CR spoke with the event organisers

Rosy Ashley

In August 2012, thousands of visiting athletes and fans will gather to celebrate the Olympic Games in East London. On Saturday 26th May 2012 there are plans for 9,000 people to gather at at Leyton Orient FC football ground to worship and pray to release the fire of God's love over London in preparation for the millions of expected visitors to the London games. London's Burning is an initiative of Cornerstone Church working in partnership across the church. Jonathan Bellamy spoke with event director Rosy Ashley and Hadleigh Hobbs who's the youth worker at the church and event manager.

Jonathan: Rosie you're the minister at Cornerstone church and also the project director of London's Burning 2012. First of all, just tell us a little bit about your church and your involvement there and how long you've been going.

Rosy: Our church is in Leyton in East London a mile and a half away from the Olympic site. We started to ask God last year what we should do to respond to the fact that millions of people from around the world are coming to our area. This is a fantastic opportunity in terms of missions, but also a real responsibility to ensure that we prepare the area spiritually so that people step into an encounter with Gods love and power. That's when God began to reveal to us his heart about this vision called London's Burning.

Jonathan: Tell us how that came about in a little more detail then.

Rosy: We've been looking at Song of Songs over a period of time and were stirred by the call to passionate, laid-down lives filled with his fiery love and power. We really had a sense that at this time God wanted to release the blazing fire of his love across London and to give people an encounter with love and power. We also had a vision that God wanted to call together people to Leyton Orient football ground and to pray. We'd been very aware in our area that without worship and prayer the mission on the ground is not effective. We need to change the spiritual atmosphere, to be able to fill it, impregnate it with the power of God for anything to change on earth. It was those two strands initially that was this big worship and prayer event alongside sending out mission teams. That's where London's Burning started. We then, and I'll pass over to Hadleigh on this point, came to hear about an organisation called Burn 24/7.

Hadleigh: We just happened to go along to a church and a meeting in central London and it was being hosted by Kingdom Faith church in London and they had invited a speaker called Sean Feucht who's the founder of Burn 24/7, which is a movement of worship; pretty similar to the 24/7 prayer movement in England, which began in America. The purpose of it is to have extended periods of worship which change the spiritual atmosphere in the area where that's taking place.

He'd particularly been praying that God would lead him to a venue next to the Olympic site to do a 30 day Olympic burn, where there would be non-stop worship and prayer during the Olympics. We'd been praying, 'Lord how do we follow up the big event on Pentecost Saturday May 26th with more prayer and worship?' So we met him and we are going to follow up the May 26th event with 30 days of non-stop worship and prayer at the Cornerstone church in Leyton, which is just a mile and a half away from the Olympic site.

Jonathan: Can you unpack that a little bit more? What's in your heart and what's in Sean's heart and what are your expectations or hopes of what you think might happen in the spiritual environment in that period?

Hadleigh Hobbs

Rosy: What we felt the Lord was saying about May 26th was that was the catalyst - lighting the fire in the spirit - to release the prophetic word over the nation about why he's called the Olympics to London at this time. The 30 days of non-stop worship and prayer is ministering to the Lord. The whole heart of Burn 24/7 is to re-establish the tabernacle of David, where David did non-stop worship in the tabernacle; praise to the Lord and ministered to Jesus. Then in that place, God inhabits that space and heaven then impacts earth in a way which doesn't happen without that kind of intense worship. Prayer comes out of worship as opposed to being alongside of it. So we're going to be having a live feed from the Olympic site for all the needs for prayer but also listening prophetically to what the spirit is saying through this worship that's going on and is going out over the air waves and releasing those prophetic words into the atmosphere as well.

Jonathan: How is this going to run for 30 days continuous?

Hadleigh: We are already one of the sites in London that is undertaking these bands, but there are other places in the country that are doing it. There are a number of different groups who've got experience of these extended periods of worship and we're expecting many of them to come and join with us during those 30 days along with all the other prayer initiatives that take place normally; they're going to come together and we're gonna host it as a team. We've got other members of different communities coming and helping us with the practical running of it. We've got teams from around the UK, from Europe and from America who are actually going to be flying in to take the two-hour slots. The day is split into 12 two-hour slots and each team would take a two-hour session and lead that section. We're expecting a large number of different groups. We're also partnering with IHOP London, the International House of Prayer and they're going to be relocating just for the Olympics to our site. At the moment they're already doing about 85 hours of prayer a week. They'll basically be continuing that, but rather than in their west London location, it'll be in the east by the Olympics.

Jonathan: There's a great sense of partnership and unity about what you're doing. Has that always been at the heart of your church?

Rosy: Oh definitely, because we know that God blesses it when Christians come together. We also know that part of the spirit that's attached to the Olympics, some of the ungodly baggage, is human competition. It's been very important as Christians that we really strive to work together. We've got many different denominations and streams supporting London's Burning and that's very important to us and that will hopefully be reflected best on May 26th, but also during the burn as Hadleigh said; also the healing on the streets teams that are coming from around the nation to actually go out. The whole heart of the 24/7 Burn is to release and to pray for the missionaries to go out; the healing teams that offer a practical opportunity for an encounter with love and power - healing power.

Jonathan: Awesome. Now you've obviously responded well to this as a specific opportunity in London, but in the bigger context there are different voices that sense that in the UK, this is a good year spiritually and there's great potential. What would be your prophetic take of the context of this in the bigger picture?