Florida church launches statewide 'circuit ride of prayer'
2/12/2001 News media contact: Tim Tanton · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn. By Michael Wacht* PALM BAY, Fla. (UMNS) -- Members of Fellowship United Methodist Church plan to begin an unusual circuit ride of prayer around their state in April.
It's unusual because neither they nor their pastor will be making the ride themselves. Instead, they will send two prayer journals on a journey of nearly 54,000 square miles through a project called the "Circuit Ride for the New Millennium."
The Rev. Deborah Mak, Fellowship's pastor, said the idea came from a church Bible study group that was reading a book by the Rev. Terry Teykl, a United Methodist elder from Texas and full-time prayer evangelist. Teykl wrote about a group of pastors in Arizona who drove around the state praying for awakening.
"Someone said, 'That would be good for our state,' " Mak said. "I told them that if this church did it, that would mean their pastor would be gone for a long time."
The idea evolved into a traveling prayer journal that would start at Fellowship Church. Members would write their prayers in the journal, then send it to the next church. Each church along the way would celebrate the journal, reading and praying for other churches' requests, add its own prayers and carry the book to the next location.
Thirty-one churches "from Madison to Marathon" answered the initial invitation to be involved, Mak said. The greatest concentration of churches is in the Jacksonville area.
Tracking the responses on a large map in the narthex of the church, Mak said she realized they would need two journals to cover the state without asking anyone to drive for most of a day to reach the next location.
The goal of the circuit ride is to prepare the state for a massive evangelistic effort.
"Prayer is evangelism, and evangelism without prayer doesn't work," Mak said. "We need to establish a foundation of prayer, beyond our church, our districts and even our denomination. Christians must commit to prayer to soften the hearts of nonbelievers and prepare believers for Christian service."
The Rev. Waite Willis, a United Methodist elder and professor at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, asked Mak if she had any plans to follow up the Circuit Ride with "concrete missional opportunities to get the unchurched."
The Circuit Ride is intended to help people and churches "access the will of God for our church through prayer," Mak said. Members of her church have already started exploring Celebrate Jesus and Faith Sharing training as mission opportunities. Celebrate Jesus is a Florida-based organization that helps churches organize one-week Celebrate Jesus evangelism ministries as a means of training and motivating them to do their own evangelism. Faith Sharing is a personal evangelism system illustrated by the Revs. Eddie Fox and George Morris in their book, Faith Sharing.
"It's equipping the people here to reach out," Mak said. "People don't feel prepared to reach out, and prayer is essential for that."
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*Wacht is the assistant editor of the Florida Annual Conference's edition of the United Methodist Review.
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