A few weeks ago our Missional Community leaders all went on a prayer walk with my friend Matt Senger. He is a church planter using MCs and Huddles and he’s planting about 5 minutes from us, so we’re really good friends and our churches are working closely together.

The MC that Matt is currently leading is seeking to bring the Kingdom into a specific neighborhood called Cameron Bay and one of the things that Matt and his MC do frequently is prayer walk the neighborhood. I’ve never really done it like Matt does it, but I don’t think it’s coincidence that Matt’s MC has had as much favor as they’ve had. So I wanted to experience (and wanted my leaders to experience) how they do this.

SO…we just tagged along and did it with them. The neighborhood is a pretty typical, suburban neighborhood except for two things:
1) There are only 168 houses, so its not GIGANTIC which allows Matt’s MC to really focus on the people living in those specific houses and neighborhood (as opposed to a neighborhood called Deer Run, which is a mile away, and has 7,000 homes)
2) A cul-de-sac at the back of the neighborhood randomly backs into an alpaca farm! lol.

All this to say, it was a fantastic experience and I definitely have a stronger sense for how prayer can actively shape what an MC can do (as they sense what God might be saying to that specific place, as well as the people you run into as you’re walking and get a chance to talk to).

As a way sharing if you’re interested in doing it yourself, here is the list of things Matt gave to us of some things he does when he prayer walks.

• Ask God to give you a sense of what He feels for the people in the neighborhood
• Ask: What would it look like if the Father’s Kingdom existed in this place like it does in heaven?
• Ask God to provide opportunities for conversation and interaction with people while you’re out walking around the neighborhood.
• Stop and talk to anyone you see while you’re out walking. Not, “Hey, I’m prayer walking, can I pray with you?” More of a “Hey, how are you doing today?” kind of thing.
• Most of the time you’ll just want to walk and “listen” to God.
• Pray that the Spirit would make the Father known to the people that live there.
• Ask God for insight on how you can serve and love the people here in ways they can understand.
• Ask that God would give you People of Peace in the neighborhood.
• Ask for grace in everything you do as an MC.

It really was an incredible experience, especially as we ran into a few families and kids as we went. We stopped for about 20 minutes in one cul-de-sac and just talked for a while with some of them and threw a football around with some of the kids that were out riding their bikes (which just happened to coincide with where the alpaca farm was!).

So if you’re in a neighborhood based Missional Community…I can’t recommend this enough. We even brought kids on it and they road their bikes as we walked around.

But here’s my question: What does it look like to “Prayer Walk” when you have a network-based Missional Community? For instance, once of our MCs is reaching out to artists, and while they are mostly in the “city” of Richmond, they are definitely spread out and we couldn’t really geographically Prayer Walk. So…what would be a comparable prayer exercise?

Seriously…would LOVE suggestions!