Get on Your Bikes and Pedal: RIDE GR Opportunity to have Fun, Pray Alongside Fellow Bikers
RIDE GR is an interdenominational prayer bike ride around Grand Rapids. Bicyclists often pedal around the city to burn calories, take in the sites and work off some stress. Stockbridge Boiler Room's (SBR) June 24 RIDE GR is no exception, but there's more to its 20-mile trek than enjoying the great outdoors.RIDE GR is an opportunity for bikers to stand in agreement and prayerfully intercede on behalf of churches' and the neighborhoods they are based in, said Tim Collier, overseer of the local SBR.
Missional bike outing
Collier described RIDE GR is a missional prayer bike outing.
Tim Collier: “There’s something about praying on location that’s different when you’re there.” "There's something about praying on location that's different when you're there and get a sense of what the Lord is doing through their organization or church," said Collier. "It's just a really powerful experience."This is RIDE GR's fourth year. It originally was planned for Sunday, June 25 but has been rescheduled for Saturday, June 24. At press time, RIDE GR's website still listed the date as June 25.
All welcomed
Bikers of all ages and Christian backgrounds are welcome to participate.
Bicyclists initially will gather from 8-8:30 a.m. at Crossroads Bible Church, 800 Scribner NW, Grand Rapids. A donation of $10 is requested and includes receiving a T-shirt for those who register in advance online at www.ridegr.org.
Bikers will then ride from 8:30 to noon, take at break from 1-2 p.m. at the Lyon Street Café and then finish by 2 p.m.
List of prayer stops
Prayer stops include SBR, Bridge Street House of Prayer, The Other Way Gold Avenue Church, The Motion Initiative, Potter's House Christian School, Oakdale Park Christian Reformed Church, Fifth Reformed Church, St. Isidore's Catholic Church and others."In the past this was kind of fundraiser and this year we sensed the Lord was leading us to cut that out of the equation and let this ride expand bikers' awareness," said Collier.
"Anyone who does the ride will have an opportunity to grow friendships over the course of the ride and be able to pray and learn new ways to pray for other churches and organizations in the city that they might not have known about and go away with an experience of what God is doing in the city."
What Stockbridge Boiler Room is
Stockbridge Boiler Room gets its name from old-fashioned steam boilers that drove machines and produced light.
The first Boiler Room was established in 2001 in Reading, England, with Pete Greig, a founder of 24-7 Prayer, an international, interdenominational movement of prayer, mission and justice.
Other Boiler Rooms have sprung up elsewhere in England. The first ones in the United States were in Kansas City and Calgary.
The local SBR is a missional church community devoted to neighborhood transformations.
Local Stockbridge Boiler Room started on front porch
Tony Tendero and his wife, Jennifer DeGraaf Tendero, moved into the West Side neighborhood of Grand Rapids in 2005 after selling their farmhouse in Ada Township to move near the Basilica of St. Adalbert and across from the Child Discovery Center.
The Stockbridge Boiler Room was born out of a nightly prayer meeting on the front porch of the Tenderos' home.
Eventually, three families agreed to purchase a foreclosed home that formerly was a crack house and brothel, which the Tenderos converted into a hospitality home and prayer community.
Its current location is 715-5th St. NW, Grand Rapids.
A community of prayer
Stockbridge Boiler Room ministries include:
• Gathering weekly for a shared meal, worship, discipleship equipping, and prayer.
• Mobilizing prayer by coaching and resourcing churches and groups to implement seasons of 24-7 Prayer.
• Discipling community members to live the Gospel as the family of God in every day life, and serve the neighborhood through a monthly community meal called the Love Feast at the 5th street Hall.
• Training apprenticing leaders to plant new missional communities in other parts of the neighborhood/city.
"We want to be a community of prayer," Collier told WMCN in an earlier interview. "Our mission is to be God's family in the neighborhood and let prayer be the center of it."
CONNECT
www.ridegr.org
www.stockbridgeboilerroom.org
