After gathering with about twenty ministries as part of a national prayer network (Camp Stillwood, BC. Sept 2009) we all sensed the importance of uniting and working together to fuel and inspire more prayer in our nation. An idea birthed out of our meeting was to mobilize a year of non-stop prayer that travels through churches/communities in cities across Canada.

Our hope and dream is to unite Canada in prayer right across the nation, including all generations, denominations, cultures, cities and ministries. Different denominations have completed a year of prayer for their nation (Salvation Army in the UK) and Canadian cities have united in prayer (7 churches in Regina for 40 days)… But we want to go beyond and unite generations, denominations, people groups and ministries in every city to PRAY…. like never before, 24-7-365!

What is 24-7 Prayer?

24-7 Prayer is an international, interdenominational movement of prayer, mission and justice that began with a single, student-led prayer vigil in Chichester, England in 1999 and has spread, by word-of-mouth, into 100+ nations.

For more than a decade the global 24-7 prayer meeting has continued unbroken, impacting locations as diverse as the US Naval Academy, a German punk festival, war-zones and underground churches, the slums of Delhi, the jungles of Papua New Guinea, ancient English cathedrals and even a brewery in Missouri.

Along the way, this unusual prayer meeting has given rise to numerous new initiatives, communities and ministries particularly focusing on the poor, the marginalized, students and those outside the reach of normal expressions of church.

Thanks to an innovative approach to spirituality and culture, 24-7 Prayer has also captured the attention of newspapers and magazines from Rolling Stone to Readers Digest, and was the subject of a British television documentary.

“I believe, as a 59 year-old woman, sitting in this prayer room, that if these young people are the next generation, our world is in safe hands.” -Liz, UK

The aim of 24-7 Prayer is Reconciliation

The 24-7 movement seeks to prioritize Christ’s two greatest commandments: to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30). We pray and work for reconciliation at three levels: spiritually – where there is broken relationship with God, socially – where there is broken relationship between people, and environmentally – where there is broken relationship with our world. 24-7 Prayer exists, therefore, ‘to reconcile the world to God through Jesus Christ’. We seek to do this by mobilizing the Church in prayer, mission and justice.

How does 24-7 Prayer work in practice?

Last night, as you slept someone, somewhere was praying 24-7. In fact, right now, as you read these words, people are interceding in scores of locations around the world. This has been continuing every minute of every hour of every day since 1999. Participating groups simply find a venue in which to establish a night-and-day prayer vigil by splitting each day into one-hour shifts, thus filling anything from a weekend to many years with an unbroken chorus of prayer and worship. Keeping rules to a minimum, we simply encourage groups to make their place of prayer as creative and accessible as possible, and to particularly focus on young people and the emerging culture.