While most churches are closed on Saturday, St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in Fairborn will be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Saturday. Dedicated vigil keepers will keep the doors open and offer their own prayers for the church, the community and the people they care for. The vigil was instituted when the Vestry came to a consensus at their May meeting that this was something that they were being called to do. Making a leap-of-faith, urgently desiring for God to transform them into the church that He would have them be, the permanent, 12-hour, every Saturday prayer vigil began on June 14.

Erin, Deanna, and Damia appear to be
pleased with the message about prayer.

It all begain in November 2002, when Jeff Brown and Andy Figueroa returned from the Confessing the Faith conference in Indianapolis with a video titled, A Prayer Driven Church. The 51 minute video shows The Rev. John Guernsey, Rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church, Woodbridge (Dale City), Virginia, conducting a talk on how their congregation, and his own ministry, had been transformed through the power of their prayers. A few people watched a portion of the video during a late November Alpha weekend. The momentum grew from there as their Rector, The Rev. Joanne Stearns watched it several times. It was finally presented to the entire vestry at their spring retreat in May.

Inspired by the video, A Prayer Driven Church, and certainly driven by the power of the Holy Spirit, the vigil is just another step St. Christopher's has taken in a plan to increase deliberate prayer for intercession and to discern God's will for the congregation. In her address to the congregation at the annual parish meeting, The Rev. Joanne Stearns declared 2003 as the Year of Prayer. The Alpha leadership team undertook a course of study entitled The Heart of Revival (punchline = prayer) during their spring course. The adult Christian education class kicked off their summer studies with a course on prayer, and the video, A Prayer Driven Church, is being shown every Sunday at 9:00 and 11:30 a.m. A separate web site to mark their progress as a prayer driven church has been started at http://prayer.philippians-1-20.us/

So far, 22 faithful people have signed on to help keep the vigil, and the vigil hasn't yet been advertised in the Lantern, their monthly newsletter. All who worship at St. Christopher's are being encouraged to consider becoming part of this team in one capacity or another.

Andy Figueroa can be contacted at figueroa@andyfigueroa.net or by calling 937-429-5419. The video "A Prayer Driven Church" is distributed by the American Angican Council, http://americananglican.org/

See original "Overview" story.