Heather Bellamy spoke with Brian Heasley

Brian Heasley

Ibiza has more pubs, clubs and bars per square mile than almost anywhere else in Europe. Hundreds and thousands of young people go there intent on having the best holiday possible and the Island is derided for the shocking scenes of excess and violence that result. Into this mix 24/7 Prayer decided to go there to pray. To find out what happened Heather Bellamy spoke with Brian Heasley who went to the Island with his wife, Tracey and has recently released the book 'Gatecrashing'.

Heather: So what made you go to Ibiza?

Brian: The short answer would be God, but the slightly longer answer was that we decided we would go there as a movement in 1999 to pray, because that is where our generation was and they were there messing their lives up having a party and getting pretty bad press. We decided that we would go there and pray and see what happened and in the end we decided that we would have to become the answer to our own prayers and move out there to live amongst the people.

Heather: What were you planning to do when you moved there?

Brian: At first the idea was to establish some form of praying community in the midst of the madness. A group of people who would be there to look out for the spiritual, physical and emotional needs of people who were coming on holiday, or people who were working there. So we went there to put legs on our prayers and grow a community that blessed the community that we were planted in.

Heather: And why did you think prayer was important for Ibiza?

Brian: Because I think that behind most things people are searching for something. I think when they go to Ibiza they are naturally going on holiday, for a rest, but when someone drinks 25 shots before they finish their evening there's a kind of pressure, a hole being filled there that I think is symptomatic of generations that are looking for happiness in drink and sex and all these different things. I think praying and introducing people to the concept of prayer and connecting to the Divine is a really good way to work with that generation.

Heather: For a lot of people that are disconnected from Church, the image of prayer probably in their heads would be Anglican Church, kneeling down with your wooden benches and Ibiza is so far from that. So what does praying look like in a place like that?

Brian: We would go out on the streets - the area we worked in was called San Antonio. That's the area that at the time had more pubs, clubs and bars than anywhere else in Europe and we would walk around the streets from midnight til five in the morning in twos and we would just approach people and say, "Hi we are part of an organisation called 24/7 Prayer. Is there anything we can pray with you about?" It was as simple as that. I know this sounds shocking cause I head up a prayer movement, but we were quite surprised at how many people said, "I'd love you to pray". I think the first summer that we did it we had a thousand people respond to that question. We would end up finding ourselves standing in the street with them talking to them and praying with them and people wouldn't have a clue. They wouldn't know what to do, they'd say, "Do I need to close my eyes, do I need to put my hands together, do I need to kneel down?" And we would quite simply explain, "Actually, prayer is just a conversation with God. Let's just do it in whatever way you feel comfortable". So most of the time we prayed with people it was standing up with our eyes wide open.

Heather: So God's interested in us when we're in that state, cause a lot of us when we come to God we think we've done so many bad things, does he really want us and a lot of the time we have an image of Christians being judgemental, critical and in that, unwelcoming. So who's God in all this? Does he care about people when they're drunk and sleeping around in the state they are in, in Ibiza?

Brian: Well I think so. I think he's a God of grace. I personally, as a younger man, ended up in prison four times for a variety of offences and ended up in all sorts of trouble myself and I found God and I found a God of love and a God of compassion and a God of mercy. I guess, when I walk around the streets of Ibiza I look at people and I think that could be me! We try to look at them, (and we should look at the world), through the eyes of Psalm 139, which says we are all fearfully and wonderfully made. So no matter what state people get in, they are God's creation. He smiled when they were born! So I try really hard not to be judgemental. We often get hassled though and people say, "Why aren't you in Africa or some other destitute third world place doing this kind of stuff, why come here?" That is always a challenge, but it's where our generation was and they needed to know about the unconditional grace-filled love of God, so that's why we did that.

Heather: Were lives changed? Were there any prayers answered that you can tell us about?

Brian: Yeah, we saw some people who had found Christ and decided to become Christians and we had the pleasure and joy of baptising a few people in the Mediterranean Sea. We prayed with many people. I think most of what we did was sow the seed. I'm not fudging the issue, but we do live in this results orientated world, but the reality for us was that we just need to pray, we need to stand with people and pray because we would only get them for 10/15 minutes sometimes just to talk and pray. You might never see them again and you have to believe that in that moment of prayer, in that moment of connection, they had opened themselves up to God and God starts to work. So a lot of it was just us sowing the seed of faith into people's lives and trusting and having faith that God would do the rest.

Heather: Did the experience change you at all?

Brian: Yes it did, it changed me quite considerably. Before I went I was a Pastor of a church here in a little sleepy town in Norfolk and yes, it changed me. If I'm honest, it enhanced my grace level and made me aware of just how much God does love people and how much of a mess personally I get myself in and that God continually picks me up, cleans me off and looks after me and therefore I can do that for others on the streets of Ibiza. I think the change in me was one of grace, one of understanding that God wants to work outside the walls of our church meetings, that He wants to interrupt, as it were our church meetings and propel us out into the market place to help people connect with the Divine out there. I think possibly in the past I was a bit more sold down an attractional model of church which was, we'll put this on, you come to us and we'll tell you about Jesus. I believed in the incarnation and all of that, but I think my model was attractional. However since Ibiza I think I would be much more aware of the incarnational nature of Christ and the fact that we, the body of Christ, need to get out there in the world and express Him out there, as opposed to hoping somehow that people will turn up and meet God in our meetings.