“I found no means of spiritual interest of any kind,” He then quickly thought to himself ‘
“What can I do for these young men? And he began to pray.

Shortly thereafter, he discovered that a fellow worker was an active Christian. They began to discuss something that God had put on George’s heart to help introduce the other staff to a relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

The YMCA as it initially grew, was a workplace prayer and outreach ministry that lovingly shared the message of Christ. It spread to several countries around the world and did not even have a building until 15 years after it’s initial founding- and this was to house a library and allow for Christian education.

Williams soon made this matter-of-fact entry in his diary:

“We met, our numbers grew, and the room was soon crammed. In answer to prayer, the Spirit of God was present, and we had conversion after conversion. Scores of employees and even the firm’s president, George Hitchcock, professed faith in Christ.

An observer of the spiritual activity at Hitchcock and Rogers commented that when Williams came to the firm in 1841, it was almost impossible for a young man there to be a Christian. By contrast, three years later, it was almost impossible to be anything else!

How to get started
Find one or two others who will meet with you for at least 30 minutes on the first Monday of every month to pray for staff by name. Register your prayer cell to be part of the nation-wide George Williams initiative at www.ymcamission.org. Print off copies of this brochure and share with others to give them vision.  

There are several ways to approach praying for staff by name. The key to each of these approaches is to make sure that the staff persons name is spoken out loud in prayer. Not “Lord, please bless our staff”, but “Oh Lord, here are the staff we bring before you by name…”.

• Read out loud the list of names—This is simple and the least time consuming approach. Say Lord, here is our staff—read names—you know their needs today and we pray…..
• Pray for groups of names—Pray for groups of staff who have similar responsibilities and challenges. Again read out the names in that group and then pray for that needs that those staff members face.
• Pray for individual staff needs—This can be an informal process at first, praying for special needs you are aware of as they become known to the YMCA staff family. However, as God leads, you can let staff know a team is praying for them once a month by name, and if they have a particular prayer need to let you know.

If you have a prayer team, you can break into 3 teams of two people and each team can pray for 10-15 staff. Using this approach, you can pray for everyone and still be able to finish praying in 30 minutes if you have time constraints. Remember, you need to treat all prayer requests confidentially, that you know are private, and your team needs to be mature enough to know and understand this as well

John Mott was a giant of a leader within the YMCA.   In this section there are two John Mott Tools - A brief bio of his life and his 15 Life Lessons that he gave a the YMCA training Center on His 80th Birthday.