PARISHIONERS prayed for 18 hours for each of five days last week in a marathon prayer-athon.

Kay Street Baptist Church in Rawtenstall has 130 members, but the event united the community with other churches joining in and people submitting written prayers and calling the church to ask for families to be included in their thoughts. Matt Hirst, youth minister, said: "There's not been a single hour when there have not been people in the prayer room."

He said other churches joined in on Wednesday and a rota system was arranged for church members and groups to ensure the prayer room was constantly manned.

The mammoth 88-hour session began last Sunday from 8pm to midnight and finished at 6pm when a joint prayer meeting was held until about 10pm.

Leaflets were distributed to houses in the Rawtenstall area asking for prayer requests -- world peace was top of the list. Matt Hirst said: "We have a week of prayer at the start of each year when we suspend all the church groups for a week. This time we decided to invite the community and other churches to get involved."