31 days of prayer initiative is launched
 A new initiative from Norfolk Call to Prayer aims to cover every day of every month of the year with prayer. Gail Halley reports.
When Jonathan Oloyede came to Norwich on 12 November 2008, he described the area as a ‘boiler room’, a place where constant, serious prayer was building up. Those who came to hear him were enthused, but were also aware that it’s very easy to lose the momentum.
Before there was even time to dither, Jonathan called out to all those present and said, ‘Choose any date of the month – and that is your day to pray for the nation, pray for the city, pray into the things you have heard today; fast if you can; do all you can, but whatever else, PRAY’.
In no time at all, each number from 1 to 31 was taken by at least one person. The days were covered!
The plan was for each pray-er to contact Call to Prayer – by email if possible – with anything they felt the Lord had said to them during their day. It was hoped some kind of continuity would build up and we would begin to see a pattern. But then Christmas came and inevitably all sorts of other things intervened, and something of the momentum got lost. Some of those who had chosen a day heard nothing more, and fell through the net.
Enter Irene Braden … Irene is a lady who loves to pray. She has also been a great supporter of many prayer initiatives in the area, and has been involved with Call to Prayer – of which she is now a team member – for some time. Irene has taken over the organisation of the 31 Days of Prayer, and already it is on the move under her direction.
Not being able to trace everyone who had (verbally) signed up, Irene’s first aim is to get every day covered; this has nearly been achieved but there remain a handful of days not yet allocated: 6, 7, 19, 20, 25, 29, 30.
The next stage is to turn this into a sort of prayer chain. Each person will contact the pray-er designated the next day – by phone or email – to tell them how their day went. They will also let Irene know if there is anything which she should be aware of, and Irene will build up a prayer diary – we can expect to see some kind of pattern emerge.
It shouldn’t be long before each day has more than one person allocated to it, and those people can – if they wish – contact each other; they can even arrange to pray together if this is practical, on the phone if not in person. And as it grows, this could form a significant part of the 24/7 prayer and praise which is beginning to take shape in our county.
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