You need to develop some support systems. I recommend two: a personal prayer team and connecting with other prayer leaders.

1. A Personal Prayer Team. Recruit a team of individuals who will agree to pray regularly for you. Depending on how difficult your situation is, you might need to levels of intercessors: friends in your church and a team outside. You can recruit people in your Sunday school class or small group, or others on your ministry team. Don’t overwhelm them with requests. Email them from time to time with things to pray; verbally give them one thing to pray when you see them. But be careful what you give this group to pray about. Be cautious of revealing negative feelings about dealing with your church leadership. That can quickly turn divisive and cause problems for you. Give general prayer needs to this group—wisdom in developing strategy, protection for you and your family, success of upcoming prayer events. If you have any connection with other church prayer leaders in your community or are friends with believers from other churches, recruit them to pray for the more “sensitive” prayer  requests—such as those relationship issues with leaders.

2. Connect with other local prayer leaders. Consider holding a simple gathering for prayer and fellowship once a month. There doesn’t have to be a lot of planning. Those who come will appreciate the fellowship of those who are in similar experiences. There are a number of ways to find these people. A. If you have been involved in communitywide prayer events, contact those who ran those events to see if they would connect you with other local prayer leaders. B. If your pastor is involved in a pastors’ prayer group, see if he might help you connect to prayer leaders at the churches represented in his group. C. Call other churches in your community and ask if they have a prayer leader. Explain why you want to know, then ask if either you could have the prayer leader’s contact information (better) or if the person would give the prayer leader your contact information. Once you have connected with as few as three or four who are interested, you are up and running. One word of warning here, if the numbers are few—which is likely—you never want to have a meeting where only two come if you are of the opposite sex.
 
If you want to stay the course as a prayer leader, then support becomes crucial. Don’t go it alone. Look for others who will walk with you.

--Lee Jones is a prayer leader who has served more than a decade in the trenches of local church ministry.