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Engaging a Congregation to Pray |
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By Jonathan Graf
In the May issue of Pray!, Daniel Henderson correctly asserted that you cannot guilt people into participating in church prayer efforts—only the Holy Spirit can nudge, woo or call them to this. While that is true, there are some things you can do and some principles you can follow that can be a runway to allow more prayer to take flight.
Make Prayer Visible. If you want to see more people involved in the
prayer life of your church, continue to keep it in front of them
through visible (and regular verbal) reminders. One of the reasons Pray
10 has worked for Susan Jones’ church is that Pray 10 has regular
reminders built into it. Many people will sign up for a new prayer
initiative with all the right intentions, but most will stop
participating in a very shot time. They need constant encouragement.
Posters or banners in the sanctuary or well-trafficked areas, weekly
inserts in the bulletin, slides in the power point announcements,
and/or a weekly prodding from the platform will work wonders. These
nudges can come in a variety of ways: testimonials of participants, a
comment from the pastor or other leader, a verbal announcement.
A number of churches in Palm Springs, California use an excellent
visual reminder to keep people on task with prayer. They are praying
for the salvation of thousands of people. Every church has a large
picture of a lighthouse on the wall of its sanctuary. On the picture,
people have written the names of people for whom they are praying.
Every Sunday—even if they have forgotten to pray for the person during
the week—people are visibly reminded of their commitment and pray.
Even a prayer conference can fit into this “make it visible” plan, if
held annually. One of the best attended local church prayer conferences
I have keynoted was at First Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, NY.
For years, it has held a prayer conference as close to the first week
of January as possible. The church promotes the event for months in
advance. It has become a big deal to the people of First Pres, and they
come out.
Make Prayer Easy. Most people need help understanding what to pray. No
prayer efforts will be sustained long if you do not put practical
prayer guides in their hands and explain an easy method of using them.
Time spent preparing here will reap huge benefits in participation. You
may need to develop your own guides depending on the focus of your
prayer initiative or ministry. But with a little searching and
tweaking, you can find some excellent guides available on a lot of
topics. Pray! has 14 different prayer guides (www.praymag.com); Harvest
Prayer Ministries (www.prayershop.org), Waymakers (www.waymakers.org)
and Prayer Point Press (www.prayerpointpress.com) also have guides
available on various subjects.
Make a Time Commitment. Whatever prayer ministries or initiatives you
put before your people, make sure to build in a length of commitment.
On initiatives, make them for a month, 40 days, etc. If people see
there is an ending point, more will participate. If it is an ongoing
ministry (a Prayer Room slot, Pastor’s Prayer Team,
Prayer-During-Services Team, etc.) ask people to sign up for only
three, four, or six months. Toward the end of that commitment, check to
see if the participants want to re-up or not. If people see their
commitment isn’t “until I die or burnout,” they will be more open to
join in.
No matter what prayer plans and strategies your church chooses to
develop, operating in these principles will add to member involvement.
As a former local church prayer leader who was often frustrated by lack
of participation, I can attest to the fact that many excellent and
creative prayer ideas fall flat when these elements are neglected.
--Jonathan Graf is the president of the Church Prayer Leaders Network and the founding editor of Pray!.
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September 2005