Introduction

ALTHOUGH THE IDEA FOR THIS BOOK had been brewing for a number of years and people kept asking me when I was going to write my book, I only began seriously writing it in 2020-the year the world held its collective breath, while many, the world over, ironically, gasped for it. For me, it was a year of unprecedented intercession. There were only two days of the week that I wasn't scheduled to pray with others.

I live just outside New York City. I go to church in Manhattan. In March of 2020 a frightening pall began to fall over the city as the Covid-19 infection rate began to climb. Some friends commented that it felt eerily like 9/11 all over again. Professional sports teams canceled their seasons. March Madness, the perennial college basketball championship series, disappeared. Schools shut down. Churches shut down. The size of legal, indoor gatherings dwindled rapidly from two hundred fifty to one hundred, then to ten in a matter of days. Restaurants boarded up. Curfews were imposed. Streets were jarringly empty. The city that never sleeps was hunkering down for an indeterminate time.

As everything closed up and it was recommended that we shelter in place for two weeks, my mind went quickly to some of the vulnerable in my church community. Those over sixty were strictly warned that they were particularly prone to infection. I thought of some seniors who were alone: my dear friends Funmi and Joy. And then I thought of Louisa, who also lives alone. I checked in with each of them by phone. There was nothing we could do to overcome this invisible, microscopic virus, but I knew we could pray. I asked each one if they would want to pray together. And in the matter of just a few minutes we all had a prayer time scheduled together for the following day.

Wednesday morning I phoned Joy on my cell phone. Now an octogenarian, Joy ran the NYC marathon each year into her seventies. Her body may be petite and frail now, but when she hugs, she squeezes the breath right out of you. She is first at church in the morning and last to leave, devotedly and prayerfully handling the altar accoutrements. She has lived alone for as long as I've known her. Aging has been a difficult road for her, but she remains a faithful stalwart of our church community. After Joy happily greeted me, I added Louisa to the call.

A longtime New York City resident, Louisa had careers as a hospital lab technician, computer programmer, and ESL instructor before retiring and continuing her interests in bird watching, Bible study, and church activities. Her single life allowed her the time to serve multiple terms on the vestry, chair the missions committee, and spearhead outreach ministries to the homeless. She's a long time Episcopalian and helped me one Sunday in Lent, as we were standing together eyeing the treats during coffee hour, by telling me that we were meant to break our Lenten fast on Sunday because it was a feast day. As we reached for our chocolatey, floured treats, I became indebted to Louisa ever since. Merging the calls, I then added Funmi.

Funmi and I share the joy of each being married in our fifties after being single most of our lives. A retired child psychologist and daughter of an Anglican bishop, Funmi not only has a rich prayer life, she also has a completely contagious little giggle that erupts shortly after her shoulders start shaking. I love serving on the healing prayer team with her. You definitely want her on your side praying when you are in need. She and her husband Robert split their time between New York City and Charlotte. When the lockdown came, Robert was in North Carolina with the rest of his family. Funmi was alone in New York City. But with her deep, vibrant faith and a gleam in her eye, she would tell you she is never alone.

So here we were, the four of us embarking on a journey. None of us knew where it would go, but it was important to be together. We were compelled to not only bring our burdens to God, but to ask for his intervention in things that were well beyond our control.

In our fear and uncertainty, we turned to our good Father. We prayed for ourselves, our church, our city; for health care workers, for parents of young children, for the sick, for the grieving, for government officials, for scientists and a vaccine, even for Dr. Fauci. If we had only listened to the news, we would've been paralyzed. But as we prayed, our trust in God grew. God is bigger than the coronavirus. Funmi's prayer lifted me up. Joy's prayer lifted Louisa. Our burdens were lifted up to Christ and we felt them taken. As we prayed together as a group, our fear melted, giving rise to hope and faith.

LEARNING THY KINGDOM COME

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done-on earth as it is in heaven." On any given day of the week, in all likelihood, this sentence from the Lord's Prayer may be one of the most prayed petitions throughout the world. It's provocative. As we take a brief look around us, what does it mean to pray for God's kingdom to come and will to be done when there are people squabbling over which lives should matter, world powers fighting over the domination of the less powerful, and marginalized communities pushed further to the margins, all while mental illness soars off the charts? If you just think long enough about all the places where God's kingdom needs to come, it can be overwhelming. How do we know what things to pray for and how to pray for those things when it doesn't always seem clear what God's will is?

What does it mean to pray for God's kingdom to come and will to be done when there are people squabbling over which lives should matter, world powers fighting over the domination of the less powerful, and marginalized communities pushed further to the margins, all while mental illness soars off the charts?

These are questions I've been asking for years, whether I was trying to have an impact with a ragtag group of college students on a Jersey Shore beach for a couple of summers or training folks in my church to actively pursue the tenets of the Lord's Prayer; or during the ten years I spent perfecting a course in intercessory prayer or the two terms I served as prayer coordinator deploying two hundred fifty staff and volunteers in prayer at an international conference. I have an increasing awareness of what God's kingdom could look like and how God might want to use us to usher in his kingdom.

ADVENTURES IN GROUP PRAYING

One of the first prayer meetings I went to as a new believer was eye opening. I had never prayed aloud with others using words that were not already written down. We sang some worship songs then broke up into same-gender small groups. Some pulled out paper and pen, poised to record the requests people had so they could remember them as we prayed and keep them to pray through during the rest of the week. Then the sharing began.

"My husband needs a job." "Our teenaged son is rebelling again." Lots of different illnesses and frailties were mentioned, some for relatives who lived far away. Then there were these: "I have three unspoken requests," things that seemed too personal for people to utter. But how was I supposed to pray for those? After all the sharing, there was actually very little time left to pray. One person began and prayed through the whole list of requests like she was putting items in God's grocery cart. She finished and there was a long, awkward silence. What else were the rest of us to pray about? We were together in a circle and had shared our requests, but was this praying together?

I don't believe intercessory prayer comes naturally to us. We should not pray in a group the same way we might pray when we are alone or with one other person. No, I believe we need to be taught. And if we want to pray for revival, we will need to pray with others who have also been taught. It is why I thought of this book as a book for groups-church small groups, ministry groups, neighborhood groups. I have been formally training groups to effectively pray together for fifteen years and modeling it for more than thirty. Praying with others stretches us, inspires our prayers, and builds love in our hearts for people and the situations they find themselves in.

When we learn to intercede with others . . .

our hope for change grows.

our prayers are emboldened.

we can pray longer with increasing energy and inspiration.

we come to understand God differently.

I can hardly think of a better illustration of these four points than when I joined a group comprised mostly of strangers to pray for Sammy. Sammy, who is as close to me as a brother, a Kenyan who calls South Africa home, contracted Covid-19. Within days he was in ICU, in an induced coma, on life support. In fact, early on, his wife was called to the hospital to come pick up his things because he was doing so poorly. Miranda created a WhatsApp group to pray for Sammy's life. More than two hundred people from at least three continents joined in to pray for this brother. We were not gathered physically together as a group, but our hearts were indelibly knit together. This type of prayer was not what I had in mind as I thought about writing a book on group prayer. But it was the only method we had, and it proved satisfying, reliable, and effective.

In the...