A century ago, Bethany Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, had an unusual season of people coming to faith in Jesus Christ—more than 1,100 in a three year period. Possibly more remarkable was that more than 600 of those converts were men. Bethany’s pastor, Rev. Wilbur Chapman, equated this outpouring to a group of 200 men who were meeting to pray before services every Sunday morning.

These men were not praying for the needs of Bethany. No bad back was mentioned, no swollen knee, not even a new job for an out of work member was lifted up. This group was focused on one thing: that the Holy Spirit’s power would fall on their pastor as he stepped into the pulpit to preach!

I believe this church was thriving in its kingdom work because of the emphasis of those prayers. They were not the “make everyone’s life good” prayers that so often seem to be the focus of much of what churches pray about.

Today’s churches and prayer leaders are coming up with better and more creative ways to focus prayer on the needs of their churches. E-mail prayer bulletins are replacing prayer chains. Creative bulletin inserts are printed so those who can’t make it to the prayer meeting can still pray. But even with these new delivery methods, it is still too easy to fill them with the “fix it” prayer needs of a congregation, rather than the spiritual life and health needs of the kingdom work of the church.

We need to strike a balance between space and time given to praying for personal needs and the space and time given to kingdom issues. And we need to take seriously the chance to disciple a congregation in prayer through the requests we give them.

It is very easy to put someone in charge of collecting requests for an e-prayer list. They can effectively function like clockwork—pull the request in, type them up, send them out—every month. No sweat. Our needs are being prayed for each month. But if you want your people to grow in their effectiveness as kingdom intercessors, you need to take the content of those prayer lists more seriously. Church prayer lists can be kingdom driven. They can move your people to pray for spiritual issues in your church. We just need to take the time to tweak those lists.

One simple step would be to make sure there are more requests for ministry issues than for personal needs on the list. Calvary Chapel Port St. Lucie has two of the three pages on its weekly prayer sheets focus on ministry issues. You think when their people see that 2/3rds of what they are asked to pray for are ministry issues that won’t change the way they pray? Not only does this bless the church spiritually, but it hugely disciples people away from a “prayer fixes things” mentality.

I believe what happened in Bethany Presbyterian Church a century ago, can happen in churches today. Who knows, simply altering the focus of our people’s prayers, may put us in a position to receive this kind of a blessing.

Jonathan Graf is the president of the Church Prayer Leaders Network and the author of The Power of Personal Prayer.