Prayer walking is a great way to get active in prayer and is as simple as it sounds – you pray as you walk. Why not try it and learn more about a place and God’s heart for a community. There are many ways to do it but here are our suggestions for giving it a go with your church.
- Start and end together: agree a place and time to meet to start walking and talking to God together. Begin by explaining why you’ve gathered to pray and a few pointers for those who haven’t prayed this way before. If you’re going to split into smaller groups at any point, then agree a place and time to end together.
- Planned route or a wild goose chase? You can decide ahead of time where you’re going to go or you can simply ask the Holy Spirit to lead you as you walk. Just make sure you don’t get lost!
- Try going out in twos: Jesus sent his disciples out in twos. It’s not intimidating or as conspicuous as a large group can be, and it is safer than people going on their own. If you have a larger group breaking into pairs can help you cover more ground. For safety’s sake you might want to make sure that at least one person on each team has a mobile phone in case you need to contact each other.
- To be seen or not to be seen: you can pray quietly or in a volume that doesn’t draw attention if you’re on a covert prayer mission. Silence is okay too. It’s not about being seen to be praying, it’s about seeing and praying. Having said that, if you feel confident sometimes the Lord can ask us to pray boldly in public!
- Pray the positive: even in areas that are considered ‘dark’ or ‘desperate’, try to pray blessings rather than ‘tearing down’ prayers. Focus on God’s plan, purpose and destiny for the place and the people that live there. “Your Kingdome come, your will be done…” makes an excellent start!
- Ending well: if you’ve gone in different directions why not meet up at the end to share what you’ve felt, seen, prayed and heard from God. If you can keep a record of what you share so you can build on it next time.
