A few weeks ago I was able to spend the day at Kansas City’s International House of Prayer (IHOP) when New York Times reporter Erik Eckholm came to town to work on a story for the paper.
IHOP is an interesting place and is filled with a wide range of believers: young, old, white, black, asian, hip and the square. This is not your typical church. If you are used to traditional hymns and ‘quiet time’ with God, well you won’t find that here. You will find people having ‘quiet time’ with God, but it is NOT quiet inside the church’s prayer room.
The prayer room is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, where people pray around the clock. That in itself is interesting, but there are a few other details that make this experience a little more unique.
Second, there is music being played 24 hours a day by staff members of IHOP. The music is contemporary christian music and never stops. Ever. The performers play two hour segments and have worked out a routine to where there is never a lull in the music, it plays constantly. Quite an accomplishment considering it has been going on for over a decade.
IHOP is a big organization that has several different properties around the Kansas City/Grandview area. IHOP even has a coffee shop, book store, reality company, apartment complex and a University that will educate around 2,000 students this upcoming semester. They recently purchased over 100 acres of land near their IHOP University location that some day may be built on.
Erik’s story has all the details that I won’t rehash. You can visit the Times’ site and read his story here. His story is great and the paper ran about 10 photographs or so online (not sure what ran in the paper) but I thought I would add a few here so you could see a little more.
