Spiritual Communication for Social Transformation: Prayer Warriors’ Intercession as Communicative Acts in Building the Parachurch Culture and Identity for National Development

Abstract

Cooperation for the shared goal of social transformation is highly aspired yet greatly challenging among Evangelical churches and partner institutions. Though parachurches function to assist churches, organizational structures and traditions threaten church-parachurch dynamics. The Davao City House of Prayer (HOP) parachurch bridges this divide by establishing its unique niche of intercessory prayers for good governance and nation-building.

The study used ethnographic field work to observe HOP members conduct the Prayer Watch, a 3-hour continuous prayer or "soaking" in God's presence. The Prayer Watch is the encompassing communicative performance where members' shared values, symbols, and meaning-making activities through intercessory prayers blend together to (co)create the parachurch culture and identity for social transformation. Communicative acts bring to life this particular culture and identity as unifying yet separating and innovative but not competitive toward the church.

The Prayer Watch demonstrates communication as the means of achieving interdependence or balance between autonomy and dependency where organizational strengths of the church and parachurch are maximized and limitations are complemented by each other.