What has happened to the church prayer meeting? You may not know that anything has happened. The current midweek practice may be all you have ever known. The typical church prayer meeting consists of a devotional or Bible study, followed by updating the list of prayer requests, before someone is called upon to offer a prayer and dismiss. I am sure there are exceptions and variations, but this is the general practice among Baptists.
The pattern is not wrong. We should hear from the Word, share our burdens and offer our petitions to the Lord corporately. It’s the frequency, freshness and fervency that are missing in most prayer meetings today. If we are to see the powerful prayer meetings of days gone by, we must recapture these three areas of emphasis.
Frequency covers a couple of issues that have weakened our meetings. First, let us consider who frequents the prayer meeting. The average church has about 20% of the Sunday morning attendance for the prayer meeting. When we subtract the youth group and the adults who are simply waiting for their kids to get out of youth group, the percentage is lower. We lack power in our prayer meetings because, by and large, the church does not value corporate prayer.
The other side of the frequency discussion covers when we hold the meeting. Let’s be real, most working folks are still on the job after 5 p.m. Young families hope to have the kids in bed by 8:30 p.m. If you have to squeeze supper, homework, and a shower in there, a prayer meeting isn’t happening. Older folks are more likely to attend, but they don’t like to be out after dark. Now throw in a half-dozen events that can pop up on a Wednesday night — is it any wonder we struggle to get 20% to attend?
Historically, prayer meetings were held at all hours of the day and night. If we want powerful prayer meetings like the days of old, why not adjust our service times to suit our people? Offer several services each week, would it be wrong to pray more? How about an early Saturday prayer breakfast, Tuesday working man’s lunch and prayer, late Friday night after the game, Thursday midday prayer or early Sunday before class? You could end up with half to two-thirds of your church in corporate prayer each week by tailoring this to your church.
Freshness is a big reason why the church does not value the prayer meeting. I once pastored a church of 30 souls that had 78 names on the prayer list. It would take 20 minutes to read through this list of names each week. We received detailed medical reports (sometimes too detailed) on the folks we knew. It became a cold, dry ritual. I determined to clean it up. After some investigation, I discovered a few deceased names on our prayer list, while others were healthy as a horse, and we didn’t know it. About half of these names were added by visitors in our service, and no one knew them. When our list got down to 15 or 20 that we had a burden for, we prayed better.
I’m not trying to minimize or eliminate what we put on the prayer list. We can take anything to the Lord in prayer. But when we spend a third of our time listing unknown people and describing illnesses, busy folks eventually rationalize skipping a service or three.
How many lost people are listed on the church list? When do we pray for our mayor, congressman, senator, governor, and president by name? How often do we lift up our schoolteachers and police officers? Is the pastor included on the list, or the deacons? Does the church have any needs that require prayer? When was the last time someone prayed for a reason to fill that dry, dusty baptistry? When we refresh the meeting with new listings each week, we prompt our church to consider what they need to be praying for during the week.
Fervency is the motivation behind a powerful prayer meeting. Praying and believing that God will answer the prayer is a must. A prayer list full of petty, unknown, or vague requests robs us of the belief that God is interested or willing to respond. Yes, our Lord can heal your cat’s upset stomach, help Dale Jr. pass his driver’s license exam and find someone to share that Nigerian prince’s fortune who emailed you. But is this what the church gathered to pray about? I know God loves to hear our voice, but the church as a whole cannot pray fervently for many of the things listed in our meetings. What is a church to do to get fervent prayer back?
I recommend praying by category. Start by taking requests for personal needs, such as illness, relationships, the bereaved, and even sick cats. Ask someone who made one of these requests to pray for all of them. Then take up preemptive prayer requests. Name some government leaders, civil servants, and schools in your area, and ask someone in one of those fields to pray for them. Now that we have prayed a couple of times, finish with a time of spiritual requests. Does anyone have the name of a lost person we should pray for? Remember our upcoming revival. Pray for our pastors, teachers and missionaries by name.
This will allow every person to ask for prayer as they are burdened. It will also help us pray for people and issues that get left off our list. Make it a practice to start a new prayer list each week to prevent a bloated list of unknown names from bogging down the service.
I’m no expert, and I don’t know the prayer climate in your church, but I do know, as a whole, we don’t pray like we used to. We must make some changes if we want powerful prayer meetings in our churches.
