CONFERENCE EVENTS

PRAYER FOR YOUR CHURCH

Connectivity with the church in our city

Lord, I lift up the church in our city. Thank You for creating the body as one unit made up of many parts. Help us understand the value of each part as You have arranged them. We confess that we’ve minimized other parts. Forgive us, for we are all baptized by one Spirit into one body. Help us to work at being one: concerned about one another—suffering with and rejoicing with other congregations as appropriate. (1 Cor. 12:12-26)
 
Home arrow June 2006 arrow Prayer Evangelism Tools
Prayer Evangelism Tools PDF Print E-mail

For Lack of a Vision . . .

A lot of churches want to encourage their people to pray more for the lost. But many planned programs flop quickly. Why? Two reasons seem to come to the forefront in many situations.

1. Lack of Prayer Direction. Many people do not know what to pray beyond, "God, save them." When you plan a strategy for praying for the lost, make sure you provide some kind of prayer guide to use. There are a number of excellent ones available.

Paths of Gold (Pray! Books) by Terry Gooding is a collection of 46 scripture-based prayers to pray for a specific person. This 3.5 x 5.5 booklet retails for $2 each, but multiple copy discounts make it affordable for most churches. Remember, Pray! gives CPLN members a 30% discount on its products. Our members are supposed to be automatically entered into their online store system (go to navpress.com); the discount should appear at checkout.

"Praying for Your Unsaved Family and Friends," (Harvest Prayer Ministries) is a short guide of scripture-based prayers, available in packs of 25 for $10. You can also get it in a pdf format for $10. This format allows you to print up as many copies as you need for your church.

Houses of Prayer Everywhere also has a number of resources available to help your people pray for the lost (www.hopeministries.org).


2. Lack of Encouragement. Many churches start out praying for the lost with passion, but soon fall away because no one is encouraged to continue. People need regular reminders to keep praying. This can happen through regular testimonies and announcements. But one of the best ways to keep people praying is to use a visual reminder. Find something that will remind people to pray, and put it in a location where people will see it each week. A cross or board with sticky notes that have the names of who is being prayed for, placed in a visible location, will work wonders.

Finally, many people need a plan to keep praying--something like "Praying through the Phone Book," or "B.L.E.S.S." In future Prayer Leader OnLine's we will present some simple ideas to keep people praying for the lost.
 
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