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By Patricia Silensky
One of the perks of walking with God for a while is feeling
less daunted when He knocks on your door with a call for which you seem to have
no training. That’s how I felt back in January of 2006 when asked to become the
prayer ministry coordinator of Calvary Chapel Port St. Lucie. I was honored to
be chosen, but somewhat dismayed that I had no model to follow.
We were a very
young church, only 21 months of age, and the prayer ministry had few
established guidelines. It was me, the job, and the Holy Spirit. But God
quickly showed me that it was a rare privilege indeed to be able to begin
building line upon line, precept upon precept—and to see as always, He is
faithful!
My early desires were to see more people involved in prayer
and to move them to pray for the spiritual life of the church. Our existing
Email Prayer Network (EPN) eventually became the focal point of these desires. The
EPN functioned like a “prayer chain” but was more technologically relevant. Not
only does God want us to utilize the technology He’s provided to quickly reach
a broader audience, but also, we need to be mindful that our churches are
increasingly populated by a generation who grew up cutting their baby teeth on
a laptop.
The EPN was used to send out immediate needs, but we wanted to
make sure it stayed a river of living water, not a dead sea. In order to bring
that about, we needed to establish some specific and rather firm guidelines and
boundaries. Frequently, prayer lists become a swamp where good prayers go to be
buried without an obituary-- heavy on the needs of people and light on anything
corporate. So, to keep our EPN current and relevant, we are zealous for posting
updates and praise reports. They fuel the Holy Spirit fire that keeps intercessors
praying, and provide faith-building testimonies on how God answers the prayers
of His children. We also put restrictions
on what would go on the list—no neighbor’s third cousin’s son or people that do
not have a significant connection to church families. Prayer requests are
removed from the EPN once the crisis has passed.
Once guidelines were in place, it became easy to develop an
effective prayer list. Personal needs (health,
bereavement, adoption, deliverance, etc) account for perhaps two dozen requests
instead of hundreds. So far so good, but that’s still a bit myopic. How to
develop an awareness of the needs of our vital church ministries?
With the support of our senior pastors, I began sending out
a “weekly prayer request reminder” to each leader every Monday morning. I
include a verse of encouragement with a short devotional on the subject of
prayer, and an invitation for them to send me the foremost prayer request for
their area of ministry by Wednesday. From these we compiled and printed an intercessory
prayer list, which is hand-delivered on Sunday to each leader who had submitted
a request. Additional copies of the list are placed in the prayer room for our
intercessors, who pray over them at church. We also encourage our EPN members
(now more than 175) to take them home for continued prayer during the week.
Some of our leaders caught the vision right away; with
others, it took more time and patience. First, I needed to demonstrate that I
was on their side and really wanted to help them be successful. A positive
attitude that says, “How can I serve you?” is the key. In the beginning, some
leaders needed assistance in formulating their requests. Some needed an extra
word of encouragement. Second, God wanted time to demonstrate His desire to answer
their prayers. As folks saw this happen, it naturally motivated them to ask for
more! Of course there were temptations to be frustrated when things weren’t
moving along as I might have liked. But I really needed to remember how loving
and kind God had been with me, and then pass that along to the beloved in
Christ.
Here’s where we are at present. Our weekly prayer list has
three pages and the first page has two columns, one for “Physical Healing” and
one for “Other Needs.” The other two pages are the ministry needs of the
church. Using the EPN for immediate needs and the list for ongoing ministry
needs has proven effective. To further expand our effectiveness, we have
recently begun emailing the weekly intercessory list to our EPN members. Our
goal is to give them a greater desire to pray regularly for the church.
At present, our church has the compliance of the great
majority of ministries. Our pastors are on board with the concept and proclaim
from the pulpit that prayer is the foundational ministry of our church. Since
our tiny beginning as church meeting in a home in the spring of 2004, we had
about 900 in attendance last Easter. We are convinced that God is blessing
because of this foundation of prayer.
Patricia Silensky is the prayer coordinator at Calvary
Chapel in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
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November 2007 
