History of Alliance Pray! and the Team (APT)

Significant events occurred during our times at our General Assembly (GA). God had been working in the hearts of a number of pastors and pray-ers. During the Assembly at Hull, QC in 1996, an informal meeting discussed the need to mobilize prayer within the Christian & Missionary Alliance in Canada. This meeting resulted in the formation of the National Prayer Mobilization Team (NPMT).

Arnold Cook, aware of the College of Prayer in US at Taccoa Falls, sent Brent Farquhar. This became the first method of prayer mobilization used by the APT. The National Prayer Mobilization Team subsequently established the College of Prayer Canada in the spring of 1999. First NPMT membership included Bob Beasley, Mark Bergen, Dean Gerbrandt, Brent Farquhar, Stephen Lam, Dee Matheson, Dan Pope, Ken Shigematsu, Julius Tiangson, Gail Whyte, Al Willems and Lorraine Willems. Al Willems became the Administrator/Registrar.

College of Prayer conducted nine modules across Canada in the next three years, and more in the years following.

College of Prayer had an agreement with Canadian Bible College and Canadian Theological Seminary (CBC/CTS) so students could take modules for credit with either CBC or CTS. Between 1999 and October 2002, registrants attended from 150 different churches, 60 of them are from non-C&MA churches. 430 people attended at least one module.

See College of Prayer tab for details about each module including links to resources.

PrayFirst was birthed out of a need. Joe Schuringa was a member of the Board of Governors for CBC/CTS and Julius Tiangson was Chairman of the National Prayer Mobilization Team (NPMT) of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in Canada. They were aware that the move of the entire campus of CBC/CTS from Regina, Saskatchewan to Calgary, Alberta was one beyond human ability. They also believed that God was behind this move and that people needed to pray for this gigantic endeavour. Julius offered to provide such mobilization leadership through the NPMT.

Lorraine Willems began in June 2001 to mobilize prayer for CBC/CTS under the initiative of the National Prayer Mobilization Team on contract with AUC. Dr. George Durance, President of CBC/CTS, agreed that prayer was vital to the campus moving successfully. The web-site, PrayFirst (www.prayfirst.ca), was created so that we could begin to challenge our C&MA churches take a day in 2002 to pray for CBC/CTS during the transition to Calgary. 56 churches took at least one day of prayer for CBC/CTS during the year committing to 196 actual days of prayer.

We were very encouraged by the reports of spontaneous prayer happening in various ways at Alliance University College (AUC) in Calgary AB. Lorraine continued to process prayer requests from the colleges, staff and faculty and forwarded them to Alliance churches and prayer partners. By August 2006, the prayfirst.ca web site was getting more than 6000 hits per month. With a change in the presidency at AUC in 2010, they determined that they no longer needed our support and the contract was terminated prematurely before the end of the contracted term. The website is now privately owned.

The National Prayer Mobilization Team was later re-branded as the Alliance Pray! Team.

In 2006-2008, Ignite Prayer was launched as a 4 session weekend seminar initially taught by Jon Graf, Dr. TV Thomas and Dr. David Chotka. It was held in 4 churches - 277 people attended.

In 2009, David Chotka published his book, Power Praying, which was widely circulated to Alliance Pastors and International Workers. In 2012, David Chotka published his booklet “50 Days of Prayer” as training for the 2012 General Assembly.

Igniting Global Prayer (IGP) Seminars began as a ministry of the Alliance Pray! Team to assist local churches to form or strengthen prayer teams to pray for their Seamless Link relationships. Working with the Seamless Link Team, the Alliance Pray! Team designed an Igniting Global Prayer seminar to assist people to pray effectively for their International Workers and to motivate a Local Church team in their commitment to pray. The purpose of the seminar was “To enhance the shared ministry relationship between church families and International Workers." The goal was to strengthen the prayer relationship of the Local Church and our International Workers in the shared ministry of reaching Least Reached People Groups. IGP continued into 2014. Ignite Prayer and Unleashing Intercession Seminars were also used to train local church intercessors.

See Ignite Events tab for more details about Ignite Prayer.

More than 330 people participated in these seminars prior to GA2014. Participants were very strongly encouraged to participate in intercession for General Assembly 2014, both together in the Prayer Room and separately across the country. The content resonated strongly with the participants, and we were encouraged to expand seminar offerings so others could benefit.

May 2-3, 2014, Church of the Living Hope, Winnipeg MB, Dr. T.V. Thomas
May 9-10, 2014, Westgate Alliance Church, Saskatoon SK., Dr. T.V. Thomas
May 13-15, 2014, Living Hope Alliance, Regina SK., Rev. David Chotka
May 23-24, 2014, Spruce Grove Alliance, Spruce Grove AB, Dr. T.V. Thomas
May 28-29, 2014, Scarborough Chinese Alliance, Rev. David Chotka
May 30-31, 2014, Emmanuel Alliance Church, Nepean ON., Rev. David Chotka

The success of Unleashing Intercession encouraged the APT to run larger Regional Prayer Mobilization Conferences such as 2018’s Going Deeper event with Dr. Daniel Henderson.

Going Deeper, Empower Prayer Saturation with Dr. Daniel Henderson, President, Strategic Renewal: Sept. 30, 2017, Airdrie Alliance Church, and February 10, 2018, Bramalea Alliance Church.

The APT also began training and participation with Prayer Ministry Trips to various mission fields (Mexico and Japan.)

By 2018, the APT had been involved in:

1. Mobilizing already committed intercessors
2. Running conferences for intercessors' development
3. Creating and running a website and webinars
4. Ignite Prayer seminars
5. College of Prayer Events
6. Igniting Global Prayer seminars
7. Deeper Life Conferences – Power Praying, Discerning the Voice
8. Unleashing Intercession
9. Prayer in Motion - 2012 and 2014 bike rides
10. Discernment Praying seminars (2016 GA)
11. Concerts of Prayer (at GAs)
12. Prayer with IWs (at GAs)
13. Prayer Walking seminars
14. Spiritual Warfare seminars
15. Prayer Ministry Trips to various mission fields
16. Prayer book promotion and distribution
17. Creation of various video resources
18. Use of online resources to share prayer stories and mobilization strategy

As a result of the above, the Lord used the work of the APT to transform prayer at General Assembly (held every 4 years), impact churches, unite Alliance prayer and Alliance mission, put both visual and print resources into the hands of individuals at the local, district and national levels, and inspire and encourage and deepen prayer for our International Workers, Districts and the work of the National Ministry Centre. The results were people trained, and there were salvations, deliverances, baptisms of the Holy Spirit, reconciliations and all kinds of spiritual fruit.

Through this time, the APT noted that the culture of God’s people had changed since our creation. Today we do not have a culture of deep learning in most churches. Sunday school, Sunday evening services and midweek services – all opportunities to learn in a mid-size group – are largely things of the past. The culture of attending church events no matter how many and when they are was also gone. The culture of individually and thoroughly reading Christian materials was and is waning. The culture of our society - post-Christian, post-modern and even post-truth – is creeping into the gathering of God’s people. So, while the culture of learning about and practicing prayer is generally shrinking, the need for more prayer and prayer mobilization is actually rising!

Seeing the culture of Canada change, and seeing the need for both prayer and prayer mobilization rise, the APT gathered in the spring of 2016 to pray into developing a more effective methodology of training more people. Coming out of that summit meeting, the APT purposed to develop an online training tool that would do for prayer what the Kairos course was doing for mission.

While we eventually settled on the title of the Transform! Prayer Course (TPC), the first such course was simply called “The Prayer Course.” Three members of the APT walked a group of only 16 participants through David Chotka’s book Power Praying, and Ed Silvoso’s first edition of Prayer Evangelism. Links to supplemental videos were emailed to each participant at the time, and the course literally ran 7 days each week for 10 weeks. The immediate result was that all the participants reported a dramatically deepened and renewed prayer life. Half of the participants became full-time intercessors for a three-day denominational church gathering right after the course ended.

By the time the course concluded on the final ZOOM call:

• One participant noted how they heard the Lord directing them to start a new work among Chinese students at a local university. They prayerwalked the university, prayed past the significant obstacles to start that work and found one hundred fifty people immediately responding!

• Another participant told how they prayed for and then led a co-worker to Christ. They subsequently baptized him (both firsts for that particular participant). The participant then joined their local church’s intercessory team.

• Another participant went on to start and lead 49 people in daily intercession for the pastoral staff of their church.

• Another participant was inspired to start a habit of prayerwalking and created a specific prayer room in their home.

• Another participant saw the prayer ministry of their church restarted, another participant saw their brother baptized in answer to prayer, and one participant led 9 people into the waters of baptism. That last participant then began to participate in their church’s healing ministry and saw multiple people divinely healed.

These are just a few examples. Participant after participant testified to new or renewed habits of prayer and answers to prayer. Best of all, the format allowed participants to become Facilitators, and Facilitators to eventually become Head Facilitators. This was our first scalable prayer mobilization tool, and because it was online, it became a historic improvement in making significant group prayer mobilization resources widely accessible.

Buoyed by these results, TPC leadership formalized the first edition of the Reader. This was enabled by KingdomLink’s purchase of the Power Praying rights for Canada. The Reader saw the amount of reading reduced from 7 days to 5 or 6 days per week, minor updates included, and most significantly, a true workbook format introduced with larger print.

Subsequently, TPC became our flagship prayer mobilization tool. The 2nd edition of the Reader was published with a slew of minor edits that improved readability, updated material and added Julio Ruibal’s material on fasting. Demand for a French version of TPC resulted in a translation effort. The 3rd edition further refined the material and the material was then translated into simplified Chinese. The APT ran TPC to great effect in four languages in cohorts ranging from 8 to more than 50 people:

English (A total of 11 cohorts were run)
French (A total of 5 cohorts were run)
Mandarin (A total of 3 cohorts were run)
Cantonese (A total of 1 cohort was run, plus a large TPC Small Group)

TPC participants could be literally anywhere in the world. Through TPC, the APT began mobilizing people in the USA, Australia, the UK, Russia and elsewhere. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the APT used the time to reformat and further refine TPC into the Small Group Edition (TPC SGE), shifting from printed to digital materials and adding much additional video content. This course currently represents the best prayer mobilization tool in our library.

In the last years of the APT (2022-2023) we saw the Lord preparing us for the close of our group ministry. Although TPC SGE is still relatively new and has an enormous untapped potential, many of our APT members were being redirected through reassignment. Members were are no longer free to direct much of their time to the work of the APT as volunteers. This material was submitted to the President at the Alliance National Ministry Centre. The website was abandoned since the Team had been dissolved.

The Team Members

2000 - Julius Tiangson, Al Willems, Dean Gerbrandt
2001 - Julius Tiangson, Al Willems, Dean Gerbrandt
2002 - Julius Tiangson (until Nov. 1), David Chotka (Nov-Dec, 2002), Al Willems, Dean Gerbrandt
2003 - David Chotka, Brent Farquhar, Dean Gerbrandt (until Nov 15) Connie Driedger (Nov. 15 to year end), Al Willems
2004 - David Chotka, Brent Farquhar, Connie Driedger, Al Willems
2005 - David Chotka, Brent Farquhar, Al Willems, Connie Driedger
2006 - David Chotka, Brent Farquhar, Al Willems, Connie Driedger

Additional Members of the Alliance Pray! Team
2001 - Bob Beasley, Brent Farquhar, Stephen Lam, Dee Matheson, Gail Whyte, Lorraine Willems
2002 - Gail Whyte, Dee Matheson, Lorraine Willems, Stephen Lam, and Connie Driedger.
2003 - Julius Tiangson, Connie Driedger, Stephen Lam, Gail Whyte, Lorraine Willems
2004 - Gail Whyte, Lorraine Willems
2005 - Julius Tiangson, Gail Whyte, Lorraine Willems,
2006 - Dee Matheson, TV Thomas, Gail Whyte, Lorraine Willems, advisor Doug Wiebe
2010 - Fred Sebastian
2015 - Claude Noel
2016 - Marcus Verbrugge, Lorilee Jespersen
2017 - Paul Ens
2018 - Al and Lorraine Willems retired from APT Aug 31, 2018. College of Prayer Canada was dissolved Dec 31, 2018.
2019 - Tommy Tsui, Gail Rodgers
2021 - Katherine Ukrainetz

Submitted Nov 17, 2023

Edited for this web site which was redeemed on March 20, 2025. Contact prayer at alliancepray.ca