Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – United, Focused Prayer: Changes in the Way We Are Praying for the World, Part 1

By Steve Hawthorne
December 2008

This is the first of two installments of how prayer related to evangelization has increased and changed in phenomenal ways since the 1984 International Prayer Assembly for World Evangelization.

Prayer has always been viewed as an essential part of missions. No one would question missionary Samuel Zwemer’s statement that “the history of missions is the history of answered prayer.” Praying for the work of world evangelization has been indispensable to missions. As well-known Scottish pastor and teacher Oswald Chambers wrote, “Prayer is not preparation for the work. Prayer is the work.”

It is important to recognize how well-precedented most of the modern prayer movements really are.

In recent decades, we have seen rapid escalations and dramatic innovations in prayer related to missions. What follows is not a comprehensive survey; rather, it is a sample of how prayer is playing a greater role than ever in accomplishing world evangelization.

Not Unprecedented
It is important to recognize how well-precedented most of the present-day movements of prayer really are. If we stay within the Protestant tradition, it is hard to forget how the Moravian communities committed themselves to hourly intercession in the summer of 1727. Members of the Moravian Church continued a prayer watch tradition for one hundred years, focusing much of their praying on world evangelization. Ever since then, prayer has been closely linked to missions in the Protestant tradition.

Prayer as a Mission Activity
Famed Protestant missionary William Carey was impressed by the Moravian prayer watch. Sixty-five years after it began, Carey published his influential An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens¹, which called for action (using the now archaic term means) in several ways. The “first, and most important,” of the action points called for was “fervent and united prayer…for the success of the gospel.” At a time when denominational fragmentation was great, Carey organized monthly prayer meetings to involve Christians of all denominations. Not long after Carey sailed for Serampore in West Bengal, India, the celebrated Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806 in Williamstown, Massachusetts, positioned united prayer as the engine of mission mobilization in the United States.

Of course, prayer was seen as much more than a mobilization method and had long been viewed as an indispensable part of how mission work was accomplished on the field. Prayer as a mission activity became even more celebrated by the faith mission movements. Leaders such as evangelist George Mueller and Hudson Taylor were notorious for looking to prayer as a method of mission.

One of the missions which arose during this time, Sudan Interior Mission (SIM), adopted the motto, “By prayer.” This motto is still used today.

Steve Hawthorne is a mission/prayer mobilizer with WayMakers. He and Ralph Winter co-edited the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement book and course. He and Graham Kendrick co-authored Prayerwalking: Praying On-Site with Insight. He has worked with the International Prayer Council since its beginning.