Focused on Prayer
Prayer is a lifestyle at this middle Tennessee congregation, located 85 miles east of Nashville. To accent prayer’s importance, in January of 2024 the church opened a Prayer Center in a building that formerly housed a children’s program.
In Buck’s case, she had a specific request: pray the tumor would shrink so she wouldn’t need chemotherapy—just surgery.
“Every time we had a meeting at the Prayer Center someone would pray for me,” says Buck, 77. “The next time I saw the doctor, she said, ‘We’ll go forward with the surgery,’ and the tumor was less than half the size they thought it was originally. It hadn’t spread to my lymph nodes, either.”
In August, her doctor pronounced the retired teacher cancer-free.
Prayer Center Director Susan C. Yarbrough, 54, is delighted by such answers to prayer and how focusing on this discipline has spurred spiritual growth in the congregation of 600.
“I attribute discipleship growth to the center,” says the co-pastor of the AG church. “People are growing in prayer and a desire to be closer to God. To me, they’re growing in depth.”
Housed in a one-story, 4,200-square-foot building, the center is open Monday through Thursday, and a prayer service is held at 5 p.m. on Sundays.
In late August, Yarbrough brought her own concern to the meeting: her grandson had a bacterial infection so bad he had to be hospitalized. With his fever still high after returning home, Susan and husband Jason were quite concerned.
“I came home and took his temperature and it had broken,” Yarbrough says.
She says there have also been numerous testimonies this year of prodigal children returning home, reflecting the church’s 2025 prayer theme: “They shall return.”
Not only have attendees at Hope seen that take place, but members of other churches have, too.
“I would say about a dozen in all,” Yarbrough said.
The center’s roots sprang from a conversation during the Yarbroughs’ candidate interviews in 2020. The board asked about their five-year plan, which prompted them to ask God for direction. The single word they sensed: “Prayer.”
Two years later, they say the Lord asked them to return prayer to His house. That started more focused intercession, which prompted the planning and steps that led to remodeling the Prayer Center building.
A mobile effort preceded it: in July of ’23 the prayer team began offering “drive-through prayer” to motorists arriving during the hour before the Wednesday night service.
The center has hosted numerous prayer meetings, seminars, and special events, and offers the space to an independent church plant for Wednesday night services.
In addition to 50 chairs, benches, and tables in the main room, the center has six smaller rooms adjoining the space. They are dedicated to prayer for: 1) government and church leaders, 2) missions, 3) revival, 4) healing, 5) family, and 6) inner healing.
The smaller rooms also offer private space for one-on-one or small group prayer sessions.
Inner healing has taken place for many at the prayer center, including church members Kristi L. Jared and Mandy S. Lands.
“I encountered Jesus and He healed places I didn’t know could be healed,” says Jared, who once struggled with suicidal thoughts.
Lands, 40, says things she has learned at the prayer center have equipped her to recognize the Holy Spirit’s voice and uncover false ideas such as believing she had to do things to earn God’s love.
“Now I understand He loves me and desires to communicate with me,” Lands says. “I am walking in a newfound freedom that God always intended for me.”
The speaker who launched Hope’s annual January season of prayer in 2025, National Prayer and Evangelism Director Joe H. Oden, came away impressed by his visit to the center.
“They have really made room for prayer,” says Oden, 48. “The thought behind what they did seemed God-centered, God-focused, and God-inspired. It was very intentional and well thought-out.”
Ironically, this is the Yarbroughs’ second tenure at Hope; they were worship leaders from 1999-2002. Susan says God led them back home to California to repair some family relationships; when the former lead pastor left, Hope’s board asked them to consider returning.
While many people assume Christians automatically know how to pray, the co-pastor says that isn’t the case.
“We’ve made it safe for people to come and say, ‘Teach me how to pray; I don’t know how,’” Yarbrough says. “We give space for them to practice hearing from the Holy Spirit. I think it’s gotten into the DNA of our church,” she adds.
