Fresh Ideas for Your Prayer Ministry
By Terrance Fulbright

 

Here’s some great ideas to give your prayer ministry some fresh fire to spark the wind of the Spirit!

 

There are lots of ways to encourage prayer. For example: Allow the youth or children to lead adult prayer. Pray the Sunday sermon. Take notes on your pastor’s message on Sunday and make the main points of the sermon into prayer points. Use small groups. This will help people get to know one another better and build unity. Some who are uncomfortable praying in front of a large group would be comfortable in a small group and would participate. Have occasional prayer meetings that use small groups the entire time. See? All it takes is a little creativity. Here’s some more:

Ideas:

* Have groups pray for different ministries in the church: Sunday school, youth, outreach, music department, church staff, home friendship groups, etc. (make a prayer guide for people to take home)
* People: The lost, backsliders, lukewarm saints, those discouraged, those who are living an overcoming life, etc.)
* Missions: Missionaries, missionary kids, national leaders, favor with the government of the country they are in, the lost, etc.)
* Have groups of like interest grouped together. (Single mothers, parents with unsaved children, parents with children in ministry, musicians and singers, Sunday school teachers, etc.) Will feel the burdens of the others.
* Have them give personal requests in small group. Instruct them to take turns telling their request and get in the center of the circle and pray for one another.

Pray for your church’s visitors.

Get a list of recent visitors to your church from your outreach department or pastor. Make a card with each visitor’s name on it and give each person at the prayer meeting a card. Ask them to pray for this person by name each day this week. Encourage them to pray specifically. Too often we pray “bless them” prayers when we need to pray very specific things such as: save them, heal their sickness, provide for their financial needs, etc. Follow up with an “I Prayed for You” card from the church.

Pray for prodigals.

Have each person bring a framed photo of their child or loved one who is away from God. Place each of the photos across the platform or altar area. Have people pray over the photos individually. You could also do this in a small group.

* Another variation is to have everyone bring a photo of one person that is a prodigal. When they arrive, have them trade photos with someone. This way you are praying for needs beyond your own family. At the end, ask the two who traded photos to partner with each other for the month to pray.

* WNOP has a great prayer guide on praying for prodigals.

 

Wal-Mart Praying.

Put everyone in pairs. Set the scene for the groups. You are at Wal-Mart and someone approaches you and asks you to pray for them. Have each person in your group give a request, one at a time. Then have the person pray out loud for them in a non church way just like they would if they were in the middle of Wal-Mart.

Let CNN or Fox News Web Sites be your prayer guide.

Be relevant in your prayer meetings. If there is a Cyclone in Myanmar, make it the focus of your next prayer meeting. If there is a natural disaster, make sure your service leader gets a prayer request for you have service before the prayer meeting.

Circle Prayer.

Put people in a circle and have them voluntarily pray one at a time whatever the Lord places on their heart.

Have a progressive prayer line.

Make a prayer line and have the end person go through the line. When they reach the end, they get back in line.

Encouragement Prayer Meeting.

Have each person go to someone and tell them something they appreciate or admire about them and then pray for the person.

Praise prayers:

A time of simple sentence prayer open for anyone to voice a sentence prayer of praise. Ex. “God, I praise you for health and the freedom to come and worship you openly.

Countries theme.

Each week highlight a different country and make it a point to pray for specific missionaries stationed there. Have a map displayed and give a few interesting facts about the country.

 

 

Birthday Groups.

Have everyone divide into groups by the months in which they were born. Give each
group a list of the prayer needs; they can also voice others within their group. Give them the option of opening up for anyone to pray, have a few volunteers to pray, or designate a leader to voice the prayers. Also, challenge them to continue praying for those within their birthday group during the next week.

Put up signs.

Put signs on the doors as they enter building faith. “Entering the miracle zone”, “All things are possible”. When they leave, “You are now entering the mission field.” Get quiet and listen for a couple of minutes. Encourage them to have one or two sentence prayers of whatever God places on their heart.

Write it.

Write on a piece of paper what you are struggling with and walk up and place it on the altar. Collectively pray over it. Afterward, destroy pieces of paper. The youth variation of this is to have this meeting outside around a bonfire. Have each youth throw their paper in the fire.

Plug in your senior saints.

Assign them to the Pastor’s personal prayer team. Provide them with items to pray each month (at the least) and weekly is even better. Develop seniors into an army who will storm the gates on behalf of your church. Organize them into teams who will pray:

* While a church board meeting is going on.
* Put them in teams to pray during the morning service.
* Ask them to come in once a month or every other week to pray for the spiritual life and health of your church.

Use them to cover those time consuming every day needs.

Most churches’ prayer revolves around praying the “make my life better” personal needs of its members. While it is important for the body life of a church to cover those things, seldom do church prayer meetings focus beyond them. If you have a group willing to focus on those things—like a seniors’ group—use it. Not only does it focus prayer on something that needs to be covered, it frees up time in other prayer meetings to focus on the kingdom things in the life of your church.

This article “Fresh Ideas for Your Prayer Ministry” was written By: Terrance Fulbright
From: www.wnop.org web site. April 2009