Juicy Ecumenism | Faith McDonnell | Oct. 31, 2019
…Then came prayer time. New Wineskins Executive Director, Jenny Noyes, announced that the closing 30 minutes or so of the night would be spent praying for the persecuted.
All around the auditorium were banners of 22 different countries where Christian persecution is most severe. Noyes had asked me to bring the banners, the creation of the Save the Persecuted Christians, from Washington, DC. I am a founding member of Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC), which is a grassroots coalition of organizations and individuals working together to educate the public on global anti-Christian violence, support the persecuted, and hold the persecutors accountable.
Noyes instructed us to “get up out of our seats” and move to a banner and to pray as the Lord led us. She urged everyone to move from banner to banner, like a kind of Stations of the Cross. And that was quite appropriate – the banner exhibit is actually entitled People of the Cross, with the title banner featuring the beautiful, haunting face of Ibitsam, the widow of one of Christian men martyred by ISIS in Libya and her little son reaching up to her, the Cross tattooed on his wrist. (That photo was taken by Jordan Allott, the filmmaker of Christians in the Mirror, mentioned in Part One)
What happened next was a God-moment. All over the auditorium, people moved to the banners. Some were laying their hand on the people in the photos, other were kneeling on the ground in front of the banners, some were praying out loud, many were weeping. Later, people reported things like, “God opened my eyes and heart to our persecuted brothers and sisters as never before!” and “I will never be the same again.”
