The vital place of Prayer
For Terry Virgo prayer is the context and engine room of hearing and interacting with God. Many are the occasions I have heard him talk about prayer and, even more important, have spent hundreds of hours with him and others in the context of prayer. In prayer we are very transparent and this has been a huge privilege. I soon discovered, as Terry’s administrator, that there was little point in pressing him for a decision if he had not yet heard from God on the issue. Indeed, this gave me great security; whatever Terry agreed to I knew was rooted in obedience to God’s will and so could proceed with faith and expectation of fruitfulness from whatever the initiative happened to be. (I also, of course, have had to know my own ‘peace’ about such initiatives).
Come before me…
One day in the early 80s Terry told me that he had been reading a passage in the Bible along the lines of men coming before God empty-handed for a time of fasting. He felt that God was saying that we should gather the leaders of the Newfrontiers churches in the UK three times per year to fast and pray. (A few years later he was re-reading this passage and realised that he had misread the passage which in fact said ‘feasting’ – but by then the pattern 
was set!). And so, one of the most important and sustained regular events for Newfrontiers began, first at the Pilgrim Hall Conference Centre in Sussex then gradually moving to increasingly larger venues as we gathered hundreds on each occasion.
Over the decades these times have shaped us as a movement. Following a pattern of two hours of prayer followed by a drink break, which was repeated six to eight times across the two days, we were able to set aside all distractions and wait in God’s presence in worship and prayer, a powerful cocktail of spiritual disciplines! It provided times for prophetic release and became very significant as God spoke to us in specific ways about various aspects of the ministry, resulting in churches being planted in different parts of the world, focus being brought to major events such as the Bible Weeks, breakthrough in apparently intractable situations in other nations, and so on.
Workshop
These days were also times for ‘workshopping’, all of us learning from one another to move in the gifts of the Spirit in a safe context. I remember taking an American friend on one occasion, someone who himself had a developed prophetic gift. On the return journey he told me how impressed he was that people with a prophetic gift felt free and safe to bring words to the gathering that were in the context of immediately being weighed by those with an apostolic gift. He, himself, came from one of the prophetic bands in the US and recognised the vulnerability of only prophets meeting together; he saw in our gathering the strength of the partnership between the apostolic and prophetic gifts.
Multiplied prayer
As the Newfrontiers family has been restructured into multiple apostolic spheres in recent years it is so encouraging to know that in many of these spheres across the world this tradition has been maintained. Surely there can be little that is as powerful as leaders gathering together to wait on God and seek his will for different situations and the next strategic move. Long may it continue!
Reference has already been made to various prophecies. Next time I will remind the reader of some of those that were given in the 80s that were particularly influential in shaping the ministry of Newfrontiers.