from Steve Lawton at the Stanford Boiler Room
Treasure Hunting is a growing phenomenon in the UK taking evangelism, the prophetic and healing prayer out of the church and onto the streets.
Championed mainly by Bill Johnson of Bethel Church, Redding in California, and Kevin Dedmon with his book The Ultimate Treasure Hunt, stories are emerging of groups of people praying on the streets in Britain for total strangers pinpointed through prayer by the Holy Spirit.
In the January edition of Christianity magazine, there was a 6-page article about Treasure Hunting under the title The New Street Preachers. It starts by asking, “Could you imagine walking up to a complete stranger in the street and offering them prayer for healing?”
Dave Bareham of Chafford Hundred Community Church recently reported that a fellow church in the NFI network has seen a significant amount of healings taking place on the streets of Bedford through Treasure Hunting. Gary Seithel of the Across Havering prayer network has been involved in a Treasure Hunt in Brentwood. And now, Treasure Hunting has arrived in Thurrock.
Transformation Thurrock caught up with Steve Lawton (right), who has been host for the 24-7 Prayer international year-out Transit students at the Corringham Baptist Manse throughout the past year. Linked with the Stanford Boiler Room (or ‘217’), he and the Transiteers are involved in a number of prayer and missional activities in the east of the borough – including Treasure Hunting.
Steve Lawton (right) has sent out the following communication:
This coming Friday, 2 July, sees the last prayer walking night of this Transit Year!
Read on! Join in!
Starts @ 8:00pm Baptist Manse Corringham
S’appnin?
First of all, a massive thanks to everyone who has helped, supported and attended prayer walking this year. Sometimes it’s been hard, sometimes it’s been cold, sometimes it’s the last thing you wanna do on a Friday night. However we can say God has been incredible.
It all started last year when with a group of transit students were challenged to take prayer out of the safety and comfort of the prayer room and drop it down right in the centre of town. Corringham has changed a lot over this time but prayer has still been a focus.
When we look back a few things stick out in my head. Litter picking and making prophetic sculpture. Prayer pennies. Glow sticks in the snow, treasure hunting, a couple nights in the Pompadour, an evening with Ramos, the 4 corners of Corringham and Stanford, prayer over the town from one tree hill then even better from a plane, having tea in our house with a professional shoplifter. The list could go on, but let’s just say we have prayed and walked and tried to inspire other to do the same, but with the inset idea of bringing heaven to earth.
This Friday 2 July is our last day of Transit and our last official prayer walking for the year as a team. We would really like to invest prayer into our town together as a team and as a community.
If you were at the transit leaving party on Saturday night you may have seen Andy’s Chinese lanterns. So the idea is we pray together at our house, we will start this at 8pm (a bit later than normal, but I was hoping for it to be a bit dark when we did this). We will pray and give thanks to all the good things God has done so far, then we will head to the park. I’d like us to consider what prayer’s to pray over our town, to consider where God heart is still breaking, and where we can be effective. We will write these on lanterns and send them up to the heavens, to symbolise our prayers going up to God but also to lift them up high above our town.
What do you think? Would you like to come? I’d like to know who’s about before we buy some to get the numbers right. Feel free to pass this on to anyone you think may be interested.
It would be great to be together as community and let our prayers not just stay in the prayer room but be lifted up for all to see.
Let me know if you’re interested.
Later on
Steve
Steve, an ex-estate agent and a DJ, is 27. Last year he spent travelling across Europe visiting Christ-centred communities. He was baptised 12 years ago at Grays Pentecostal Church when it was in Bridge Road.
Transformation Thurrock would like to encourage Treasure Hunting across the borough. A group from TCF in Grays are going to a day conference in Harlow this coming Saturday to look into it further. The same group are hosting a prayer tent at the T-Fest at Grays Beach on 24-25 July. It has already been prototyped in part by Bar’N’Bus and Thurrock Healing Rooms (who have used the bus in South Ockendon). We will be looking at this whole subject further and report back – so watch this space!
Links:
24-7 Prayer: www.24-7prayer.com
Bill Johnson’s website: www.bjm.org
Bethel Church, Redding, CA: www.ibethel.org
The Ultimate Treasure Hunt: A Guide to Supernatural Evangelism Through Supernatural Encounters by Kevin Dedmon – £7.03 from Amazon:
www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Treasure-Hunt-Supernatural-Evangelism/dp/0768426022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264766064&sr=1-1
