Pine Grove prayer outreach hits the news

Craig Macartney
Spur Ottawa Writer

Pine Grove Bible Church was in the news last week, after they held a prayer vigil at the site of Ottawa’s fifth homicide. A 20 year-old man was shot, just blocks from the church. But one piece of the story was largely missed. The prayer vigil was only a small part of Pine Grove’s ongoing prayer initiative, aimed at transforming their neighbourhood.

“Almost two-and-a-half years ago, Pine Grove took a really hard look at how we do missions, what missions are, and how we should invest in missions,” says church member Wesley Moore. “Our church is pretty good at doing the first part of the greatest commandment, but we want to do a better job, with our physical neighbours, of doing the second part—loving our neighbours as ourselves.”

Moore says they are still in the process of reshaping their local outreach and missions, with a key focus to “proactively and prayerfully love, serve, and know Beacon Hill South.” One initiative this refocus led to is a weekly prayer walk in the community.

“Thursday mornings at our church we have an amazing women’s Bible study. It’s designed for young moms and there’s free childcare. So some of us decided to take the men out for prayer walks during that time and we’ve been doing that since early December.”

Although the group is not large, anywhere from two to five men, they braved the cold and snow all through the winter. The group starts by asking God to lead them. Then they walk where they feel led and pray what God puts on their hearts. Moore says they usually pray for up to two hours.

“Every time we’ve gone out, we’ve had some kind of divine encounter. Sometimes it’s quite small, but sometimes it’s quite overt.”

“At the heart of it, we believe prayer is important and that prayer changes things. If you look at the history of humankind, prayer has changed situations and cultures in a pretty dramatic fashion.”

When Moore heard about the homicide in their community, he had the last-minute idea of holding their weekly pray walk at the site of the murder and opening it up to the community. They put out a social media invitation and invited their city councillor, Tim Tierney.

“This was just an extension of what we are already doing,” says church elder Les Woolsey, who led the prayer vigil. “It’s not about trying to get people into Pine Grove. As we walk, we pray that God will break our hearts for the problems in the neighbourhood. It’s about meeting people, meeting their needs, and figuring out what God is putting on our hearts to help the community.”

Both Moore and Woolsey were surprised by the turnout at the vigil, especially because they only announced it the evening before. Councillor Tierney came, as well as a group of community members, representatives from various community services, and a number of reporters.

Although this was the first time the pray walks received a public response, Moore says they have seen God leading them many times, over the past months.

“Every time we’ve gone out, we’ve had some kind of divine encounter. Sometimes it’s quite small, but sometimes it’s quite overt,” he states.

“A couple weeks ago we felt led to walk over to the Gloucester Emergency Food Cupboard. We were standing there praying for the workers and the people who come.”

“Fortunately we happened to be there at the right time.”

As they prayed, a food truck pulled up and asked if any of the staff were at the Food Cupboard. The driver had a delivery of fresh produce to drop off, but couldn’t find anyone to let him in.

“He told us he had another shipment to do, so he would have to leave the box. Fortunately we happened to be there at the right time. Otherwise there would have been a lot of produce wasted. It was -25 degrees out. We were able to take the produce to the church and bring it back the next morning, when the food bank opened.

“In the grand scheme, it’s a small thing, but it was quite a significant amount of produce that was going to feed the poor. We really felt God lead us to that spot to pray and as a result there was a very practical outcome.”