A prayer meeting was held by Micah Challenge for the 21 world leaders who will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on this coming weekend as the Christian coalition expresses its disappointment that the issue of extreme poverty is not up for discussion.
There were about 120 people who attended last Saturday prayer gathering, said Amanda Jackson, the National Coordinator for the Christian group. She stressed the importance for this gathering, saying that when people of like-mind come together their prayers are powerful.
"One of the people who came, the chair of Micah Challenge, said the value of coming together rather than directly praying in church is that when people of like-mind come together to pray, it is really powerful."
The prayer topics in this gathering, Ms. Jackson added, would hopefully be brought back by those who attended it. Overall, she was pleased with the prayer meeting saying it was really good to get together and pray together.
In their prayer, the Christian group fighting to eradicate global- poverty asked God to ensure the decisions made by the leader are of 'sound judgement, of godly intention such that they can affect real change, now and into the future.' The prayer itself is found on the Australian Micah Challenge website.
Ms. Jackson told Christian Today Australia what the Christian global movement wanted to see was not 'aspirational' statement but concrete action taken by the Asia-Pacific group to tackle extreme poverty in this region.
The disappointment for her is the summit will not discuss about providing steps to the economic ladder of prosperity. Once again it was all about the rich and powerful, she said, where not much consideration was given to the least.