Heather Bellamy spoke with the visionary, Richard Gamble, a former Leicester City F.C. chaplain.
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Richard: We've got a mixture. We've got a lot of the prayer networks: National Day of Prayer and Worship, 24/7 Prayer, the World Centre of Prayer. We've got CBN Europe and TBN. A lot of the media organisations are promoting what we're doing, which is great. Then we're having a number of conversations at the moment with the denominations.
In February we had a parliamentary reception where we presented the whole concept to MPs. We have backing from each of the parties and people from the Members of Parliament, House of Lords and also church leaders and Christian organisations. As I'm sure you can imagine, loads of different conversations are happening and more people are coming on board by the week.
Heather: How have other faith groups responded to what you're doing, are other faith groups aware of it?
Richard: I've not had any feedback at this stage, but I'm sure we will in the future. But my experience on these sorts of things is that a lot of other faith groups are quite happy for people to go and express their faith and their beliefs. We've had a lot of this in sports chaplaincy, which I've been involved in. I don't foresee any problems on that side. I think most of our challenge comes from secularists and humanist groups, who want to be politically correct.
Heather: Have you had any opposition or complaints so far?
Richard: I've had plenty, but that sort of makes me feel like I'm doing something right as well. I'm developing a thick skin. I'm working on it; there's work to do on that, but we're getting there.
Heather: If people want to find out more, or get involved, or contact you for any reason, what's the website for people to go to?
Richard: The website is thewall.org.uk, or they can phone up and share
their answered prayer. That number is 0300 561 0080 and that's just a
local call. We would love to hear your stories. We've had some stories
of amazing healings, which has been fantastic. Then we had a story the
other day of a young boy who'd prayed with his mum and dad to stop the
bully at school, and then the bully stopped coming to school. What we
want is to capture a whole range of different stories, because I think
Jesus not only cares about the huge things in our lives, but some of
the day to day stuff as well. ![]()
Heather Bellamy leads Cross Rhythms with her husband Jonathan. They are part of the Church of the Nations family of churches and live in Stoke-on-Trent.
