Burnt Hickory Baptist Church Prayer Coordinator Barbara Clark shared this encouraging update on their annual initiative to prayer walk the schools and cover teachers, staff, students, and parents in prayer.
We are so blessed to be part of this community with so many churches who have such a deep compassion to pray for our students, families, schools, principals, teachers, and all who make the difficult decisions concerning education. Many of our churches, including Burnt Hickory Baptist, have been lifting up prayers for 20 to 30 years for our schools, especially as they are returning to start a new year. As Noonday Baptist Association shared, this year the prayer is needed more than ever due to the COVID-19 situation!
In these last few years, Burnt Hickory Baptist and other local churches have felt the nudging of the Holy Spirit to unite our prayer efforts. This year even with COVID-19 and all its ripples, God has already led us to see more people than ever intercede for these public, private, and Christian schools in Cobb, Paulding, and Marietta!
The 12 churches who bonded in prayer have seen people from a total of 15 churches come together to cover in prayer 118 schools with people onsite and on social media! Over 274 people were onsite prayer walking/driving/parking on August 1. In addition, over 1700 people covered their schools in prayer through Facebook Live events and Zoom calls also on August 1. And that is just so far! Some of them are still continuing their prayer efforts with many more adopting classrooms and schools to support throughout the year!
The churches bonding together this year were: Faith Christian Center (Austell), First Christian Church of Mableton, Kennesaw Avenue Missionary Baptist Church (Marietta), Life Church (Smyrna), Mars Hill Presbyterian (Acworth), NorthStar Church (Kennesaw), Poplar Springs Baptist Church (Hiram), Powder Springs First United Methodist Church, Sanctuary (Kennesaw), Vertical Life Church (Dallas), West Ridge Church (Dallas), and Burnt Hickory Baptist Church (Powder Springs) with others joining from Saint Joseph Catholic Church (Marietta), NTBC, Lost Mountain Baptist Church (Powder Springs), and Due West Methodist Church.
Everyone began their prayer coverage armed with a prayer guide and specific prayer requests gathered from the schools by the churches. Those requests are available and will be added to throughout the year at: https://www.burnthickory.com/2020-school-prayer-requests/ . Four churches conducted short “Praise and Prayer” times before intercessors began covering the schools in prayer: First Christian Church of Mableton, Powder Spring First United Methodist Church, West Ridge Church, and Burnt Hickory Baptist Church.
In this unprecedented year where we expected to have the fewest people ever praying over our schools, God opened doors and paved the way for us to have the most people ever lifting up the greatest number prayers ever! To God be the glory!