How in the world could we have four days of continuous prayer? Who would lead it? Where would the teams come from?

Well, I had seen numerous similar “impossible” prayer events, that had filled up with leaders and teams. I had faith that the schedule would be filled. After all, this was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation! In my ever-optimistic thinking – who wouldn’t want to come and pray?

I knew that we could bring a prayer team from Texas. Michael and Joelene Michel were worshipers who had spent their college and young adult years in AHOP, then married each other. They now had two children, but Michael’s mother Lori worked for United Airlines, and so she and her husband Joe agreed to catch a flight over and take care of their precious grandchildren. That was one.

I knew that Br. Pietro, a Lutheran monk with the Marienschwestern in Darmstadt, loved to pray in the late night hours. That was two.

We reached out to Alexander Dietsche, the German worship leader living in Israel who had set Richard Harvey’s Judensau lament to music. I had seen his free-flowing worship style in 2016, and had thought then that he would be a natural prayer room leader. That was three.

The dam broke with the wonderful community of Help International. Led by the indomitable Walter Heidenreich, a well known German evangelist, we had gotten to know Help International well when they sent a missionary team from Germany to … wait for it … Austin! In fact, their base was located about 15 minutes away from our home, and we had become friends and had met Walter and other leaders from their home community of Lüdenscheid, Germany. They had a prayer room for 24/7 prayer in Lüdenscheid!

“Can you temporarily move your prayer room to Wittenberg?”, we asked. And when their response arrived, we were overjoyed!. The core Lüdenscheid community would send a prayer team of 40. And the community in Vienna would also send a team. Not only was that teams four and five – we now had the entire night watch covered! We were so grateful.

Another team came from Vienna as well. Over the years, we had gotten to know Gaby Schubert, who led MHOP, a house of prayer in Vienna. Gaby was a true Spirit-filled gift to the body of Christ – faithful, cheerful, responsible, and resourceful. It turns out she was well-connected as well! She not only brought her MHOP team, but recruited a team from Budapest, Hungary. That was six, and seven.

And seven was enough. We could fill all of the prayer hours with these teams.

The leadership team understood the vision. We had the prayer teams and the location for the prayer room.

Our next challenge was – how to structure prayer?

At Christ the Reconciler in Elgin , Amy and I and the leadership team had developed a simple 20-minute prayer model called “Bridge Prayer”. The name had two meanings. One was that it combined ways of praying that were typically Catholic, with those that were more common in the Protestant world. The second was that it was intended to bridge across two longer prayer times in a prayer room, providing a unifying time of prayer between the team that was ending, and the one that was beginning.

Perfect.

We would teach the seven teams how to do Bridge Prayer. Each team would:

Pray Bridge Prayer for 20 minutes with the preceding team …

… then lead prayer for 1 hour and 40 minutes, in the manner of praying they were accustomed to …

… and finally pray Bridge Prayer for 20 minutes with the next team.

In order for this to be successful, each team would have spend some time preparing with the other teams … which meant that Lutherans would reach out to Pentecostals, who would reach out to Catholics, who would reach out to Anglicans, and so on. So even in the preparation for praying for unity, unity would be built.

And so the Lord provided a way for Wittenberg 2017 to be a prayer meeting, occasionally interrupted by teachings.

Duane Grobman had prophetically encouraged us years before 2017:

“You need a bigger room.”

By which he meant - bigger than the Melancthonsaal in the Best Western, which Julia and I had reserved in 2010 (see Chapter 12). That room could hold 150 maximum.

When he said this, we had an urgency from the Holy Spirit. We immediately emailed contacts in Germany and said, “Investigate other room possibilities.” We learned that a brand new conference center, the Stadthaus, had been built in Wittenberg since 2010 - which is why it wasn’t one of the five rooms on Julia and my meeting room treasure map. It was built specifically in preparation for the 500th anniversary. Which meant it was not reservable for October 31, 2017 - of course!

But … it was reservable for November 1, the day after the 500th anniversary!

“Book it for a week,” we immediately wrote back.

And the Stadthaus was ours from November 1 through November 8.

A few months later, I was in Germany again, and made the one-hour train journey down to Wittenberg from Berlin. I visited the Leucorea - which in 2010 we had found to be the nicest meeting room in Germany. My goal was to reserve it for the 2016 meeting, 500 days before the 500th anniversary. Providentially, even though there were several 500th-anniversary-related events that summer, our dates were available, and I reserved them.

I turned to go.

Then I turned back.

“Just one more thing,” I said. “What about November 1 - 5, 2017?”

“Let me see,” said the very helpful events coordinator. “Yes, those are available.”

“I’d like to reserve those, as well.” And it was done.

Why had I reserved the Leucorea, when we already had the Stadthaus? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I reported back to the leadership team that we now had three rooms reserved for the 500th anniversary, as shown in the graphic below, which we displayed in 2016 to try to explain the (quite complicated) room schedule for 2017.