CONSTITUENCY


5


This month, David Hill - an entrepreneur, former agnostic, father and rugby fan who lives in Liberton - has contributed on article on the


campaign


This Easter, the enigmatic invitation to trypraying will appear across the city.


coincides with scores of churches uniting in 40 days of continuous prayer


for


Edinburgh. The same event has happened for the past two years in the period leading up to Easter – along with the sudden appearance of dozens of buses with the ‘trypraying’ logo on their sides. However, the idea of trypraying is aimed squarely at those who don’t go to church. These days many people


don’t consider themselves religious, but will probably pray when they need help or just to find out if it’s true. To help people out, a 7-day prayer guide has been produced which


It


is now used by many in Scotland to pass on to friends and family with a few words of encouragement - ‘Why don’t you try praying for a week and see what happens in your life?’ A free copy can be obtained from their website. The idea isn’t to prove that God exists by answered prayer - but to invite people to an experience of God. I experienced this in quite a radical way.


The slogan on the buses


has had a polarising effect. Some claim they’ve been encouraged to pray for the first time in years. Others, mostly in the atheist and secularist


camps, are highly offended at the simple invitation. However, “The stories that have come back to us have been amazing,” comments David Hill, a former agnostic and coordinator of the campaign, adding with a touch of irony, “It’s almost as if someone is listening when people pray.” Ian Murray has


commented that the churches in S. E. Edinburgh do an amazing job but they don’t boast about it. Christians believe that prayer can have a radical effect on individuals and communities, and so the campaign has nothing to do with self- promotion, but everything to do with believing for a better world.


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