Ministry Update: Launching NIGHT WATCH!

Hey, friends! It has been too long since I’ve written… tbh, I was swamped for a while with our summer programs and I didn’t fight like I should have to make Fragrance Arise a priority. But in all our discussions and prayers about building the house of prayer and strengthening the prayer movement, I’ve been freshly aware of the potential of this blog, and I’ve been convicted that I can’t afford to let it sit on the back burner.

So I am coming back after my unnofficial hiatus with the best news ever: Today, September 1, The Prayer Room Missions Base is extending our hours into the night! For 6 years, we’ve been 18/7 with live prayer and worship 5am-11pm every single day. We’re expanding that that to 1am every night, making us officially 20/7 and one step closer to our goal of being 24/7! We call this addition the “Night Watch”, and eventually, the whole overnight portion of our schedule will be the Night Watch.

This is incredible. We are so thrilled and grateful to the Lord that He has given us the strength to be able to give Him this offering. Tonight at 11pm, instead of praying a closing prayer and turning off the lights, a fresh worship leader (me!) will come on stage and we’ll keep going another two hours until 1am. And then we’ll do it again the next night, and the next, until we’re able to go longer and never turn off the lights at all.

Since our early days of starting as a one hour 5am daily prayer meeting in our director’s living room in 2005, we’ve known that The Prayer Room was called to a 24/7 house of prayer for our region. Over the years, we’ve added slowly, very careful that if we added a set to our schedule, it would be on every day of the week, and we would be able to sustain it. We don’t experiment with adding hours for a season; if something gets added to our schedule, it’s there till Jesus comes back.

We’ve been faithful to that model since day 1, but that means that every step is very slow and strategic. We’ve been 18/7 for 6 years, knowing that whenever we took our next step forward into the night, it would be a big deal.

The plan has always been to add one set at a time into the night: first 11pm-1am, then 1-3am, and finally 3-5am to make us 24/7. Our strategy to shore up these new sets would be to launch an internship at the same time, and fill that prayer room with young adults with passion for worship in the night. After the internship, some would stay on the night watch, and we could start another internship and go get more.

This is what we’re doing this semester. Today, in conjuction with launching our new Night Watch hours, we’re also launching our first-ever Fire in the Night internship! This is a part-time 14 week program for young adults centered around those night hours. Here’s the schedule:

  • Class 8-9pm Tues/Wed/Thurs
  • Class 3-7pm Sat (including an hour for dinner, food provided)
  • Encounter service 7-9pm Sat
  • Prayer room 9pm-1am Thurs/Fri/Sat (we chose weekend hours because these are mostly people with jobs!)

While they’re in the prayer room, they’ll be serving on three sets each, which will be a mix of worship leading, ushering, and prayer leading. For more info, including class content, see our website at tprdfw.com.

As of today, we’re launching with 5 interns! (I’m a little leery of putting that number out there, because it ALWAYS fluctuates the first few weeks–ask me at the end of the semester how many we ended with!) I’m so excited to see these hungry ones encounter Jesus in the night.

To get this internship off on the right foot, I put together a short playlist of songs from that specifically talk about the night watch. They’re all from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, where they’ve been doing 24/7 live prayer and worship since 1999 – so they know a thing or two about worship in the night! The songs from the “Simple Devotion” album were actually all written and recorded by the night watch worship teams.

If you don’t see it below, here’s the direct Spotify link.

There is one other song that is deeply precious to the night watch in Kansas City (written by Chris Tofilon) but it was never released on an album so it’s not on Spotify. I pulled a live recording from youtube and edited it down to six minutes from an hour-long set. This one is called “Psalm 134 (Bless the Lord)” and the Psalm it’s based on is literally ALL about the night watch – the priests who stand and bless the Lord in the house of prayer through the night.

“Come, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD,
who stand by night in the house of the LORD!
Lift up your hands to the holy place
and bless the LORD!
May the LORD bless you from Zion,
he who made heaven and earth!”
(Psalm 134:1-3)

Attached below is the live recording of Psalm 134 (6 min) and also the longer worship time it came from (23 minutes). If you have time, listen to the longer one. It goes into a powerful spontaneous time of what I call throne room worship, centered on the holiness of God. You can also right click to download.

Revive Texas: 50 Days of Prayer, Unity, Evangelism, and Discipleship

First, quick update: I’m currently in Wisconsin visiting my dear friends Abigail and Rondale, whom I know from IHOPU and whose wedding I was privileged to be in last July. It’s been a lovely few days hanging out, watching LOTS of Netflix, and tagging along with their normal life stuff. I’ll be in Texas on Wednesday, January 18, and then my new life as a full-time intercessory missionary with The Prayer Room Missions Base will officially begin!

However, this post is mostly not about me. This post is about something EPICLY HUGE that God is doing in the DFW region. The Prayer Room is participating wholeheartedly, but it’s so much bigger than us.
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Time to Revive is a ministry that tours the country mobilising dozens or hundreds of churches in a city to unite and strategically spread the gospel through their whole region. The focus is on awakening the church to pursue revival in their cities.

This spring, from April 16 through June 4, 2017, Time to Revive is launching a 50 day campaign in Dallas-Ft. Worth called Revive Texas.

 

Revive Texas will unite the church (hundreds of churches across many denominations) in an unprecedented way to come together in prayer and go out together to share the gospel. I’m so excited for what this will do for church unity in the region and also for the incredible testimonies we’re about to hear!
Check out this video to find out more about the vision and strategy behind this movement:

The DFW region has been divided into ten smaller regions, each of which will have its own host churches and outreach teams. To my understanding, having ten regions is something Time to Revive has never done before in any other city. We’re basically getting ten revival campaigns for the price of one! I will be in the green area centred around the city of Arlington.
dallas-mapEvery day for 50 days, local believers will come together at host churches for fellowship, prayer, and training, and then will be sent out in small teams to pray for people and share the gospel using a very simple evangelistic model. People are welcome to participate in as much or as little of the schedule as they are able.

  • 7-8am: corporate prayer
  • 8-9am: community breakfast
  • 9-10am: training
  • 10am – 12pm: outreach (go out in teams to pray for local churches)
  • 12-1pm: testimony time (share what God did during the outreach)
  • 1-2pm: community lunch
  • 2-3pm: training
  • 3-5pm: outreach (go out to pray for people and share the Gospel)
  • 5:30pm: community dinner
  • 7-9pm: evening service (teaching, testimonies, worship)

Each of the ten regions will have a prayer hub covering the outreach in prayer with worship for several hours each day. These ten prayer hubs will be existing local houses of prayer that are smaller than The Prayer Room but already have the vision and structure in place to lead the charge in intercession.

On top of these ten smaller prayer hubs, The Prayer Room will serve as a central prayer hub with 24/7 prayer and worship for all 50 days. This is huge for us. We already are doing 18 hours a day, and even outside of Revive Texas we’re just a few steps away from being able to launch a night watch that will make us continually 24/7. Since we already have the vision and structure in place, the extra people and motivational oomph of Revive Texas will enable us to carry the torch 24/7 for these 50 days. Hopefully, some of the people who join us and the other local houses of prayer for this campaign will stick around after June 4, and the entire prayer movement in DFW will be strengthened long-term.

Check out the video below, and also THIS LINK about The Prayer Room’s involvement in Revive Texas:

If you live in the DFW region, you can find out how to get involved at

ReviveTX.org.
I am so excited about all God is going to do during Revive Texas. I will keep you all updated as preparations unfold, and I will certainly share testimonies as the campaign gets underway.

In the meantime, here’s how you can pray:

  • Unity, vision, and hunger for revival in DFW churches
  • Wisdom and strength for the leaders
  • Necessary funding and logistics to land
  • Hearts to be prepared, both in believers and the unbelievers we will encounter

“And he said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest
to send out laborers into his harvest.'”
(Luke 10:2)

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