Karen Glassford, director of General Conference's Digital Strategy for Mission, leads a round of prayer at the special 2025 GC Session prayer meeting. Photo: Melvin Donadelle
The theme of the 62nd General Conference Session is “Jesus is Coming, I Will Go!” This is the clarion call to illuminate the entire world with the three angels’ messages and the everlasting gospel.
Like any city, St. Louis, Missouri, the session’s host, needs Jesus’ light, so several organizations, ministry leaders, and young people partnered together to implement a special week of prayer. Residents were invited to the nightly sessions to share their requests and burdens (to the extent with which they were comfortable) with the coordinators and other session attendees and be encouraged by the fact that dozens of prayer warriors would be lifting them up to the heavenly Father’s throne on a regular basis.
Karen Glassford, director of the GC’s Digital Strategy for Mission, has been leading this initiative. She indicated this wasn’t the first time this type of community week of prayer has been activated.
“Several of us sat around and wondered what we could do for the city of St. Louis, but we have done these types of projects in many different countries and locations, and we have seen them work very well,” said Glassford. “It’s not that the numbers are really large, it’s that the impact is deep. So the people that we pray with often report back incredible answers to prayer that they never expected, and they will credit it directly to the prayer ministry.”
Matt and Josie Minikus share special music with those attending the community-wide week of prayer at the 62nd General Conference Session. Photo: Melvin Donadelle
Partnering with Adventist Connect
Glassford highlighted the pivotal role played by Adventist Connect. “[They were] able to provide the online pastoral care to answer people,” she mentioned. As interested as local churches were to follow up on the responses to this public prayer outreach, they were already to capacity with their exertions on the heels of Your Best Pathway to Health and multiple evangelistic campaigns — all things considered, a great problem to have.
Brent Hardinge, director of Adventist Connect, shared his perspective on his collaboration with Glassford and detailed some of the tangible assistance he and his team provided.
“We have been working on various projects with [Digital Strategy for Mission] over the past couple of years so they approached us about the project,” Hardinge said. “They wanted to do prayer ads and from that lead into conversations; and then the final step would be inviting them to come to the meetings that they have this week in the evening.”
The prayer request ads were run on Facebook and other social media platforms, as were the invitation ads weeks afterward as the session drew nearer. As people clicked on them, they were able to engage in messenger/chat conversations with representatives from Adventist Connect and other ministries.
The aforementioned Pathway to Health fed into this effort. “A lot of the people at Pathway were invited to come to this; that was an avenue for them to submit prayer requests,” Hardinge stated. “Those who had expressed interest in spiritual care when they came through the Pathway event were then invited to participate in [this week of prayer].”
Karen Glassford operates a Zoom feed to provide a hybrid option for St. Louis residents without reliable transportation to still attend the GC Session 2025 Week of Prayer. Photo: Melvin Donadelle
Hope Channel Contributions
Hope Channel was another contributor to this endeavor: specifically, in the person of Season Cromwell, host of Let’s Pray, one of Hope Channel’s signature programs.
“I was brought in partway through the process as hosting and then also participating, providing some prayer guidance throughout the program,” Cromwell mentioned. “I’m so grateful to get a chance to work together.”
Quite a few of the St. Louis residents who have attended the prayer nights so far have been rather comfortable with transparency. This has opened the door for Cromwell to be the face of the team in offering compassion and empathy — attributes she conveys through natural disposition and shared experiences.
“I’m a recovered methamphetamine addict,” Cromwell admitted. “It’s vitally important to me that in all of our weirdness and differences and layers of growth, people understand that they’re welcome. Some of us do that very well; some of us are growing in that area; but this is a step forward in allowing us to be there for our communities.”
Season Cromwell, host of Hope Channel's Let's Pray, has been an indispensable source of support and compassion for St. Louis residents sharing their prayer requests and struggles during the GC Session Week of Prayer special initiative. Photo: Melvin Donadelle
Youth and Young Adult Participation
Youth and young adult participation in this prayer initiative has been significant. Francine Drysdale-Brown, an engineering student at Andrews University and a ministry specialist with Adventist Connect, discussed the support she and her peers supplied.
“The GC started it, and then students working at Adventist Connect got introduced … to communicate with the people that they had already developed that relationship with and we just continued that, and slowly, we sent our invitations to them, inviting them to this event,” Drysdale-Brown said.
Glassford is confident that many testimonies and radical prayer answers will emanate from this outreach. Stories of health turnarounds, addiction conquering, and other miracles stemming from prior iterations of this community prayer initiative stand as ebenezers undergirding this expectation.
Several youth participants contribute to the operation of the community prayer initiative at the 2015 GC Session. Photo: Melvin Donadelle
—John Simon is a freelance writer based in Berrien Springs, Michigan.