Prayer at Oak Tree

What is the prayer chain?

The prayer chain is a group of people at Oak tree who are committed to pray when called upon to do so.

How does it work?

The prayer chain operates in two ways. Firstly, there are a group of people that are contacted by telephone. Then there is a second group that receive the prayer requests by email. When people have a need for prayer they ring up the prayer chain coordinators who put out the prayer request by telephone to the “telephone group” and by email to the “email group” – and everyone starts to pray!

Do all requests go out to both groups?

Most do – however some requests are very urgent and these tend to go out by telephone only – e.g. someone may have gone into labour: probably the baby would have been born by the time people have accessed their emails! The same applies to requests which need a special degree of confidentiality (all requests are regarded as confidential but sometimes a person may feel nervous about personal details going out to people by email).

What kind of prayer needs can be shared on the prayer chain?

Mostly they tend to be personal problems, difficulties, health issues and so on. However it can be anything. For example one person asked the prayer chain to pray before she went off to visit a friend who was a Jehovah’s Witness and whose daughter was quite ill. Someone else felt that something that he was involved with wasn’t going anywhere and asked for prayer for wisdom and direction. There have also been instances where we have prayed for a particular situation over a period of weeks and months.

Have you seen any dramatic answers to prayer?

It’s difficult to be specific as most of the prayer requests are confidential. One case comes to mind where we were asked to pray for someone who was receiving harassing phone calls. Amazingly, the day after we prayed, the phone calls stopped! There have been other occasions where God has not answered in the way that we had hoped and prayed for but even in these cases we have been able to pray for God’s grace and peace for the people involved and it has been a privilege to see this happen.

So what if I want to get involved?

Give us a ring on 020 8896 0493,

or send an email to otprayerchain@yahoo.co.uk [1],

or send a text to 07722 059741.

It would be great to have more people involved. We know that some branch groups have started up their own internal prayer chains which is an excellent development. And what if I have a prayer request?

Any final thoughts?

Yes – please do use the prayer chain, and don’t feel that anything is too small to bother about!