What is 24-7 Prayer?
According to a lexicon the abbreviation ’24-7′ stands for something that happens all around the clock. For example there are cafes that are open ’24-7′. So according to that 24-7 Prayer stands for a Prayer meeting, where people pray all around the clock for 7 days (or even longer). Click here to find out how this works practically.
About us and our goals
We are a Team of believers from different evangelical Churches in Vienna. We are united through the love of Jesus and we’re driven by the desire to see Christ being glorified in our City. In the past we’ve had positive experiences in our Churches with 24-7 Prayer. We want to encourage like-minded evangelical Churches to organise a 24-7 Prayer week and we’re willing to give advice on how this can practically be done. Our common beliefs are based on the Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith.
Why Prayer for Vienna?
A lot of Tourists visit our City because of the architectural beauty of the old buildings and because of the Viennese Music and Culture. But behind the scenes is an other picture – a city in desperate need of the gospel. The crime rate is going up, there are increasing problems with drugs and alcohol among Teenagers, and there is a high suicide rate. The divorce rate is more than 65%, so that a lot of kids are being raised up alone. Faith in Christ doesn’t mean anything to most of the people.
Why 24-7 Prayer?
Because God calls us to pray. 24-7 Prayer is an easy way to mobilize your Church to interceed for the City, and it unites young and old to work together for a common goal. 24-7 Prayer is a model that works! It has proven unusually successful around the globe at mobilising people – especially young people – to pray like they’ve never prayed before. People learn to pray… by praying! Therefore 24-7 Prayer offers a great opportunity to (re)discover Prayer with your whole Church. It offers a room of silence where your Church members are able to focus on God without getting disturbed. Therefore we’d like to encourage you to consider to have a 24-7 Prayer week with your local Church: to pray 24 hrs for 7 days – that’s what’s 24-7 Prayer is about. Click here to find out how it works.
Our History
In 1996 Korky Davy from Open Air Campaigners (OAC) in England was invited to come to Vienna to do Seminars on Open Air Evangelism. As a result of this OAC Austria was founded as well as an annual Summer Outreach campaign called “Reach the City”, which is being organised in cooperation with some local Churches in Vienna. Some of our 24-7 Prayer Team members were also part of the group that organised “Reach the City” from the beginning. Part of our preparation for “Reach the City” during the year were also regular Prayer times. We had Prayer walks through the inner City as well as even Prayer at McDonalds. That created a deep desire in our hearts to see God work in our City. Around the year 2000 JAM for friends (Youth Ministry of the Association of Evangelical Churches in Austria) started to do the first 24-7 Prayer weeks for young people from different Churches in Vienna. That’s where we first got aware of this concept. It also created a desire to take this Prayer model back to our own Churches in order to encourage the people for Prayer. In 2006 we met with some fellow believers from different evangelical Churches, and we decided to take the first step. The Evangelical Church at Quellenstrasse was the first Church that then did a 24-7 Prayer week, followed by Grace Church in Febuary 2007. The next Churches that did a 24-7 Prayer week were the Mennonite Church at Hetzendorfer Strasse and the Church at Tulpengasse. In the Fall of 2007 within very short time we were able to encourage 9 Churches to get involved. These Churches together covered a whole month of Prayer. Later we received powerful testimonies of what God did during these Prayer weeks and how he gave them a fresh vision to reach people for Christ.
