Overflowing. That’s the best word to describe what happened at White Oak Conference Center, Feb. 27-28.
Participants of the prayer retreat represented a blend of ethnicities, ages and denominations.“Women Who Request by Prayer,” an intensive women’s prayer retreat, overflowed White Oak, overflowed with prayer, and overflowed with fellowship. More than 400 women came together to learn ways to pray more effectively and to be equipped to lead similar retreats in their own communities.
“We implemented the plan God gave us and relied on him for every detail,” said Laslene Glymph, women’s ministry associate at the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
A year ago, Glymph felt led to reserve all the rooms at the conference center. White Oak could not accommodate all the women who wanted to be there. Nearby Camp LaVida was pressed into service and housed the overflow crowd.
Selena Pinkney, a member of First Northeast Baptist Church in Columbia, said she attended the weekend retreat to renew and revive her prayer life. “We want to see God at work in others’ lives and see him at work in our own lives.”
Worship banners with the titles of the seven teaching sessions were written in English and Spanish, and the take-home prayer manual was provided in Spanish for the women from seven Hispanic churches that participated. Several prayer sessions were presented entirely in Spanish. Women from 108 churches and three colleges and universities represented a blend of ethnicities, ages and denominations.
The retreat included corporate worship and prayer, teaching and instruction, private prayer time, and some 20 small-group prayer sessions on topics such as “Praying for Financial Wisdom and the Economy,” “Praying Through Times of Fear,” and “Praying for Ministers’ Wives and Their Husbands.”
In the first of seven teaching sessions, SCBC evangelism and prayer strategist Ron Barker spoke on the relationship between prayer and revival. “This meeting is significant because before any great revival takes place, God sets his people praying. Revival begins with prayer.”
Other teachers spoke on repentance, “praying the scriptures,” praying and fasting, praying in trying times, praying for the lost, and corporate prayer. Glymph chose to use retreat teachers and prayer and worship leaders who were not well-known. “The teachers and prayer closet leaders were not big names, but faithful, praying people of God,” she said.
Retreat attendees were invited to participate in “virtual prayerwalks,” the practice of praying for groups of people or places using pictures and specific prayer requests in lieu of prayer walking onsite. One virtual prayerwalk covered prayer requests for an October 2009 mission trip to India, while another highlighted South Carolina missionaries.
The Participatory Prayer Experience was set up, guiding women through a series of banners that prompt scripture-based opportunities for praise, confession, praying for missionaries and for lost people.
Annette Williamson of Miami said she had a hunger to share what she’d learned during the weekend with others. The group from Florida asked White Oak management for permission to stay an extra night before returning home because they did not want to leave the spirit-filled atmosphere. The conference center could not provide meals after the retreat ended, but Williamson said the group could skip a meal and use that time for their “appointment with God” for prayer and fasting – referring to a phrase retreat teacher Lillian Williams used in her session on prayer and fasting.
“Women are hungry to learn about prayer,” Glymph said. “This retreat is a model to equip and train women in prayer so that they can do this in their part of the state.”
Glymph anticipates that four regional prayer events will be held in 2010 with local lay leadership. Retreat attendees were asked to volunteer to participate in planning and implementing the events.
For more information about leading a women’s prayer retreat in your area, contact the Ministry to Women Evangelism Group, SCBC, at (800) 723-7242 or (803) 765-0035, ext. 3600, or online at www.scbaptist.org/women.