One of the UK's best known youth evangelists Andy Hawthorne is calling on Christians around the world to take part in a million hours of prayer for Manchester, a city in the North West of England that has one the highest rates of knife crime in the country.

The one million hours of prayer initiative is in partnership with The Message Trust, UCB, Audacious, World Prayer Centre and many others, who are calling for 30,000 Christians around the world to commit to 20 minutes of prayer a day for 100 days for the city of Manchester starting this Friday May 1st.

The vision of Andy Hawthorne's ministry The Message Trust is to enable every young person in the city of Manchester to repeatedly hear the Christian message and he strongly believes this will only come about as a result of focused prayer. During the recent ECG conference in Llandudno in North Wales he told me how this initiative came about: "Our vision has always been for our city and our goal is particularly for every young person to hear the Gospel message repeatedly and see this demonstrated. Now we're not going to achieve that without loads of prayer and as we raise our game in terms of much more mission in words and actions we've absolutely got to raise our game in terms of prayer.

"So we're calling on the nations and saying how about this city in Northern England that for a long time has been like the end of the road for Christianity in Britain, but something is starting to happen. How about joining with us praying that God would continue to move? We want more and the all evidence of history is if you want to see much blessing it involves much prayer so we thought a million hours would be pretty good.

"The biggest challenges in the city are mostly around young people involved in gangs in guns and violence and crime," explains Andy.

Greater Manchester has one of the highest levels of knife crime in England and Wales and there are seven gun-related incidents in the city every day. Andy believes the only way to tackle these challenges is by reaching the city's youth, which can only be achieved through prayer: "There are many young people who've never heard the good news of Jesus Christ and is it any wonder that their lives are out of control. That's why so much of our effort is going into rea ching young people in the toughest areas. We believe when we see these strongholds transformed the whole city will be blessed and so youth is absolutely at the heart of what we do and we're mobilizing people to pray for them."

One of the initiatives of The Message Trust is for Christian workers to live in some of these tough areas as part of the Eden Project. Andy says this is having a major impact in seeing a reduction in the crime rate: "As our teams move into these communities and back that up with powerful prayer we're starting to see crime come down and churches grow. Greater Manchester police tell us some of the areas where we're working have seen a 45% reduction in crime. We're seeing the biggest gang leaders in Manchester who've come to Christ and have gone from being the problem to being the answer. When that happens that's a huge prize, not just a win for the church a win for the city. We're believing as bit by bit we chip away with lots of frontline mission, lots of kindness but also lots of prayer, we'll see these tough places turned round for Christ."

Finally I asked Andy to explain how he believes prayer makes a real difference: "Some more intelligent than me say mission is just the mopping up operation. The real battle is won in prayer. There's a battle in the heavenlies for our city. All sorts of evil forces are coming against the powers of the kingdom of God and we advance in prayer. Now we win in the end, Jesus wins. He'll have his kingdom he'll have his prize, he'll have his people, but we are now this side of heaven to be involved in that battle and one of our key weapons of warfare is prayer.

"It's not just for the super intercessors, the old ladies who pray for 18 hours a day behind closed doors. It's for all of us and that's why one million hours of prayer is something that everyone can do. Its a hundred days 20 minutes a day. We're challenging people all around the world to pray."

To find out more go to: www.1millionhours.com