to bring the transforming power of prayer back to the public high school
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eleven11 Project
During October of 2010, something extraordinary happened in Cottonwood, Arizona. Mingus High School, a public school, hosted 26 hours of uninterrupted prayer in the school auditorium. Numerous churches brought their youth groups to pray for an hour, kids came and left all through the night hours, giving up their Friday evening and Saturday. There were prayer requests from the school faculty, the students, area pastors, and others in the community which were mounted on poster board throughout the auditorium, creating prayer stations. The Chief of Police volunteered security for the event, rallying enough officers to cover the entire 26 hours, completely free of charge. Afterwards, testimonies came in of kids having a radical encounter with God, causing their lives to change in big ways. All this happened in spite of a principal who wasn’t a Christian and who was completely against prayer. At the end of the event, she recommended this event to other schools saying I don’t know about the prayer, but I do know about the results.
Out of this weekend of prayer at Mingus High School, a vision was born to have this same event in 11 different schools in Arizona, one right after another, 11 weekends in a row ending on November 11, 2011. This vision was named eleven11.
Aftermath
During these 11 weeks God radically moved. We saw not only students come out for these events but teaches, principles, and churches. As we prayed for each school we where able to see churches step up to the great needs our schools have from buying pizza for football teams who have nothing to buying clothes for students that cant afford them. God is revealing the Spiritual and the fiscal needs of our schools. He is calling us to respond. Witnessing what God did in these 11 weeks we as a team are continuing on the vision to cry out to the Lord for the Schools of Arizona!
Why do this?
We want to take prayer back into public schools, believing that if the young people begin to pray we will see many of the issues in our state and nation improve dramatically.
We believe that through praying young people, the rate of divorce, abortion, rape, drug abuse, addiction and violent crime will not only drop, but at the very least return to the rate they were prior to prayer being taken out of public schools.
How will this happen?
A leadership team made up of young leaders from around the state was formed to accomplish this tremendous feat. The key leadership team is made up of 6 young adults, all currently established as leaders in ministries such as LiteTheFire, Victory Worship Center, Emmanuel Fellowship, & BridgeBuilders Int’l. The team has partnered with different ministries to support them with prayer, to help facilitate the events, to oversee finances and in raising awareness. In particular, the organization overseeing the finances is a member of the ECFA (Evangelical Council For Financial Accountability).
The team sets out to make connections with, pastors, youth groups, christian clubs, principals, school administrators and interested individuals. These meetings gained permission for the use of school auditoriums, accumulated support, and went a long way to build momentum with the students. Not only do we want the kids to participate on the weekend, we want the area churches, the clubs, and other organizations already in place to be involved and to be prepared to offer follow up and discipleship to the kids who are interested after their school’s 26 hours of prayer is over.Schedule
The first day of the event (which will always be a Friday night, starting at 7pm) will begin with a corporate session of prayer and worship. After the session ends at 9pm, the hourly prayer times will begin, continuing through the night and through the next day until 7pm. The auditorium will be open to the public the entire time (with security provided). Youth Groups, clubs and individuals will sign up for hourly slots to come and pray. We hope to schedule live worship for the entire 26 hour period for each school.
Prior to each event we’ll have a schedule available online for people to sign up for each hour.
At 7pm Saturday evening we will transition into another corporate session of prayer and worship to close our time at the school.
Afterwards
We hope to see people of all ages encounter God during their time of prayer, to be reignited in their passion for Jesus. We expect:
- To see students freed from depression and fear.
- To see broken families and relationships healed.
- To see the prevalence of drugs and underage drinking eliminated.
- To see the many issues facing high school administrators, teachers, coaches and students resolved through prayer.-To see churches taking up new opportunities to influence and disciple their communities.
-To see students who are interested in furthering their relationship with God, connect with mentors & discipleship programs.
In short, we expect that God will hear our cries for His intervention in our lives and culture and that He will meet with us. Without Him, we are worn out, defeated, asleep with apathy and indifference. But we know that with Him, there is life, life that is not found anywhere else. Life and love that conquer fear and depression, which heals the broken hearted, that eliminates the need for addiction. We expect God to come and awaken our hearts to Him.
“Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” – John 11:11
