c. 1999 Religion News Service
PUYALLUP, Wash. _ Linda Woerman and Carolyn Nelson sat side by side at Woerman’s kitchen table, hands folded in prayer, ignoring the ringing telephone.
Every week, they spend an hour together praying for the needs of their neighbors _ the guy recovering from heart surgery who must give up pizza and beer, the children who play near a busy street, the man around the corner who uses a wheelchair.”Father, you know the needs that are in this neighborhood,”prayed Woerman.”I pray, Lord, for the hearts of members of the households, Lord, that their hearts will be open and turn toward you.” Woerman, a conservative Lutheran, and Nelson, a Southern Baptist, are part of the”Lighthouse Movement”that has reached pockets of the country and that evangelical Christians predict will sweep the nation with a wide swath of prayer. In the end, they hope these groups of two or more gathering regularly for prayer will prompt a form of evangelism that turns neighborhoods into mission fields.”Many Christians are shy about sharing their faith,”said the Rev. Paul Cedar, chairman of the Lighthouse Movement and of Mission America, a Minneapolis-based consortium of about 400 evangelical groups.”What we’re saying is don’t worry about that. Just start praying for neighbors. … As you begin to pray, God will open up authentic opportunities … to care for them.” Houses of Prayer Everywhere, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based ministry, sends out”Houses of Prayer Personal Light-House Kits”to inquiring Christians interested in participating. The kits, which cost $69.95 for churches and $25.95 for individuals, include lighthouse decals with the words”Prayer-Care-Share”on them, pamphlets and devotional guides on how to get started, and a 34-minute introductory video.”What would happen if we all began to pray for our neighbors and our neighborhoods?”asks the Rev. Alvin Vander Griend, the ministry’s executive director, of his video audience.”We’d have cities in transformation, churches that were revived, streams of people coming to Jesus Christ.” Woerman, 50, a part-time staffer at a physical therapy practice, went a step beyond having merely a decal in her window. When she and Nelson, 64, a retired teacher, gather for their weekly sessions, she replaces the American flag next to her garage with a purple”House of Prayer”flag.
She and Nelson have gone beyond praying to caring for their neighbors by organizing emergency preparedness sessions for whatever might arise in their community south of Seattle, from earthquakes to ice storms to floods. On the lined paper they pull out before their prayer session, they jot down their requests to God for the next preparedness meeting _ to be held during a block party _ and note the illnesses and other concerns they’ve learned about in the houses that surround them.”Linda and I had the thought of getting the neighbors to know each other, to try and work together,”said Nelson.”Ultimately, we pray that they’ll come to know the Lord, but we’re going a step at a time.” At this point, some neighbors know they’re praying for the neighborhood, but not specifically for particular conditions in each household.
Thus, the women have not yet moved to the sharing portion of the plan, which could include placing bright orange door hangers on their neighbors’ doorknobs announcing that they’re being prayed for and offering a few lines on the back to jot down prayer requests.
Eventually, Nelson and Woerman hope others will join their prayer group but, if so, they may grow slightly less specific about their requests so their neighbors’ problems remain private.”This is not a gossip session,”Woerman said.”Everything that is spoken here is considered confidential.” While Houses of Prayer Everywhere suggests people begin by praying five minutes a day for five neighbors five days a week for five weeks, other ministries involved in the movement recommend praying for five neighbors to the left and right and 10 across the street. Movement supporters also suggest that neighbors don’t have to be people who live next door, but can be other associates, such as co-workers, playmates or classmates.
All of this may sound fairly programmatic, but organizers insist it is a flexible strategy that is simply getting Christians to do what they’re called to do _ pray for their neighbors, care for their community and share their faith.”Prayer evangelism is talking to God about your neighbors before you talk to your neighbors about God,”said Patrick Clowes, vice president of Promise Keepers’ Vision 2000 division, which is working to encourage men in the evangelical movement to turn their homes into”lighthouses.””They’re not just your project. You’re not just trying to stuff the gospel down their throats but rather to present to them in a loving and caring way something that’s been transformational in your life.” Clowes and others are speaking at Promise Keepers rallies this summer about the movement, showing videos about it and selling $6″lighthouse kits”that include a guidebook. Campus Crusade is using its”WorldChangers Radio”program, which is co-hosted by founder Bill Bright, to promote the movement. Mission America is encouraging Christian radio stations to do something similar in the fall, when the idea is expected to be expanded through a media blitz directed at evangelical Christians.
But Jan Connell, author of the recent book”Prayer Power: Secrets of Healing and Protection”(HarperSanFrancisco), said the concept of prayer groups is not limited to evangelical Protestants or to the United States. She compares the groups to”crocuses coming up in the spring”and says they’ve cropped up at churches, synagogues and mosques across the globe as well as among groups of Hindus and Buddhists.”The more you look, the more prayer groups you find,”said Connell, a Pennsylvania-based Catholic lawyer who is working on her ninth book on prayer.”People all over the world are telling me that in their prayer life they discern … that they’re called either to form prayer groups or to be a part of prayer groups.” In the end, evangelical Christian leaders say they hope their particular effort will get people to do two things they may not have done before _ get involved with their neighbors and with evangelism.”It’s moving people out of their comfort zone,”said Clowes.
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Pastors in the Seattle area _ in a state the Gallup Organization reported last year had the lowest percentage of regular churchgoers in the nation _ report that they and members of their churches have seen positive results from their new prayer regimens.
The Rev. Lewie Schultz of Mountain View Baptist Church in Tacoma, Wash., said after his family started praying for his neighbors, one woman who lived nearby and had been the subject of their prayers ran into his wife in a Kmart and asked to follow them to church. The woman and her husband were later baptized by Schultz.”It was fun to see God, in answer to prayer, begin to reach our neighbors,”he said.
Cedar calls the Lighthouse Movement”out of human control, in the Holy Spirit’s control”and acknowledges it’s hard to figure out exactly how many people are participating. While Cedar’s organization has just started registering participants online and expects to have”tens of thousands”registered by the fall, Paul Dozeman, associate director of Houses of Prayer Everywhere, estimates that”tens of thousands”already are involved in the Lighthouse Movement. Both predict there will be at least 3 million”lighthouses”by sometime next year.
While some Lighthouse participants are telling their neighbors they are praying for them _ some even have baskets near their front doors for people to drop off prayer requests _ Cedar is among those who think keeping the prayers private is a good idea.”I’m sure that there would be non-Christians who would prefer that they not be prayed for,”he said.”The key, really, is authentically loving, not manipulating, not squeezing people into a program, not making them into a target, but just praying.” As Nelson and Woerman keep up their weekly ritual, they say their work reflects their response to a question asked by Cain of God in the book of Genesis:”Am I my brother’s keeper?””If you answer that question in the affirmative, then this is a natural step,”Woerman said.
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