Paul Calvert spoke with Wayne Hilsden, a senior Pastor in Jerusalem

Wayne Hilsden

Wayne Hilsden is the senior Pastor of King of Kings community church in the heart of down town Jerusalem. Originally from Canada, he and his family have lived in Israel for 24 years.

Paul: Why did you come here to Jerusalem?

Wayne: That's a long story, but to make it brief, I was Pastoring in a congregation in down town Toronto and on vacation my wife and I stopped in a church north of the city; the Pastor invited us home for dinner after the service and he shared with us that the Lord had called him to move to Israel and to plant a congregation in Jerusalem and right off the top of his head it seemed, he asked us if my wife and myself would like to come and plant that congregation in Jerusalem. At first it seemed like a crazy idea, but the Lord planted that seed in our hearts and we began to pray about it. Later on, we took a tour to Israel, a 'spy out the land' tour to see if God was really calling us. We believed He was.

Paul: You used to rent facilities from the YMCA, but now you have your very own facility. How did that come about?

Wayne: We rented the YMCA auditorium for our congregation for over 20 years. It was an adequate facility seating 600 people, which was great; but with a rented facility, you'd have added surprises every week. Things weren't always in order and we felt that we really needed to have our own space and not just once a week on the weekend but throughout the week to meet as a community. We began to pray about that and the Lord pressed upon me that we could do it and gave me the gift of faith to step out of the boat and believe God for the ability to acquire our own facility. We ended up finding the largest movie theatre in Jerusalem and began to negotiate on that and we bought it.

Paul: Have you had any miracles in the process of purchasing the building?

Wayne: Well first of all we only had $200,000 dollars saved up in the bank towards a building and they wanted 3.6 million dollars for the property, (we got it for less in the end). Basically, we believed God wanted us to have the property, so we signed the papers. We needed 1.1 million dollars in 2 weeks as a deposit; one day I was sitting in our staff meeting and I sensed the Lord say, 'get on an aeroplane'. Six hours later I was on a plane and within 12 hours of my arrival a man and his wife said that the Lord had spoken to them to give us 1.5 million dollars! The money arrived in our bank account in good time and we had more than enough for that first deposit and we had miracle after miracle following that to make this possible.

Paul: Your facility is on the bottom floor of a tower block but we are now on the 14th floor, what is this facility here?

Wayne: A while ago I was on a personal prayer retreat; one of my goals was to ask the Lord to help us pay off the remaining debt we had on our first facility. We had raised over ¾ of the amount needed but we still had some loans and I just wanted to pay those off; but as I was praying, the Lord just directed me in a totally different direction. He actually led me to the decision to buy the top floor of the building in which our worship centre is located, as you mentioned on the 14th floor of an office tower. And the Lord said, 'build a prayer centre'; so we call it the Pavilion Prayer Tower. Our worship centre at the bottom is called the Pavilion. This Prayer Tower was dedicated on the eve of Pentecost.

Paul: So why pray for the nation and the land here?

Wayne: Well we believe that prayer is the forerunner of Gods purposes, whenever God is about to do something he puts a burden of prayer on his people and we have got a burden to pray for this nation and for this city of Jerusalem. We believe in the fulfilment of God's word that he will save his people Israel and that Jerusalem once again will be a praise in the earth. Also, the Bible commands all believers to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, so we're simply obeying that commandment.