In May of 2017, Kelsey had a nervous breakdown and was led to have inner healing prayer with Novo staff Keith and Megan Peeler. “After that radical, transformative two hours of inner healing prayer, I was completely delivered from my strongholds and experienced God like I never had before. That encounter has changed me forever,” Kelsey shared. “I asked The Peelers where I could get more of this.” The Peelers recommended Kelsey join a new Spiritual Authority Cohort that was coming to her church. “That fall of 2017, I did my very first Spiritual Authority Cohort, and that year took my prayer life to new heights. I haven’t looked back since.”
Janie, the director of women’s ministry at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, was also in that first Spiritual Authority Cohort. “I was a very strong praying woman, and when this class came up, I was a little leery, because I’ve seen the abuse and misuse of this kind of teaching,” Janie said. But the Lord made it clear that he wanted her to take the class. “And same as Kelsey, it radically transformed my prayer life and made such an incredible difference.”
That first Cohort was just for women. The women who went through it were lit on fire for prayer. After that, their husbands wanted to go through the Cohort as well. So the church hosted it again, for men and women. About 70 people came. “We had Novo people flying in every month [to teach]. We had the cream of the crop, the best of the best. It was amazing. And it brought in other churches, which we loved.” The church has continued hosting the Cohort annually ever since.
Over time, though, attendance at the Cohort began to dwindle. It seemed like their church needed something fresh to light the fire under their prayer lives again. And that’s when the Holy Spirit began to speak to Janie and Kelsey about prayer.
In 2022, Janie’s husband fell gravely ill with Covid. “As I was going through our hardship and struggle, I was receiving so many letters, texts, phone calls, and messages from people in the church praying for us. And it came from all different areas. A lot of them were groups—a Tuesday morning prayer group, a Bible study group. I’ve been involved in this church my whole life and I’m on staff. I’m very plugged in. And I just wasn’t aware of all these groups of people praying.”
That’s when God spoke to Janie. “We are a praying church, Janie. Look at all this different prayer going on on your behalf. But it needs to be organized.” God gave Janie three different words—that they needed to identify, engage, and mobilize these different prayers. They needed to unify them as a force for prayer in their church, identifying them as prayer warriors, pulling them together, and mobilizing them into different prayer teams. “He gave me different names of people that would be involved in this. And then said Novo’s Spiritual Authority Cohort needed to be part of it.” Janie met with one of the pastors of the church to share the vision God had given her. “Well great,” he said. “It would be great to have you doing that.”
At around the exact same time, the church’s pastor of prayer took Kelsey aside to make a request. “Kelsey, I’d love your help. Would you consider listening and just asking the Lord what his vision for prayer would be for Highland Park Pres?” Kelsey agreed.
One morning a few weeks later, as Kelsey was just going through her routine, she had a strong impression she needed to pray and ask God about Highland Park Pres prayer. “God was very direct,” Kelsey said. “‘You get a pen, write this down.’ I was hesitant since it involved a vision for our larger church, but confident I was hearing from him, so I just started listening. And the Lord gave me three words: teams, mobilize, and movement. It was so clear. He said, ‘You’ve got to put your people in teams.’ And he gave me the names of the teams: intercessory prayer team, listening prayer team, physical healing prayer team, inner healing prayer team, prayer-walking team. And then he started giving me names to put in these teams as potential leaders and participants. So she wrote all this down. Her next question was, ‘Lord, what do I do with this?’ His response was, ‘Call your pastor of prayer. Tell him you have something to share.’”
So Kelsey reached out to the prayer pastor and they arranged a meeting. When Kelsey showed up, Janie just happened to be in the hallway outside the meeting room at the same time. The prayer pastor invited her in. “Janie,” he said, “You would love this meeting. I think you’ve reached out to me about prayer. Come on, I want you to join us.” So they sat down and Kelsey began to share: “This is what I think I’ve gotten.” As she shared, Janie’s jaw dropped. She was getting chills. “This is my vision! This is my exact vision!” We got one of the exact same words—mobilize.” They had the exact same names for the prayer teams. “It was just so clear what the Spirit was doing that both of us would get the same vision. It was so exciting.”
After a few months passed, the executive pastor reached out to Janie and Kelsey asking them to officially take the lead on the cohorts moving forward and gave them the blessing to start running with this vision. Kelsey and Janie met to brainstorm how to actually form the teams. “The Holy Spirit just guided us so carefully,” said Janie. They went into a two-hour brainstorming meeting, and the Holy Spirit made the plan super clear. It needed to start with the Novo Spiritual Authority Cohorts, but the cohort needed to be revamped and reshaped to be more accessible to everyone in their church. Up to that point, it had mainly been attended by people who were already prayer warriors, but now it needed to draw everyone—welcoming beginners to seasoned believers. They’d take the 7-session cohort previously spread out over 7 months and condense it down to 12 weekly classes fitting in one semester. One week there would be teaching and training, the next week they would practice what they’d learned. And they would call the reshaped Cohorts “Teach Me to Pray,” from the disciples’ request to Jesus in Luke 11:1.
Janie and Kelsey were so excited about how the Holy Spirit pulled everything together. But before they acted on it, they went to the leaders of the Novo Spiritual Authority Cohorts to run the plan past them. “They were excited,” said Kelsey. “They blessed the new name and the new format. After that meeting, we felt like it was full throttle forward, setting up the structure and getting it going.”
So Janie and Kelsey went to the church communications team and started promoting this new expression of the Spiritual Authority Cohort across the church. It was like there was a fire under the idea. People were hungry for it, with so many registering for the fall class that they had to move the training to a bigger room to accommodate all the people who wanted to be part of it.
“Teach Me to Pray went great!” Kelsey shared. “We probably had 60–70 come every time. And we did a very thorough evaluation, because we wanted to know, was it really resonating and digestible in the new 12 week format? The numbers were just so encouraging.” When asked how the class had impacted their prayer life, the responses were things like, “This has transformed my prayer life,” “I am now quick to listen to the Lord,” “I know that God answers prayer,” and “I was a Christian spectator and now I’m in the game as a quarterback.”
At the last session, everyone was asking “what’s next?” And the Holy Spirit told Janie and Kelsey, “They’re trained. They’re excited. Now the teams.” Janie and Kelsey met together to brainstorm part two called The Prayer Project, and God gave them the next phase of the plan.
They set up an 8-week spring training for those interested in being on a specific prayer team, and Novo staff Keith and Megan Peeler drove from Austin to Dallas each week to lead the training. An incredible 60–70 people came to the training every week. At the end of that time, six prayer teams were formed, with 16 people committing to lead them, and a total of 54 covenant partners from the church signed up to serve. All six of the prayer teams Kelsey and Janie heard months before in listening prayer were now formed. And almost every person whose names the Holy Spirit had given to Janie and Kelsey in prayer felt led to serve as a prayer team leader.
While the church is currently still working out details on how to give church-wide access to the prayer teams’ ministry (i.e. how to sign up for inner healing or physical healing prayer), the teams have taken initiative to start serving on their own. When a local shooting occurred, the Crisis Prayer Team sprung into action, praying over the crisis in their community.
There is continued excitement about “Teach Me to Pray,” and people are already signing up for the next fall session. The Prayer Project that was birthed from listening prayer has had an incredible impact on Highland Park Pres.
“God orchestrated it beautifully and did way more than we could ask or imagine,” said Kelsey. “We’re still just in shock and awe. It’s such a joy trying to keep up with what the Spirit is doing and what Jesus is doing. Yes, there have been some bumps along the way, but the Lord has made this thing take off, and we’re just trying to keep up!”
“Our hope is that the formation of these prayer teams has two lasting impacts. First, internally, that our church would truly become a house of prayer as we become people of prayer. We want to be a place where people know they can come to encounter the living God through the power of prayer. Second, externally, as we pursue our church’s mission to help people find and follow Jesus for the flourishing of our city and beyond, we ultimately desire for these encounters with God to spill into our city for his Kingdom to come, his will to be done here in Dallas, TX, as it is in heaven.”
“We love partnering with Novo,” Kelsey shared. “We see this as a missions organization/local church partnership. This blend really brings the one big Church together—the one Church of Jesus Christ. God is doing a major work at Highland Park Pres raising our dependence on prayer and raising up leaders in prayer. It’s been such an incredible faith ride.”
Learn more or sign up for Novo’s Spiritual Authority Cohort here.
ABOUT THIS STORY
Janie Bell was born and raised at Highland Park Pres and has attended the church most of her life. After serving in many different capacities in the church, Janie eventually joined staff as the director of women’s ministry. She’s married to Ben and they have three boys, one girl, and five grandchildren.
Kelsey Phillips joined Highland Park Pres in 2004 and now serves as an elder in the church. Kelsey has been a volunteer for Novo’s Spiritual Authority Cohorts, first as a local leader, and then as a regional leader. She also taught the Cohort trainings on Priestly Prayer and Listening Prayer. Kelsey is married to Chandler and they have three children.
Highland Park Presbyterian is a large local church in Dallas, TX, with about 5000 members. They are a member of the ECO denomination. The church has planted five other churches in the last 5–7 years, two of which meet on their campus (a Kenyan church and a Chinese Mandarin church). Kelsey and Janie hope that The Prayer Project will flow into these new church plants as well.