PICTURE: iStockphoto.com “Really we just want people to pray,” says Lynne Klomp, one of the national co-ordinators of the Parliamentary Prayer Network. “We’re just encouraging everybody to really prayer and to take one step forward from what they did at the last election. If they prayed last time, try some fasting this time. Get involved.”

6th September, 2004

DAVID ADAMS

As news spread last week that the Prime Minister, John Howard, had announced a federal election would be held in October, prayer teams across the country were being mobilised.

Among them were the hundreds of people who form part of the Parliamentary Prayer Network, a non-denominational group of Australians who join regularly in groups across the country to pray for our state and federal parliaments.

In conjunction with the Australian Prayer Network, they are calling for Australians to take part in 28 days of prayer and fasting kicking off this Saturday (11th September).

In a document published last week they have called for prayer on a range of issues which they consider significant to the nation’s future including the nation’s Christian heritage, system of government and morality.

A daily ‘prayer diary’ provides people with specific requests to ask of God, including praying for the election of a Government which has a “heart for the needy” through to a praying for the election of a federal parliament which exhibits a “heart of grace”.

Lynne Klomp, one of the Parliamentary Prayer Network's national co-ordinators, says the network and the Australian Prayer Network are just two of a number of Christian groups calling for prayer ahead of the upcoming election.

“Really we just want people to pray,” Klomp says. “We’re just encouraging everybody to really prayer and to take one step forward from what they did at the last election. If they prayed last time, try some fasting this time. Get involved.”

The Parliamentary Prayer Network (PPN) was formed in 1993 to pray for Federal Parliament and in the past year has expanded to include people praying for state parliaments. Those associated with the network - it currently has around 200 churches and organisations as points of contact - regularly pray inside both federal and state parliament houses.

Klomp, who founded the group with her husband Peter, says the network is not a lobby group nor is it politically partisan. Rather she describes it as a support group for MPs.

“If you think of chaplaincy - we’re kind of the front line in the army and we go in and we pray, we build relationships with MPs and pray with them on a one-on-one basis...” she says. “We equate ourselves a bit with the SAS (Special Air Service) - we’re kind of small, very specific, prayer group.”

While the subject matter of the prayers can vary, Klomp says justice and righteousness are common themes. “We also pray for personal needs (of MPs). Wisdom and courage are big themes too.”

Klomp says that while when the network was formed, there were very few Christians in Federal Parliament, that number has increased significantly. She adds that while it’s hard to quantify the day-to-day affect of the prayers of the network members and other groups praying for our nation’s MPs, “we can look back and say ‘God’s been good and He has answered prayer for the nation'."

While she’s always had an interest in politics, Klomp recalls that the catalyst for the group's establishment took place when she was living in the United Kingdom and came into contact with a church group in Cambridge who were protesting the introduction of Sunday trading.

“All the churches united across the UK against the bill and then the trade unions actually came in behind the churches, threw a lot of money at the campaign and the bill was actually thrown out,” she recalls.

“It kind of burned something in my heart and I could see there were several keys to it: there was a lot of prayer and the church was also in unity across the denominations. That just sort of stayed with me...”

Returning to Australia, Klomp married, and became part of a home group.

“I don’t really know why now but I organised a prayer meeting at Parliament House - we did that through a contact at (now deputy Prime Minister) John Anderson’s office. About 30 or 40 people came to that and then somebody at that prayer meeting said ‘Look we need this going on all the time, not just once or twice’, so that’s basically where we started. We just gathered friends and we wrote to Christian leaders and we started the network off from there.”

While many of those who are involved in with network are middle-aged or older, the network has started a schools program to encourage younger people to pray.

As well as speaking to school groups who tour through parliament, the network also encourages schools to pray on a weekly basis for their local MP.

“We’ve got 70 schools on that program at the moment,” says Klomp. “The whole aim behind that is to teach children to pray for their leaders and to raise up the next generation (of prayers).”

• The Parliamentary Prayer Network

www.ppn.org.au

• The Australian Prayer Network

www.austprayernet.org.au