Friends, just an encouragement to join-in on IJM’s Global Prayer Gathering this weekend from wherever you are. If you are not one of the nearly 1,000 people joining in person here in the DC Area, you can connect through our live-stream and live-blog presence all throughout the weekend. Hope you’ll join!

http://www.ijm.org/GPGOnline

We have just about hit max-capacity for this year’s IJM Global Prayer Gathering - if you are still thinking about attending and have questions, please quickly send an email to . We will soon be closing registration and moving to a wait-list.

IJM Field Office Directors from 17 cities world-wide are eagerly preparing to fly to DC next month for this time of prayer and worship with you. We are also grateful to be led this year by IJM friends Sara Groves, Lamont Hiebert (of Ten Shekel Shirt and Love146), and Andy Crouch alongside Gary Haugen, Sharon Cohn Wu, and other IJM staff.

Hope to see you April 9-11 for this indescribable experience of meeting with our God.

Planning to be there? Would love to hear from you in the comments below. Been before? What are you most looking forward to about coming again?

Whether you joined us in person, prayed from afar, participated in the LiveBlog, or are simply wondering what the Global Prayer Gathering is, we hope that you’ll enjoy this handful of photos, courtesy of photographers Ted Haddock and Brian Tropiano (copyright IJM) from this powerful time of prayer and worship two weeks ago (March 27-29).

Click “read more” to see the batch. And let us know your thoughts from the weekend, comments on the LiveBlog experience, or anything else that may come to mind related to your experience of joining us in prayer, year-round, for this work. We are very grateful for you.

Read more...

Whether you were able to join us in person for GPG09 or not, you’ll probably enjoy the fantastic photos our team captured throughout the weekend. Ted Haddock is sorting through the thousands and we’ll be sharing the best shots with you here on the blog next week.

In the meantime, check-out the archives from GPG Live - there are photos embedded in some of the live blogging sessions, and some great raw/unproduced video footage of Lamont, Sara Groves, our VP of Investigations, and other speakers. Let us know what you think! http://www.ijminstitute.org/index.php/gpglive

The Global Prayer Gathering is drawing nigh and our office is buzzing with preparations and excitement. The directors of each field office - Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Peru, Honduras, Bolivia, Guatemala, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, even Ecuador (not yet launched) will begin arriving here in DC in just a few days.

Had a fantastic conversation with Sara Groves last night, putting some final details together for her special leadership role on Saturday night of the GPG, and have been loving the plans Lamont has been putting together for worship throughout the weekend.

What are your favorite worship songs (of any artist) these days, and why? What songs by either Sara or Lamont are you particularly inspired by?

P.S.: Are you on Twitter? Would love it if you start tweeting about the GPG using this marker: #GPG09 - whether you’ll be joining us in person or remotely.

It’s been a fascinating expedition across sub-cultures over the past month: as I finished up my conversations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland I transitioned back to the States and soon found myself in the classical pulpit of American evangelicalism—Moody Church in Chicago.  Interesting juxtaposition of contexts: 

In both places I noted from many a sense of old worlds passing and new, uncertain futures unfolding (ready or not).

There was also, in both places, an emerging word of conviction that the ancient virtue of “justice” must somehow be at the foundation of any good tomorrow. 

The next big stop for me is IJM’s Global Prayer Gathering.  I hope many of you will come join me and our leaders from the field, as well as Lamont Hiebert/Ten Shekel Shirt and Sara Groves.  I’m so very grateful to all of you who join with us in prayer day by day from locations across the globe - the most recent outpouring of prayer for the rescue operation in South Asia was just staggering. And the upcoming opportunity for us to join together in person at the GPG is, for me, the most powerful homecoming of the eternal mysteries of prayer and the daily, dirt-under-your-fingernails fight for justice in the real world.  Come and dig in with us.  I doubt you have experienced anything quite like it.