This is a reprint from the Jan-Feb 1957 issue of the Methodist Message. This call to prayer was to mark the centennial year of a prayer movement that started in 1857. It is particularly significant that 50 years on the Methodist Church in Malaysia is again calling for prayer in the jubilee year of our nation.

All Methodists are called upon to make 1957 a year of prayer. This was the unanimous action of the General Conference. The resolution invites all people throughout the world to join a great prayer movement in 1957 for peace, brotherhood, and personal commitment to God. A point of interest is the fact that the year 1957 will be the centennial of a great prayer movement that began in 1857.

Let us call the attention of our people at the Watch Night Service to this proposal, and ask them to join with other Methodists in this prayer movement in 1957. We believe that “prayer changes things.” Many things in our own life, in the life of our church, and the world at large are in need of the changes that nothing but earnest supplication could accomplish. Let every pastor, after calling attention to this movement, then lead his people in earnest prayer for peace, brotherhood, and personal commitment to God.

A portion of the resolution of the General Conference follows: “In 1857, a prayer movement started by a single person, and then a group, in the historical John Street Church in New York City, became one of the most vital spiritual influences of the last century. Pray to God that 1957, the centennial year of the beginning of that prayer movement, will find Methodists everywhere on their knees and Christians all over the world praying individually and in groups; until truly there will be a World Wide Prayer Movement that will help accomplish the will of God and establish the Kingdom of Christ on our earth.

“We call upon the Methodist Church.

1. To reaffirm its faith in the efficacy of individual prayer and in the power of united prayer of persons devoted to the will of God;

2. To urge all Methodists, individually and collectively, to cultivate the prayer habit until prayer becomes natural to them and they pray without ceasing;

3. To go on record as desiring and inviting all people throughout the world ‘who name the name of Christ’ to cooperate in making the year 1957 the greatest year of prayer for peace, for brotherhood and for personal commitment to God that this world has ever known.”

W. S. R.