...And also with you


On Saturday we had another prayer event. This one went much better than our first attempt the week before.


Our idea was to invite Muslims to come to the church for prayer. We know that many people in our neighborhood visit the "hoja," a kind of Muslim witch doctor, to help them solve problems or to protect them from evil eye and magic spells. Many Turkish Muslims believe in the reality of demons and magic and they go to great lengths to gain insight into, power over, and protection from the spirit world. Since we know that the hoja doesn't have any real solution to their problems, we want them to come to the church for prayer instead.


We made a flyer that advertised "Spiritual Consulting Days" at the church and invited them to come for prayer for all kinds of healing, deliverance, and protection that can only come from Jesus. We passed out 900 flyers in the neighborhood and held the event two Saturdays in a row. The first one was very poorly attended and we weren't sure if we would do it again, but since we had already advertised for both Saturdays, we opened the church again on the second week. It went better than we imagined it would.


18 people came throughout the afternoon in small groups, all but one of them women. Some of them came to have demons cast out. Some wanted healing for themselves or for their loved ones. Some wanted protection from the effects of evil eye (nazar in Turkish). And several of them wanted prayer to find a spouse.


I had prepared several copies of a written prayer ceremony that we planned on using. I described the prayer in a previous entry (Clove Oil). The ceremony is an old liturgy, the kind that would be used in a Catholic or Anglican church. I appreciated the Jesus-centered content of the prayer. It offers a place for the people to repent and has several call-and-response portions so that the person being prayed for can actually participate in the prayer. Two places in the prayer call for Bible readings, which allowed us to share the gospel and read events from Jesus' life. The ceremony also calls for annointing oil as a symbol of healing. I made dozens of copies of the prayer so that people could follow along, pray with us if they wished, and then take the prayer home with them.


The people appreciated the ceremony and I think it went very well. People were able to pray along with us, which almost every one did. The ceremonial quality of the prayer and the oil we used made people feel as if something spiritually significant had taken place.


Several people heard the gospel that day and we gave everyone a gift-wrapped Jesus film and a book that talks about witchcraft, evil eye, and spiritual power from a Christian perspective.


The first woman who came was reluctant to tell us exactly what she wanted prayer for. Still, we prayed for her and talked with her a little before she left. I didn't really expect to see her again but later in the afternoon she came back with 5 of her friends saying, "I want you to pray for them, too!"


One group of young women came out of curiosity but were too nervous to stay for prayer. We gave them some books and Bibles and they left thanking us.


All of the people who came had a positive experience of the church. We made it clear that we had no expectations of our visitors but that we wanted to pray for them and serve them the way that Jesus served and performed miracles.


After last week's experience I'm sure that we will hold another event like it.




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