24-7 Prayer Bristol

Bristol has long felt a little bereft of 24-7 community. We have always needed to travel to gatherings or iChat our way into the presence of ‘our people’. That was until Monday."

"I had heard underground rumours that there were 24-7 rumblings starting in the city. Random connections and conversations were taking place between people I did not know. Out of the rumblings came a tour date in Bristol, a meeting point, a dot on the map.

So on Monday night, I drove into the dodgy part of town in my car that looked quite at home there. I parked up on a deserted street outside a very dubious looking ‘massage parlour’ and headed into the unpretentious redbrick building across the street.

Inside, I was greeted by a buzz of noise and bustle. A bunch of friendly, smiley twenty-somethings ushered us into the rather flashy church meeting room that looked more like Hillsongs than 24-7 Prayer. The lighting guys played with their exciting roving stage lights, while we became increasingly surprised as more and more people came through the doors.

The night kicked off with some familiar faces, Jude Smith, Pete Ward and a bunch of Transit guys I vaguely recognised from the last Feast. It was so good to see our 24-7 people on our soil. There was something strategic and confirming about the team being here and drawing all us random ones together.

We worshipped together and the presence of God was so sweet in the room that I could have stayed there forever. People grabbed the mic’s and began to pray and suddenly we weren’t strangers anymore. Sweet prayers of thanks and mighty prayers of fire and Kingdom come in Bristol as it is in Heaven. Amen!

It was sometime after Phil Togwell began to speak, that I realised he was ‘preaching’ his message. It felt more like a fireside chat where we, now friends, all sat around and listened to the secrets of the Kingdom. Phil spoke about breathing in the very breath of God and exchanging dreams with the divine dreamer. That we would be so altered by our intimacy with God that we couldn’t help but alter the world around us. To me it was a sweet thing to draw together what has been separated too long. As we prayed for our city again and then left to go back into it, I knew that something had happened. Something has begun.