Since starting a daily prayer ministry, Granite Community Church, a rural church in north west Victoria, has seen a huge growth in people’s prayer life and in relationships within the church, and alongside this has come the wonderful blessing of many new people attending the church.
“Committing everything to prayer is an awesome, powerful thing,” said prayer-group member Kyle Pearse. “Our walk with Jesus should affect every aspect of our lives. Every Christian knows about the power of prayer, but being intentional to spend more time in prayer every day is awesome. Getting in God’s presence to worship and seek His wisdom on things – it’s a brilliant way to start your day.”
The church had held weekly prayer meetings for some time, but in September Kyle and his wife asked whether they could meet more often. “What had changed for us personally was that we returned from several months’ mission with YWAM, and we felt a real void because we were so used to praying with other people every day. We asked someone if we could move to two days a week or more, and they suggested that we commit to praying every day and allow others to join us if they wanted to.”
Kyle said a lot more people had joined the prayer meeting since it became daily. “I have this sense that a weekly prayer time can sometimes feel a bit like an obligation as a church, but all of a sudden when it became daily, people caught onto the heart for God and the passion to seek him in prayer, so it became even more meaningful and more people wanted to be on board.”
In 2025 the church had a congregation of around 35 people per week, but at the end of the year there were more than 70 attending each service. “This is really exciting to see, and it’s also exciting to see people who have been spending more time in prayer having so much more confidence and boldness in their prayer. I guess it has also helped people change focus and really see the things that God cares about. Everyone prays about what’s dear to their heart, but hearing what’s close to other people’s hearts helps you to have compassion for others. It widens our perspective as we pray for things that personal prayer times may not cover, such as praying for wisdom for leaders of our church and our country.”
The church has started praying more recently that God would guide them in discipling new Christians. Kyle said it had also been encouraging that a couple of people from other churches joined the prayer meeting. “This is building unity in the broader body of Christ as we spend time praying together – it’s really beautiful. There’s also a deeper connection and bond between people within our church because we meet and pray about the same things every day.”