In the early 1980’s, Concerts of Prayer brought together Christians from around the Madison area to pray for revival in the church, in the city, and in the nation. The monthly Concerts of Prayer were led by David Bryant, who lived in Madison while he worked with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and were held in churches all over the city.
Bryant left Madison and moved to New Jersey, to help launch a Concert of Prayer movement in New York City. An article posted this week on the website Journey Through NYC Religions tells what happened next.
The article is part of a series exploring the roots of a Christian renewal in the city, and profiles Mac Pier. Pier was an InterVarsity staff member working on a half dozen campuses in South Dakota when he was transferred to New York City to become an InterVarsity Area Director in 1984.
Three years later he left InterVarsity and joined David Bryant to start the Concerts of Prayer movement. At their first event they invited 16 churches and 70 showed up. Eventually the Concerts of Prayer became the largest network of evangelical Christians in the city, and helped pave the way for unprecedented growth of evangelical churches.
It’s a fascinating story illustrating, first of all, the often overlooked influence of Madison-based InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. But it also illustrates how God can use a key individual with a heart for revival to impact a whole city or a whole region. The Gates of Glory meetings that are held on Friday evenings keep the embers glowing in Madison.