Ever Hear of the Miracle Mile?

For racing fans and those living near Indianapolis, the term miracle mile immediately makes us think of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the Indianapolis 500 and the Nascar Brickyard 400 are held each year. But there's a church near Indianapolis--Rainbow Acres Church of God--where that term connotes something different. Its Miracle Mile is a circle one-mile in radius from the church, where it has a focused prayer and evangelism effort.

The goal is to have every business, school, and family within that mile prayed for. They have done things like prayerwalks and pray drives through neighborhoods, getting yearbooks from the high school to pray for teachers and students, going to businesses and asking how they can bless that business in prayer.

As you think of outreach and prayer, perhaps this is a fit for your church. Depending on the size of your church, this plan will mean a joint effort of both the prayer committee and the evangelism committee. This has to be virtually all-church or it will be difficult to maintain.

1. Map out a workable area around your church (so many blocks, the housing development you are in, or 1 to 2 miles, etc.) that will become your church's focus for prayer and evangelism.
2. Give the effort a catchy name--something that would stick with people.
3. Plot a multi-front strategy. You need to collect data. What businesses, schools and people reside within our area? How do we collect names of owners, students and teachers, and residents (www.anywho.com can give you names of residents)? What prayer efforts will we put before people. How can we keep them running? What evangelism events or efforts will we couple with the prayer? How will we report successes to people? How will we keep reminding people to pray (posters, announcements, a bulletin board, etc.)?
4. Plan a launch Sunday where the pastor preaches on prayer evangelism and this project is presented.
5. Keep it fresh over the long haul. Many people will get excited and join in at first. And you can keep up a fairly strong measure of involvement if you continually mention the project with posters, bulletin reminders, power point announcements, etc. But if you never add anything different or new to the mix, people's interest level will fade. Make sure every three to six months you are throwing something into the project that will add new life to it.