🙏 A Week in Luton: What the 2017 UK Prayer Mission Taught Me

Monday 26 June – Sunday 2 July, Luton, England

I almost didn’t go.

A few months earlier I’d already taken three weeks of leave to be with my parents when they came out of Paraguay for the first time in years. My remaining holiday was thin. Spending a whole week on something called a “prayer mission”—something I’d never heard of until recently—wasn’t exactly an easy sell at home. My wife was understandably frustrated. The vacation days we had left were supposed to be for our family.

But there was something I couldn’t shake. I’d been living in England long enough to feel the slow drift—middle age creeping in, the weight of responsibilities, the quiet compromises you make without noticing. The blazing faith of my younger years had become something more managed, more careful. Less alive. I wanted it back. That was the real reason I wanted to go: not to do anything impressive, but to pray. Concentrated, unhurried, undistracted prayer—for England, for revival, for whatever God still wanted from me.

Looking back now, I think God gave me far more than I asked for that week. This is what happened.

The Schedule

We arrived Monday evening at Heathrow, where I met Missionary Kim Nam-jin, who coordinates the European Prayer Mission, and then Pastor Jo—the vicar of St. Hugh’s Anglican Church in Luton, who was waiting for us in the arrivals hall with a 16-seat minibus he’d rented himself. The Korean prayer team—nine people from Daejeon, led by Pastor Kim Moon-soo—arrived shortly after, and we all drove up to Luton together.

That first night we gathered in the sanctuary, held hands, prayed briefly over the week ahead, and prayed protection prayers over one another. Then we slept.

From Tuesday onward the rhythm was this: mornings spent visiting churches and prayer groups around Luton—interdenominational gatherings that Pastor Jo had organized in advance, knowing we were coming. The format was consistent: the local believers would share what God was doing in their area, give us specific requests, and then Pastor Kim Moon-soo and Pastor Han Sang-gyu would lead us into passionate corporate prayer, following the Spirit’s leading.

Tuesday was a prayer gathering for Luton’s church-based charities. Wednesday, for the nations represented in the city. Thursday, for church leaders across Luton. Friday morning, prayer for street evangelism and healing teams; Friday evening, prayer for youth ministry. Saturday was a full day of street evangelism. Sunday morning we attended worship, and Sunday evening we held a final prayer gathering open to all.

But the heart of every day—the thing that shaped everything else—was the late-night altar prayer, which ran from 10 pm to 2 am. Every night except, originally, Saturday. That plan didn’t hold. More on that in a moment.

Luton

If you know Luton, you know that it occupies a specific place in the British imagination—a bit like Nazareth. Can anything good come from there? It’s one of the poorest towns in England, best known for its budget airport and, more recently, for having one of the highest Muslim populations in the country—now approaching 25% of residents. Good schools? Luton Grammar School was once among the best in England and produced significant leaders, but it was restructured decades ago, and today there isn’t a single high-performing secondary school left in the borough. Families with means come, look at the schools, and move to Harpenden. The cycle repeats. The talent drains away.

But there were signs of hope, and they were impossible to ignore.

In 2014, the first Korean prayer mission team had come to Luton—also staying at St. Hugh’s—and spent a week interceding with tears over the city. After they left, things began to shift. The suffocating spiritual heaviness that had blanketed the area started to lift. In 2015, a development company called thinkluton.co.uk launched with £1.5 billion in investment committed to the borough. Derelict areas began to be rebuilt. St. Hugh’s itself had grown from around 100 people at the time of that first visit to over 250—a thriving, revived congregation that had become a voice for the whole city.

Everywhere we went, British believers said the same thing: everything changed after the Korean team came in 2014. They weren’t just acknowledging it—they were desperate for more intercession. One British woman, a German missionary’s daughter now raising four children as a layperson, put it as simply as it can be put: “Because prayer is ministry!”

Spiritual Warfare

Because these local believers were so hungry for prayer, the most significant outcome of our week wasn’t simply that we interceded and left. It was that we helped raise up intercessors who would continue after we were gone.

Friday morning and Sunday evening in particular were designed with that goal in mind—gathering those who wanted to commit to ongoing prayer for their own churches and neighborhoods. On Sunday evening, an interdenominational group of about fifty people came. All but a few came forward when they were invited to make that commitment. Then something beautiful happened: Pastor Han Sang-gyu handed the microphone to Pastor Jo for a closing prayer—and instead of closing, Pastor Jo was moved by the Spirit to keep going, leading the room in fervent intercession himself. Nobody had arranged that. The baton was passed in the most natural, most Spirit-led way I have ever witnessed—from the visiting Korean team to the resident English leadership. I believe God had been building to that moment all week, which is part of why He kept us up all night the night before.

St. Hugh’s carries significant history. In the 1970s, a vicar named Colin Urqhart led the church into a powerful season of healing and supernatural gifts—so remarkable that people traveled from Canada and the United States to see what God was doing there. Later leadership changes dimmed that flame, and when Pastor Jo arrived five years ago, he found a congregation of about 75.

We learned something else about the church’s location. The neighborhood where St. Hugh’s sits—an area called Bury Park—has a long history of witchcraft and occult activity. When Pastor Jo first arrived, his second daughter wouldn’t make eye contact with him for two years. Praying into it, he came to understand this was the result of a curse. He broke it in Jesus’ name, and immediately his daughter ran to him with her arms wide open, calling “Daddy!” Throughout our week we prayed specific protection over Pastor Jo and his family, renouncing every curse in Jesus’ name.

The spiritual opposition was tangible. On Wednesday night, the doors were left unlocked so that English believers could join the altar prayer from 10 pm to midnight. During that open window, a young woman walked in and moved through the sanctuary. One of our team members—one of the pastor’s wives—sensed immediately, by the Spirit, what was happening, and began binding the spirits from the back of the room. I approached the woman a few times to speak with her; each time she moved away, and eventually she left.

We only pieced together the full picture later, on Saturday night. That woman hadn’t just wandered in—she had scattered objects throughout the sanctuary. Small wooden spheres, each one hand-carved, individually sized, painted black. I had never seen anything like them. They were clearly handmade for a purpose. During our late-night prayer that Saturday, we searched the whole building systematically and collected them. They kept turning up. By the end, we had enough to fill a water bottle to about one-eighth full.

This woman—we learned her name was Estel—was apparently well known to the church. She had a habit of appearing during Sunday services to cause disruption. She had threatened Pastor Jo’s children on multiple occasions, and the police had been called repeatedly. She had entered the church specifically to oppose what we were doing.

That same night, something more alarming happened. During the previous Wednesday session, spirits had entered along with Estel and had hidden themselves inside the large worship flags stored at the back of the sanctuary—the kind British churches sometimes wave during worship. Our eldest team member, a deaconess, saw one of the spirits with her spiritual eyes during our final night of prayer: the chief one assigned against Pastor Jo. She was overcome with fear, her throat tightening. We gathered around her and fought in prayer until the fear broke.

Then we all stood and began walking circuits around the sanctuary—like Jericho—singing “There Is Power in the Blood” and praying in tongues. The deaconess saw the spirits hiding in the flags. Pastor Han Sang-gyu walked to each flag and broke it with his foot, one by one, driving the spirits out. Several team members who had been feeling oppressed and blocked all week reported feeling an immediate release—as if something that had been sealed shut had just blown open.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV)

This is not metaphor. It is the actual shape of reality.

Praying the Word

From the beginning I had a quiet but fierce hope for this week: I wanted to be a prayer warrior, not just a translator. I asked God to use me as an intercessor alongside the team, and not to let my spiritual immaturity become a hindrance to what He was doing.

In the two months before the trip I’d been serving as a youth group leader at Ealing Church, and together with the young people I’d memorized five or six passages of Scripture—verses on the spiritual life. That week, I prayed through each one of them. Holding God’s promises while praying gave the intercession a weight and a confidence I’d never quite felt before.

The first night of altar prayer I anchored myself to:

“But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV)

I chose it because I was struggling. Everyone else seemed to be entering deeper and deeper as the night went on—praying with greater urgency, more fire—and I kept glancing at my watch. I cried out honestly: Father, I’m waiting on You. Why aren’t I getting that eagle-strength? Give it to me now.

The next day I felt God respond: Son, last night you weren’t soaring like an eagle. You were flapping like a pigeon—doing it in your own strength. That’s why you wore out. Tonight, spread your wings wide and catch the current of My love.

That image reoriented everything.

“And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’”

Galatians 4:6 (NKJV)

Prayer isn’t effort. It’s inheritance.

Another verse I held tightly was:

“Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”

Jeremiah 33:3 (NKJV)

That Tuesday morning we’d met an Iranian woman named Hamina who had seen visions—golden rings over the city, God’s hand anointing, angels delivering arrows. I prayed boldly: Father, show me things like that. Open my eyes to what You’re doing here. I never received that kind of pictorial vision. But by the end of the week I had seen the reality of spiritual warfare with my own eyes, and I had caught something of God’s heart for Luton and for England. That was more than I bargained for. Hallelujah.

Humility and Gentleness

If I had to describe this entire week in two words, they would be: humility and gentleness.

First, the mission’s DNA. When Missionary Kim Nam-jin first explained this ministry to me, the three founding principles stopped me cold: humility, service, sacrifice. And the posture the Korean teams take when they go to British churches is not “let us show you how to pray properly.” It’s this: “The missionaries from your nation gave their lives to bring the gospel to our people. We are the fruit of that seed. We have come to pray for you as a small way of repaying that debt.” I watched British believers hear that explanation over and over in Luton, and every single time it landed—it softened people, opened them, made them receive us as brothers and sisters rather than as religious performers from abroad.

Second, Pastor Jo. This man drove a 16-seat minibus all week as our personal chauffeur. Every time we needed anything—water, fruit, bread, Korean rice—he drove to Tesco and came back with it. He arrived at midnight on our first night to buy us breakfast for the next morning. But what struck me most was this: he would drop us off at the prayer gatherings, and then he would leave. Except for Thursday’s leaders’ prayer meeting, he never came in with us. He just waited outside and picked us up when we finished. I first assumed he was simply busy. But as the week went on I realized there was intentionality in it—a deliberate choice to serve without being seen. If he’d walked into every meeting and introduced us as “my Korean prayer mission team,” there would have been a subtle pride in it, a way of leveraging our presence for his own standing. Instead he chose to disappear.

When I mentioned this to him at the end of the week, he told me God had spoken to him the week before we arrived: Wash the feet of those who are coming from Korea. That same week, he had been shortlisted as a candidate for bishop—a position that oversees some 400 churches. Within days of that news, God asked him to be a driver and a grocery runner. The timing was not lost on him, and it was not lost on me.

Third, the Daejeon team. Our nine-person team came from three different churches across two denominations—Holiness and Methodist. Pastor Kim Moon-soo and Pastor Han Sang-gyu held different ranks, different histories, different roles. But all week, not a single note of friction. Pastor Han, who had led previous UK prayer missions himself and had every right to lead this one, placed himself entirely under Pastor Kim’s authority. I genuinely mistook him for an associate pastor at first. Pastor Kim, for his part, watched over every team member’s spiritual and physical condition with remarkable attention, and at the final Sunday gathering he stepped back from the front and prayed quietly at the rear while Pastor Han led from the platform. God’s anointing rested on that lowness.

Fourth, my mother’s words. My mother—who has prayed for my brother Hongsoo and me for over thirty years from the mission field in Paraguay—had one thing to say when I told her I was going: Serve them with the kind of humility that God recognizes, not just performed humility. The content of thirty years of intercession for us, she told me, had been gentleness and humility. So from the first day I volunteered to do the washing-up after meals. People tried to stop me—I was the youngest. But to me it was simply obvious. I was grateful for any chance to serve this group. At the end-of-week sharing time I mentioned it, and one of the team members said she had quietly noticed it all week and had been thinking: this young man is genuinely gentle and humble. I give that entirely to God. It was His answer to thirty years of my mother’s prayers.

The deeper reason I keep coming back to humility: Luton is a city that has been beaten down. Its churches know failure. Its people don’t need someone arriving with answers and spiritual firepower to show off. What that city needed—what those churches needed—was someone willing to get low. God sent us there for a reason.

Intercession: What I Learned

Intercession is not a supplement to ministry. It is ministry. Everything else flows from it. We often say we’re interceding for our work—but that may be backwards. The church on its knees before God is the work.

The Daejeon team’s three churches all practiced what they called altar prayer—regular, nightly intercession in the sanctuary. One church: Monday through Friday, 8–10 pm. Another: Monday through Saturday, 9–10 pm. The specifics varied, but the commitment didn’t. One person or thirty—it didn’t matter. What mattered was not sinning against God by ceasing to pray (1 Samuel 12:23). And the primary subject of that intercession? The Sunday sermon—praying that God’s Word would go out from that pulpit in full power, that the dry bones in the congregation would come alive, that God’s army would form from people who had been spiritually dead.

“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”

Colossians 3:1–2 (NKJV)

The testimony, consistently, from those who pray this way: first the spirits of division and strife that have filled the church begin to leave. Then the congregation begins to come under the pastor’s leadership and to move as one. And when that unity comes, genuine revival follows.

Two tools the Korean intercessors taught that week stood out.

The first was blood prayer—consciously pleading the blood of Christ over a person, place, or situation; claiming that covering; then binding every unclean spirit that had access to that uncovered ground, and lifting them before God to be dealt with. The image that guided it: the blood confuses and blinds the enemy; the name of Jesus binds; God disposes. Praying this way felt qualitatively different from simply speaking words.

The second was “Joo-yeo” prayer—the Korean threefold cry of “Lord! Lord! Lord!”—drawn from Daniel’s prayer:

“O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name.”

Daniel 9:19 (NKJV)

That single cry contains everything—petition, repentance, urgency, submission. And on the frontline of spiritual warfare, when you hit a wall and feel the darkness pushing back, “Joo-yeo!” is a battle cry, a declaration that you are not fighting in your own name.

One of the most electric moments of the whole week: the Friday morning outreach team learned this cry. They had barely been taught it before they were shouting it in their prayers—some of them louder and more fierce than any Korean I’ve heard. Standing next to them, I felt the territory shift. I felt the Kingdom of God expand in that moment, right there in Luton.

The Name of Jesus in England

On Wednesday night, something broke in me during prayer.

I became aware—not as an idea but as a felt weight—of how thoroughly the name of Jesus is desecrated across Britain. It is used as a curse word in workplaces, schools, streets, homes. The Oxford English Dictionary’s second definition of “Jesus” lists it as a meaningless exclamation expressing surprise or anger. That’s what it has become to this nation.

The Lord’s Prayer says: Hallowed be Your name. Britain is living the opposite of that prayer.

I felt God say to me—quietly, but unmistakably—that before revival comes to Britain, the Church in Britain must repent of this. Must grieve it. Must take it seriously before He will move on the scale the nation needs.

When I shared this with the British believers at St. Hugh’s, they fell to the floor. They wept. They hit the ground with their fists. And I prayed that this spirit of repentance would spread from Luton to the whole country.

“if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV)

The Army Rising

On Tuesday evening, Pastor Han Sang-gyu shared an image with our team. He saw a Roman legion—an ordered, disciplined, unified army of intercessors—rising across Luton, marching together. He saw anointed leaders, with Pastor Jo among them, leading this army to spiritual victory.

When we shared that image with the British believers, several of them said they had seen exactly the same picture in their own prayers. Independently. Separately.

Something is coming to Luton. Something is coming to Britain. I believe it.

To God alone be the glory—Sola Deo Gloria.