Interns

What a season! After we wrapped our music school with 18 students, I launched my energy into our summer Immerse internship. I have six interns and they are incredible!! I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better group. They are hungry, humble, in love with Jesus, engaged, and running hard! They remind me of the well-loved line from the Misty Edwards song Always on His Mind:

How far will You let me go?
How abandoned will You let me be?

These six have committed to spending their summer with us at The Prayer Room going deep in prayer, community, and the Word. It’s a part-time schedule, but it’s not lightweight. Here’s their weekly schedule, not including their 8 hours a week of prayer room time. (Session I lead/teach are marked with an asterisk.)

Tuesday
6-7pm – Awakening (theology of intimacy with God, etc)

Wednesday
6-7pm – Equipping Tools (how-tos of growing in prayer, with activities)

Thursday
6-7pm – *Group Discussion (talk through Bible passages)

Saturday
3-4pm – *Intro to the End Times
4-5pm – Intern Essentials (behind the scenes, hands-on introduction to how we run the house of prayer)
5-6pm – *DINNER PROVIDED
6-7pm – *Community Time (fun, relational connect time)
7-9pm – Encounter service

Externs

The Prayer Room has the incredible privilege of getting to host not two, not three, but FOUR externs from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City this summer!! Students at IHOPU have to do an externship at another house of prayer during their senior year or the summer before. We have hosted close to 20 externs over the years, and they always have an incredible experience and several of them (including me!) have moved back to join us long-term after graduating.

This summer, we get two guys, Faith and John, plus a newlywed couple (like two weeks newlywed!), Max and Brittani! Max and Brittani are coming here a week later than the guys, because they are currently on their honeymoon. The guys arrived this weekend, and we are SO excited to have them!

Externs strengthen our community so much. They bring fresh life and vibrancy, as well as an array of gifts in areas like wisdom, musicianship, administration, intercession, worship, servantheartedness, etc. They come hungry to serve, learn, and get connected, and they become friends for life whether or not they choose to plant themselves here afterward.

On their end, they get the benefit of hands-on experience at a smaller house of prayer, with daily interaction with leadership and real responsibility. For most of them, IHOPKC is the only house of prayer context they’ve ever known, and it’s the rare student who gets real access to even running the prayer room, let alone running the ministry as a whole. Spending a season at a smaller house of prayer not only gives that leadership experience, but provides a real-life glimpse into what the prayer movement is actually like outside of Kansas City.

Staff

This is a season of a lot of staff transition for us. Jeremy Jarvis, our beloved worship director who has served as a senior leader and intercessory missionary at TPR for a decade, recently felt God transitioning him out of this ministry. His absence will leave a hole in a dozen different ways, especially as a dear friend and father in this house.

At the same time, we are gaining more staff than we’re losing, praise God! Jade Cude, who was one of my interns in 2017 and has been on volunteer staff ever since, just came on full-time missionary staff!! (I shared an interview with Jade in a House of Prayer Spotlight post last month.) Jade is already teaching weekly in our internship (taking over the Intern Essentials class) and will soon take over coordinating our weekly Encounter service.

Our two spring externs/FMA teachers, Tyler and Daniel, are currently raising partnership to be able to join full-time missionary staff in the fall. We also just got two of my favorite people from my IHOPU years, Nick and Brittany, who moved here from Kansas City, joined volunteer staff, and want to be as involved as possible.

On top of all of this, we got a new volunteer staff member from the music school who is heading up a new security department for us, and another new volunteer staff member from Immerse (Beverly, bottom center in the picture at the top of this post)! God seems to be really bringing us new staff right now with specific gifts and experiences that will be a huge strength to this house. It is such a joy to have these people as new friends and comrades-at-arms building night and day prayer with us.

Prayer Request for Housing

A while ago, I shared that we were praying for God to give us a dorm. He’s been really quiet on that point, and even started to lead us to believe that He has a different plan for how He’s going to provide housing for our community in this season. Luke and Caslin, two of our senior leaders (also my small group leaders and good friends), recently bought a house with a few rooms to host! On top of that, several of our young adults are talking about buying/renting homes together. As much as it would make life easier to have a dorm, God seems to be stretching us by calling people to open their own homes.

At the beginning of June, I actually moved out of my house! I was the only TPR person left in the house, and the house culture was shifting toward being a discipleship house for younger college girls, so it was time for me to transition. Luke and Caslin invited me to move in with them for the summer, until they get a single guy (Daniel) as a housemate in September. Our externs Max and Brittani are moving into the house for the summer as well!

My hope for the fall is to find a house to rent with a few TPR girls, but that plan is very much not landed yet. Please pray for the right (affordable!) house and for the right people to be able to move in together.