BLACKSHEAR, Ga. – A Southern Baptist layperson is asking Christians to register online for a prayer emphasis she launched to cover the 2020 election cycle with prayer and fasting.
The 365+ Prayer Project online website allows volunteers to register to pray and fast at least one day through Nov. 3, 2020, for national and local candidates and elections in all 50 states, project founder Kim Strickland of Blackshear, Ga., told Baptist Press Wednesday, Nov. 13.
“What I really want is anyone who has just a heart for intercession for America,” she said, “if they can reach out to a family or a friend who also has a heart for America in another state, and to bring the 365+ Prayer Project to that state, that is what we really desire, just for more people who have a heart for interceding for America to be saturated in regions across the country.”
Strickland has enlisted a few Georgia pastors and the Piedmont Okefenokee Baptist Association (POBA) to help, including fellow Christians at Bridge Community Church in Blackshear.
To have Christians in every state fasting and praying at least one day each leading up to 2020 governmental elections, with volunteers on each day, is the project’s goal. All participants in each state would fast and pray on election day.
“We have to saturate the country,” she said. “We have to hold hands with other states. And it shows that we’re in unity together, all of us who love God and who want what’s best for our country, for us who have a holy rage against what we know is the enemy trying to divide us.”
She encourages prayer “that America will return to holiness, that America will be one nation under God, that America will no longer be divided, that America will be a country that our Lord Jesus Christ can smile upon.”
Volunteers in Georgia, California and Tennessee have registered online, she said.
“All the other 47 states, we don’t have anybody on the calendar,” she said Wednesday. “We even have churches here in my town who are not on our calendar, but they’re all participating…. I want everybody to sign up on the website” to indicate that an area is covered.
POBA Mission Strategist Greg Benfield serves on the project’s leadership team.
“The idea is to have someone praying and fasting from each church that participates, for them to have someone praying and fasting for the local leadership, state leadership, national leadership as we’re leading up to that election,” Benfield has said. “Regardless of who (wins), … we are praying for that person to a) seek God’s will and b) for the Church to be praying for leaders as it commands in the Scripture.”
Completing the 365+ leadership team are Bridge Community Church pastor Chris Roberts; Greg Carter, pastor, Walkerville Baptist Church, Blackshear; Mary Ann Braswell, pastor, Blackshear First United Methodist Church (Strickland’s employer); Chris Tolbert, Bridge Community Church member, and Strickland’s husband Serge Strickland.
Registration and complimentary resources are available at prayer365plus.org.
Written by Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.