Background

Pray For the City was started by Kevin McStay in 1993. Kevin became a committed Christian in 1985/6 whilst at Medical School in Newcastle. In 1989 he married one of the girls who led him to Christ - Ruth. In the same year, Kevin and his new wife moved to live and work in Carlisle. As a student in Newcastle, Kevin had seen an amazing move of God amongst the Halls of Residence. This was primarily rooted in prayer; and it was during this time that he felt God saying to ‘Go to Cumbria'.

Then, in 1991, he felt a prophetic burden to see the Lordship of Jesus evident over cities worldwide - not just individual churches. This vision was rooted in Joshua 5:13 - 6:2, where God spoke to Joshua saying “I have delivered Jericho (the city) into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.” Along with other ‘words' this became a passion to see local churches develop a collective vision for their city (or local area), based on face-to-face leadership relationships, rooted in prayer, and founded on the unity of the Gospel message.

These principles led him to found Pray For The City, Carlisle (PFTC).

Further to this he felt God speaking through Ezekiel 37:15-28; that God specifically wanted to bring the Pentecostal/charismatic and non-charismatic churches and leaders together as one. In the early 1990's in Carlisle this was not the case. ‘Conservative' and ‘charismatic' evangelical leaders did not generally mix together - having separate leadership gatherings. Indeed, there were degrees of open antagonism and mistrust on occasions.

1993

In 1993, the first PFTC prayer meetings came into being and were initially well supported by a number of leaders and members from various churches. Prayer walking became popular, involving up to 19 churches, with every street of the city being prayed through every 3 months for a year. However, numbers at main gatherings dwindled and it was evident that there was a need to ‘build the vision'.

1996

Three years later a group of church leaders began meeting regularly for breakfast and prayer, on a Saturday morning. This practice has continued ever since - every 2nd Saturday of the month - and has become the foundation for relationships of openness and trust that exist today among a number of the churches and its leaders across the city. It was during this time that both of the above leadership gatherings - ‘conservative' and ‘charismatic' - folded to become one.

1999

In 1999, this group of church leaders was challenged through watching the first “Transformations” video and for a period of time the group met fortnightly. Quarterly prayer meetings for church members and attenders were re-introduced in 2001 and proved to be effective at bringing a hundred or so people together to worship and pray for Carlisle. Around this time, leaders began to discuss what the churches could do ‘together' to demonstrate the unity that was felt and to take the Good News to our city.

2003

2003 saw our first major event. The “On the Move” team were invited to join us and in conjunction with them a City Centre Barbecue took place. Free burgers and sausages were distributed in their thousands while worship bands drawn from across the involved churches played and sang at various points throughout the city centre. Testimonies were shared and contacts made that were followed up by individual churches. While this was primarily pre-evangelism, a number of people came to faith in Christ and were added in to churches.

2004

A year later, in July 2004, followed the ‘Blue Moon Fun Day' in the city centre; with puppet ministry, free candy floss, face painting, fire-eating, singing (the Nigerians being particularly popular) and balloons. It was intended to be the Church reaching out to interact with people who only attend Church once in a blue moon!

In fact, God has a sense of humour. Having completed the event we discovered where the phrase ‘once in a blue moon' comes from. It is used in day-to-day language to mean an uncommon happening. However, a blue moon is in fact the description of a second full moon in a single month. A full moon occurs only every 29.5 days; so two in one month is not common - only 41 in a century. Guess what? July 2004 actually had 2 full moons - a true blue moon month!

2006

Two years later, in the summer of 2006, a further City Centre Barbecue took place- see the BBC report for details. City churches hosted the event in a similar fashion to what was done three years previously with 'On the Move'.

2007

More recently, in April 2007, we did our first PFTC 24-7 prayer event; in the week leading up to Easter. Different churches took different slots of prayer throughout the week, as well as other individuals just turning up as and when Feedback has generally been excellent; although we've also learnt what could be better done next time. We need to consider how to build on this.

For the near future, however, we have a month of church-based evangelism planned. With joint advertising this is dated for October, under the banner title, “Is the time right...”.