I belong to a prayer group of pastors who meet every morning to pray for our city. We range in number from 15 to 30 at each meeting. The interesting thing about our meeting is that we have people from all streams of our faith who come. Most of the attendees are Pentecostal, or Charismatic, but there are a few Evangelicals in the group. Denominationally we have only three Southern Baptist ministers who come, but the major denominations like United Methodists, Presbyterian USA or PCA, Lutherans and UCC or DOC are conspicuous in their absence. They have been invited a number of times, but they do not have time or do not believe in what we are doing. About 50% of our attendees are black, one is Latino and the rest are white. We have three or four women who come on a regular basis.

Our prayers are directed at the sin in our city and a government that is inept and corrupt. We pray for the police department, the fire department, the school board and the city council. We pray for revival in our city. We pray that our  President and the leaders of our nation will be guided and directed by the Holy Spirit. We pray that our military will be protected in battle. We pray that the churches will come alive. We pray that we will reach out to the poor and homeless and that the gospel will be presented to all people. We also conduct spiritual warfare since Satan seems to have taken over our town. On some Tuesdays we pray for our neighboring towns and for the churches in those towns. Some of us have gone through neighborhoods praying for each house and its occupants. We have also prayed in spiritual warfare in front of the offices of  Planned Parenthood. Others have walked the streets of the most criminalized part of town to take back the streets for God. Finally, we pray for each other and our personal problems. We will continue these activities.

We have seen results. Through our prayer effort we have secured permission to start a Good News Club in one local school and we are hoping to get clubs started in other schools as well. We have prayed up our attendance so that we have more and more pastors who come. This summer we plan to sponsor five tent meetings in five different parts of the city. We will also have a tent for the Latino population. The representative churches will each conduct services for the attendees in their part of town. I look forward to participating.

The importance of our pastors= prayer group has been manifest in that those of us who participate are edified, our racial barriers have come down and we are cooperating in ways that I have not seen in years. The last time I saw any ecumenical cooperation was when we had our Billy Graham crusade over 20 years ago. Even then it was primarily the Baptist churches that were active while other mainline denominations did little if anything. Those of us from mainline churches who participated did so because of our own personal belief in His cause not with the blessing of our church.