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"Prayer can have an absolutely fundamental role in creating a peaceful community." It's a sentiment you wouldn't be surprised to hear expressed from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. But those are the words of senior police inspector Bob Pull, of the racial and violent crime task force for the London Metropolitan Police, who truly believes that "prayer can empower the police."

Arnold, a small market town near Nottingham, has seen crime drop massively through a combination of prayer and youth outreach. "Four summers ago I noticed that youth-related crime in Arnold was consistently lower on a Wednesday evening," says Inspector Alan Stewart, in charge of the Arnold police and a Christian. "I started to rummage around to find out why and discovered that a small independent church was hiring the community center in the area where most of the trouble would be, and asking the kids in for free pizza every Wednesday. That was it—just free pizza!

"It was a gem of an idea and got me thinking that if one church could make this much difference, what could Arnold's 19 churches do? So I got them together, and 57 people turned up, when I had only expected 25. Their response was very encouraging, and we followed it up with a police-run workshop, where we looked at the crime problems in Arnold and asked what the churches could offer."

So effective was the coordinated church response that juvenile crime in Arnold has dropped by 40 percent in four years. The churches streamlined and publicized their youth work so kids knew there was somewhere to go most nights of the week. "I had to ask the churches if they were willing to take in kids who were playing around with crime, and they said they were. They have made the kids welcome."

Underpinning pact (Police and Arnold Churches Together) is what Inspector Stewart describes as "the most controversial part of all this—prayer." He regularly posts specific prayer requests on crime to all 19 churches and has seen startling answers. "There are loads of examples. One time there were 50 kids routinely causing disorder and damage on a particular area. I sent out the prayer request, and the problems stopped the following day! Usually that means the kids have moved on somewhere else, but they didn't—it just stopped. My colleagues were all wondering what had happened, because they weren't getting the usual calls out to that area. We later talked to someone who worked with the youth causing the disruption. They had told him they had just decided not to do it anymore, and that was just after we had prayed."

Inspector Stewart says that after the Arnold story appeared on the bbc news, he got a mixed reaction to his prayer letters from his colleagues. "Some said, 'We're right behind you boss,' and others said nothing at all. But I've always told them prayer is part of faith—you either believe it works or you don't, and the results are there. The scheme is working and it costs the police no resources at all."

Debra Green, a member of the Evangelical Alliance's council, is head of the Manchester Prayer Network, which has prayed for the city in tandem with The Message, a well-known youth project. She says the combination of prayer and practical action has cleaned up some tough areas in the city, in the name of Jesus. According to the Greater Manchester Police, crime on the Swinton Valley Estate in Salford has dropped by 45 percent since 2000—a fact quoted on the bbc website.

The Manchester Prayer Network gets together four times a year for focused prayer for the city. There are now networks in nine of the of the ten Manchester boroughs, including Oldham—the scene of violent rioting last year. Reducing crime rates was the specific target for the gathering in January 2002. "For half of the meeting, we shared information for prayer, often interviewing people working in that area, and we also gave out printed information. We prayed for the rest of the time," explains Green.

The network has forged a good relationship with the police in Greater Manchester. Adds Green, "In 1998, we asked to put up posters in all the police stations in Greater Manchester for our first prayer event, which focused on law and order. We thanked the police for their work and told them the churches in Manchester would be praying for them and their families, for their work and health and protection."

So impressed have the police been over recent years by the commitment of Manchester Christians to the community, that they have donated £40,000 to The Message out of their own funds for future regeneration projects.

Condensed from idea magazine (Sept./Oct. 2001), which is published by the Evangelical Alliance in the United Kingdom.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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