Year of unbroken prayer in Coventry

During the last year, when Covid-19 restrictions have curtailed so many activities, Christians in Coventry have continued to work together intentionally to seek more God-given transformation in the city. Some of the work is undertaken under the banner of ‘HOPE Coventry,’ who run projects such as Good Neighbours Coventry, Christians Against Poverty Coventry, Healing on the Streets, HOPE@Motofest, and Coventry Prayer House. These projects support huge numbers of local people in need and mobilise hundreds of volunteers to serve the local community. HOPE Coventry is in relationship with groups such as City Praise and Prayer, the Light House counselling service, Radio Plus 101.5FM, Coventry Street Pastors, Embrace and Kidz Klub, and is aligned to the national HOPE Together movement.

A recent development has been a link-up with the newly-renamed HALO Centre, a 25,000-square-foot warehouse and office owned by Feed the Hungry, which runs Coventry Foodbank. The centre has widened its offer to include holistic Christian support, with a pattern of prayer to cover the work. The day-to-day food support for individuals and communities continues, but from now on people will also be able to access employability training, CAP debt counselling, coaching and advice on health and welfare. Integral to all of this has been prayer. The answers to prayer continue to happen, as do new opportunities to serve the city.

In June 2020, many congregations were mobilised to prayer-walk Coventry in an initiative called Open Heaven. Every street in the city was prayed for, with over 1,000 downloads of the locally-developed Prayer App, which enabled users to ‘claim’ streets they committed to prayer-walk. The evidence was shown on a map graphic and participants saw the colour of ‘their’ street changed when they reported that street had been prayed over. The App has now been used successfully in Sheffield, and is being considered by other groups around the country.

In March 2021, a small grassroots team of local Christians organised a 24-7 prayer initiative, in which 99 individuals from over 20 local churches and Christian organisations across Coventry came together and prayed unceasingly for a week. The number of participants would have been much more than this, due to double-bookings and groups of Christians praying together. The March 2021 week of prayer is now set to become a year of unbroken prayer! Organised by the same team, Cov365 is an open invitation to all Coventry-based Christians to contribute to unceasing worship and prayer from the start to the end of Coventry City of Culture year i.e. every hour of the day, every day from Saturday 15 May 2021 to 14 May 2022. Hourly slots can be booked for worship and prayer by individuals, families, churches, prayer groups, life groups, friendship groups and/or Christian charities. Together the people will bring different expressions of faith lined up in a chain of unbroken, year-long offering to Jesus. In this significant, not-to-mention challenging, prayer initiative, Coventry’s Christians welcome prayer support from Christians in Birmingham. More information about Cov365 can be found HERE.