The Extraordinary Blessing of IDOP
The International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP) is a very extraordinary and unique opportunity for great blessing. It’s a special day each year that encourages us all to come together as the Body of Christ in loving prayer for each other, in spite of the geographical barriers. Prayer is the unique thing that conquers both time and geographical barriers. I have never felt God’s pleasure more than when I host an IDOP event! I’ve been hosting IDOP events in November and persecuted church banquets in the spring for many years, and I’ve had so many blessed experiences.
One of the biggest blessings of hosting these events has been the very wonderful and interesting people I have been privileged to meet and work with! Our list of speakers spans the world.
Some of our speakers have been missionaries who preach the gospel in countries where that activity automatically invites persecution, people like Fr. Jerry and Stacy Kramer, serving in the Middle East, and the Rev. Alison Barfoot, serving in Uganda and Kenya. It’s wonderful that an IDOP gives you the opportunity to support the persecuted church while also supporting global missions more generally. The IDOP event ideally includes both lots of prayer and financial support for our persecuted brothers and sisters. If you choose to also host an international banquet for the persecuted church, perhaps in the spring, you can maximize the fund-raising aspect by selling tickets to the event, in addition to taking an offering. At one of our banquet events, Rev. Alison Barfoot was sharing about her mentoring of an evangelist in a dangerous area of Kenya. She was building a missions training center in Isiolo, Kenya, right in the middle of the very hostile territory bordering Somalia and needed $8,000 within a couple of days to seal the deal on the land. Not only were we able to deliver the money but also she mentored me on my planned mission trip to Tanzania the next month! I’m always amazed at the Lord’s intricate timing of things!
2006 IDOP banquet with Pastor Wally Magdangal (front row wearing a black suit, next to his daughter). These were all the great people who helped me with the event. What a blessing!
We have also had speakers who grew up in foreign countries and experienced severe persecution and shared their testimonies with us. In 2005, Sister Ruth Xu, wife of Peter Xu, the “Billy Graham of China” and founder of the Back to Jerusalem movement – told her story, with translation, of being tortured in prison for her faith. I was worried because her presentation just went on and on and on, especially with all the extra time needed for translation, and people aren’t usually patient in the U.S. with long presentations. However, at the end, everyone rose to their feet and clapped for a very long time, so my worries were groundless.
At my international banquet in 2006 Pastor Wally Magdangal of Christians in Crisis told his amazing story of how the Lord sustained him through torture in a Saudi Arabian prison and then miraculously rescued him from the sentence of death. He was quite the fiery Pentecostal but was warmly welcomed into our Anglican church setting.
Bp. Abraham Nhial speaking in the Persecuted Church Pre-Conference at the 2025 New Wineskins Conference
Later that year at my IDOP event, a young man named Abraham Nhial, one of the “lost boys of Sudan” was featured along with Tom Prichard of Sudan Sunrise. These were the boys who had fled for their lives when their parents were murdered and their villages burned down in the southern part of Sudan by the Islamic terrorists who run the country. At the event, part of the offering was dedicated to help give Abraham a scholarship to Uganda Christian University. Now he is the Bishop of South Sudan, his homeland.
Once we heard from this “lost boy of Sudan,” who is clearly lost no more (read about his book at lostboynomore.com), God showed us some more Sudanese Christians who lived in San Diego, not very far away, and we had quite the Sudan prayer night with a bunch of them.
Sudan prayer night with Sudanese Christians living in San Diego
In 2017 we were blessed to have someone from Open Doors to interview a Bible smugger and church planter from Iran. One highlight was getting to introduce him and tell everyone the story of how the Iranian secret policeman he called the Shadow had vowed to shut him up forever, but now he preaches the gospel through satellite TV to 70 million Iranians, possibly to the Shadow himself!
In 2021 – Bob Fu, head of ChinaAid, shared his gripping story of being a double agent for God in Communist China. We were all so encouraged that Bob was able to share the gospel and somehow evade arrest by the CCP for a long time. But we all cheered when we heard how he and his wife Heidi managed to escape the country to avoid the CCP’s evil plan to force an abortion on Heidi.
For my IDOP in 2024, Max, a pastor friend I met at the New Wineskins conference in 2022, shared his incredible testimony of how sharing his faith in a very restricted country in Central Asia led to his arrest and a very narrow escape from lifelong imprisonment. Everyone was on the edge of their seats during his exciting story! Now he can no longer live there, but he regularly travels there to support and encourage the persecuted believers there.
In addition to the incredible speakers I have met through my IDOP experiences over the years, I have also met so many people who really care about the Great Commission and the way God is using persecuted believers to advance His Kingdom. It was at an IDOP event that I got to know the great Faith McDonnell, who spoke at several of my IDOP events about the persecuted in Sudan. God eventually used Jenny Noyes to bring Faith and me together as the Co-leaders of the Anglican Persecuted Church Network, which we launched in 2019. Nothing encourages me more than meeting with all of the wonderful members of the Anglican Persecuted Church Network – at New Wineskins conferences and at monthly prayer meetings. This whole wonderful experience started with IDOP!
In addition to Anglicans who encouraged me, God opened the door for other churches to open their doors to me when our church lost our building. It turns out that one of these churches, a Calvary Chapel in Irvine, California, also had a Persian congregation who were very happy to come to my banquet events, especially as we often prayed for the church in Iran, and cook all their great Persian food.
When I saw the loving way we were welcomed into this Calvary Chapel and the way the two churches worked together in such harmony, my joy was overwhelming! As I thanked all the workers from both churches, everyone was thanking ME and telling me how much the event meant to them. Many years ago someone I did not know had prayed for me and received a word from the Lord for me: “You will be a Bridgebuilder.” As I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit that night drawing us all together across denominational lines (as well as the usual ethnic lines), I felt that the Lord was saying to me, “Tonight that prophecy is fulfilled.” And it certainly did not hurt in the least that Open Doors at that time was calling all of their volunteers Bridgebuilders!
One of the biggest blessings over my 27 years of hosting these events has been hearing from those who attended and those who helped me by hosting speakers that their minds have been enlightened and their hearts have been changed. Their faith is deeper, and Jesus is more real to them after hearing the testimonies of persecuted believers. I believe the Lord is eager to share this IDOP blessing with you! Just say yes!
Patricia Streeter is the co-founder of the Anglican Persecuted Church Network, the Global Missions Advocate for the Diocese of Western Anglicans, and a volunteer for Open Doors USA. She speaks at and organizes many events to draw attention to the persecuted church worldwide.
