 Around 80 people from churches right across Thurrock assembled at Grays Baptist Church last Friday night (1 April) to launch the Rock Thurrock Prayer strategy at the Ignite The Flame event.
The half night of prayer combined worship, exhortation, information and intercession. Older generations joined with young people in petitioning God for the community’s Body of Believers to realise afresh the power of prayer and for the youth of the borough to come to faith in Jesus Christ. The evening was hosted by Rock Thurrock Core Team members Colin Baker, pastor at Grays Baptist Church; Frank Gaisie, pastor of Destiny Chapel (South Ockendon); and Transformation Thurrock‘s Tim Harrold. Music was provided by Thurrock Christian Fellowship’s band, led by Neil Frost.
Following this, Tim invited the Youth Ministries Project Manager at BGEA UK, Anita Darashah-Borman, to talk about Rock Thurrock’s Bring A Friend scheme. Everyone was invited to fill in the forms found inside their programmes with the names of up to five young people they feel the Lord is leading them to invite to the Rock Thurrock events on the weekend of 24/25 September at Thurrock Civic Hall. Anita then asked everyone to get into prayer triplets to pray for the young people they had identified on their forms. Those forms were then retained for continued prayer. Tim then introduced the latest recruit to the Rock Thurrock team, Elinor Rew. Elle, as she is better known, had only agreed to facilitate Rock Thurrock Prayer’s youth stream the day before. She came to the front with her friends Steve Blakey and Hannah Lawton from the boroughwide young adults’ monthly gathering, Access, where she was briefly interviewed by Tim.
Next, Colin introduced a short DVD promoting Rock Thurrock and the various elements that go to make up the project – the Christian Life & Witness Course for adults; the Community Action Projects; the FM419 course for young people; the Rock Thurrock Events at the Civic Hall; and the follow-up Velocity course. The presentation included excerpts of music by the three bands playing at the Civic Hall events in September – LZ7, Beautiful Remnant and Empire Nation – and Will Graham, who will be presenting the Gospel at the events, speaking at ‘Rock the City’ events in the USA and Canada.
Groups then prayed into all of these aspects of Rock Thurrock. Transformation Thurrock has since heard that on Sunday morning a young person in one local church excitedly relayed the Rock Thurrock vision to the congregation, and then handed out Bring A Friend forms to everyone there. For Bring A Friend forms, please contact the Rock Thurrock team via tim@transformationthurrock.com
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After a time of worship, Frank brought an exhortation to pray – why we must pray, how we can pray, and what to expect when we pray.
Tim asked all the young people present to come to the front to be prayed over. He urged people to think of the current generation not just as a generation of Joshuas (as is often said), but a generation of Josiahs – a generation who rediscover the very thing that is missing from today’s day society, the redeeming law and healing love of King Jesus. Rock Thurrock team members, youth leaders, church leaders, and people just passionate about youth, gathered around them in releasing prayer, and words of encouragement, affirmation and confirmation were given.
Tim also made an appeal for finance – Thurrock is required to raise £20K towards the cost of the entire project. Some £3500 has already been raised.
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