Last Thursday prayer meetings bring unity among Waco believers, tangible change to the city

The median household income in Waco has increased by 11.5%, and the poverty rate has fallen by 3% over the past three years. A homeless community called Creekside Development has been established. Crime is at its lowest in the city’s recorded history. The city has seen steady employment growth and has added jobs. Church attendance has increased among college students and young adults, and more are coming for baptism. 

John Durham, lead pastor of Highland Baptist Church, a Texas Baptists church in Waco, said he believes these statistics are a direct result of prayer. 

“For three years now, Christians, pastors and ministry leaders across Waco have been praying together on the last Thursday of each month across racial, ethnic, denominational and generational lines,” he wrote in a Facebook post where he shared these statistics. “I think there is a direct correlation between prayer and [what’s happening in] our city.” 

Praying for unity, spiritual awakening, next generation in Waco 

In August 2023, Waco churches joined the state in holding Last Thursday prayer meetings every month leading up to the Collegiate Day of Prayer in February 2024, hosted by Baylor University for the first time in the 200-year movement of praying for revival on college campuses. Last Thursdays have been held in conjunction with the movement since its start in 1823 during the Second Great Awakening. 

“The Collegiate Day of Prayer team told us about Last Thursdays and said, ‘If you want to, for 4 or 5 months leading up to it, y'all can meet every Thursday morning [to pray in preparation for the day],’... So we [gathered about 20 churches and] did it for six months and realized, ‘This is amazing!’ It was building a lot of unity and stirring a lot of really neat conversations,” Durham said.

On the Collegiate Day of Prayer at Baylor, the group that had been praying together each month decided to keep the momentum going. 

“We made the decision on the Collegiate Day of Prayer, ‘What if we keep doing this?’ We even announced it at Baylor, ‘What if we do this until the Lord comes back? What if we meet every month as Christians across the city?’” Durham said.

Since that day, Christians across Waco have gathered at a different church at 6:30 a.m. on the last Thursday of each month, excluding December, to pray for unity of believers, spiritual awakening and Generation Z in Waco. Durham said that seeing different groups of Christians praying together is a beautiful picture of unity.

“At the meeting in April at Highland [Baptist Church], I called up the mayor of Waco, who's Catholic and loves the Lord and asked, ‘Hey, you want to come join us?’ He said, ‘Absolutely!’ So he came, and I looked over, and it was a Baylor professor, who is Baptist, was praying with [Mayor] Jim Holmes, who is Catholic, praying with an African-American lady,” Durham said. “I thought, ‘Man, what a beautiful picture.’ But also, [it's] an encouragement to our city leaders to be a part of that, to be prayed over themselves and to see the city come together.” 

Durham said the Lord provides a committed group of believers who love prayer to each Last Thursday prayer meeting.  

“We had over 400 people show up at the meeting at Highland [Baptist Church] back in April and so you go for two-and-a-half plus years and there's been some [meetings where] we've had 400 people and sometimes we have 40 people, but we feel like God has always provided a group of people who love to pray and love to see revival and awakening and salvation and specifically unity of of believers in the city [which] really gets sparked because of citywide prayer,” Durham said. 

Connie Sloan, a Highland Baptist Church member who has been attending Last Thursday prayer meetings since its start in 2023, said she knows the Holy Spirit is moving in hearts and minds in Waco. 

“I trust the Spirit of God is speaking and we will see in the physical what He is doing inwardly in every tribe and tongue in our community because He loves the people of Waco,” Sloan said. “We walk by faith and not by sight.” 

Prayer moves from discipline to delight 

Durham said praying with the community every month has transformed prayer from a discipline to a delight. 

“You [would] think that a pastor would automatically pray for revival and unity and a younger generation to get to know Jesus deeply, but there's something that's just a great delight when you're sitting in a circle… [with] maybe another pastor or maybe a senior adult woman from a Hispanic church who might be struggling with her English, but we get to pray together for the same thing,” Durham said. “It's really moved me from prayer being a responsibility or even sometimes a cold discipline to being a really fiery delight to get to pray with people of different backgrounds.” 

He said he has also learned new rhythms and prayer patterns from the groups he has prayed with at Last Thursday meetings. 

“When I hear other people pray in different ways or pray for different things, I [think], ‘Man, I want to incorporate that in my prayer life also.’ It's been a healthy thing for me to learn some new patterns and rhythms and new dynamics of prayer by spending an hour praying with other people in a small circle,” Durham said. 

Durham said prayer and singing together as Christians are two things that bind our hearts together and help us realize the common ground we stand on in Christ, moving us toward unity. 

“I think it’s a blessing to the Lord himself when sons and daughters live together, dwell together in unity, he demands the blessing there,” Durham said. “In an unbelievably deep time of divisions, prayer is one of those things that actually pulls us together.”