Transforming communities through prayer
Debra Green shares the story of how Redeeming Our Communities started and how she has seen incidents of violent crime reduce as a result of prayer
People often ask me where the idea of Redeeming Our Communities (ROC) came from. The answer is that it was inspired by seven years of inter-church city-wide prayer in Greater Manchester. Concerned for our reputation as ‘Gunchester’ which described some of the serious social issues we were experiencing as a city, we felt stirred to start a united prayer movement back in 1993. Seven years later, we had over 200 churches of different denominations and streams praying together. Our aim was to change the spiritual atmosphere and reduce incidents of violent crime.
I’m a great believer in specific or informed prayer. We can only be specific if we have knowledge. Informed intercession is powerful.
Someone said “general prayers are a breeding ground for unbelief”. Think about it, if we can’t be bothered to do any research, our prayers will just be very generalised. Being specific holds us...
Imagine how we felt when we prayed “no more Gunchester” in a packed velodrome in 2008, only to read on the Manchester Evening News front page headline six months later: “Is this the end of...
Prayer is a powerful first step.
Seven years of persistent prayer
Following seven years of persistent united prayer we felt led to start ROC. The idea of “people of goodwill working together towards safer, kinder communities” was born. We knew that no one...
