Variations of the Corporate Prayer Meeting

By P. Douglas Small
President, PRAYER AT THE HEART

Attending a prayer meeting is not enough, unless we are taking from it, prayer-fire, and we are learning to be people of prayer. Here we give sound to our prayer thoughts, words to our hearts, we organize random feelings into coherent requests, and then we hear others apply Biblical language to needs. We borrow their language, catch prayer-fire from their hearts.

This prayer experience should move quickly. At times, you may not touch all the component parts. You want this experience to range from 75 to 90 minutes. Some may want to stay all night but keep the larger group in mind. Remember, the ancient altar at the tabernacle was essentially a box to contain the fire! The fire needs to be fervent, but it needs also to be contained. If you allow your prayer effort to be unbounded, zeal and fervency may mark its demeanor, passion may be its norm, but the lack of boundaries will narrow the participants to small core whose desire for the exotic will not contribute to the growth and stability of the church. They will run ahead of the larger group.

Keep the hot coal next to the cold, wet logs. Allow for an afterglow, but establish a pattern in which your people understand, they will not have to leave as if they are walking out on the Holy Spirit and prayer, they will be appropriately released and blessed. Keep your prayer effort bounded. This is only one of many corporate prayer gatherings that you might offer.

A sampling of others includes –

1. Relational prayer gatherings in which the participants sit a circle and the prayer meeting is largely unscripted. The activity is prayer, one by one; the reading of Scripture; and spontaneous singing. Every prayer meeting should provide some time for the people to pray – for everyone to voice prayer. The goal is to seek the face of God together. Again, bound the time.
2. A second experience is quiet time. Open the sanctuary, dim the lights, turn on the music, and allow people to slip in, find a place, and pray quietly – sit, kneel, prostrate themselves before God.
3. Offer a communion prayer experience – for men, for couples or families, for the church.
4. Do a guided prayer experience with a litany of prayer. A guided prayer experience is important when the content is critical to the prayer gathering.
5. Do an evening in which you engage in prayer missions into the city with specific locations in mind. Send the people out to pray; bring them back and debrief them on their experience.
6. Have a foot-washing service! Emphasize humility and prayer. Servanthood.
7. Do a sanctuary and facility cleansing and blessing service. Assign people in triads, give them assignments to go to specific locations on your church campus. Offer suggestions of what to pray in each location. Have them stop along the way, as the Lord would lead. Have them bathe their sanctuary and entire facility in prayer. Repent for any activities that have taken place that might not be pleasing to God; Invite the Holy Spirit into the nursery, the gym, the fellowship hall and the sanctuary. Pray at the doors and even in the parking lot. At some point during the night have the teachers that teach in that classroom, those who serve in the foyer or the nursery, etc. meet a team and receive prayer.
8. Do an intergenerational prayer gathering. Challenge the young and old to come. Work to get a great intergenerational blend. Create stations of prayer in the sanctuary or throughout the building. Use several themes that relate to the generations. Pair up an older and a younger, and have them move through the stations of prayer – understanding the generations, musical taste/cultural differences, family issues, life purpose and mission, dreams and difficulties. Have an intergeneration team plan the prayer experience. As each pair moves from station to station, have them share and reflect on the themes, and then pray for one another. Switch pairs at least once in the experience.
9. Do a night of healing – put out a prayer chair and pray for the infirm. Anoint with oil. Discourage no long prayers by individuals, and quick, one-size-fits-all prayers over them as well. These are needy people. Tarry over them. Love them. Pray not only for their presenting physical need, but holistically. Pray for family members who may have come with them. Soak them in prayer. Read Scriptures over them. Speak into their life words of hope and encouragement.
10. Invite a missionary family for a night of prayer. Have them share their needs and challenges in bite-sizes. Spend an hour lovingly lifting them before God in prayer. The things you pray about will often be recalled by the Spirit in weeks and months ahead, as this couple is supported in prayer.
11. Do a scripture and praise, prayer and thanksgiving night. Make it informal. Sing a song, perhaps one requested by someone in the audience. Unless you have utterly spontaneous musicians, you may want to have a list of songs. They can be requested in advance, approved and put in a hat and drawn out randomly. You sing. And then, as the Scripture reminds us, thanksgiving and petitions are to be laced together. Have a praise report. Again, you may want to plan some of these. You also want to set a reasonable limit on time. There was a 5-minute rule that became standard during many of the awakenings, but a series of five-minute testimonies, though thrilling, can be a slow evening. You want a number of short, quick praise reports and stories of answered prayer. You may find such stories and read them. Some are available as videos. Then, you want to pray for specific needs. Again, you will be more effective if you collect these beforehand.

Spurgeon reviewed the prayer needs that were submitted and used as kindling in the prayer gathering. You need not mention them all. You might group them by category.

Use these three movements – praise through song, praise and thanksgiving reports, prayer. Lace in scripture along the way. You sing, you hear praise reports, you pray for needs. You read the promises. You do not need to be legalistic – one song, one praise report, one need, one verse. Be fluid but follow the pattern. Try to cycle through it four to five times in the course of an hour prayer gathering.

12. Send out Blessing Teams. Meet for prayer, receive assignments of individuals and families who want prayer, need prayer – and send teams of 4-7 people to their homes to give the gift of prayer. You may want to do some training, at least for the leaders of these teams. Seniors and the less mobile may be on their list, along with the sick and shut-ins. Allow no long prayers by individuals, nor quick, one-size-fits-all prayers. Be personal. Wait on the Holy Spirit. You may pray with families who are faced with daunting challenges – vocationally, spiritually, some relational crisis, physical and felt needs.

A church is not a church without a prayer meeting. And into that prayer meeting flows the grace of God to meet needs and fulfill God’s purposes, vision rises and with it, faith. Out of that prayer meeting mission flows and the anointing and enabling of the Spirit to fulfill mission. “Prayer often avails where everything else fails … By prayer the bitterest enemies of the Gospel have become its most valiant defenders, the greatest scoundrels – the truest sons of God, and the vilest women – the purest saints! Oh, the power of prayer to reach down, down where hope itself seems vain, and lift men and women up, up into fellowship with and likeness to God! It is simply wonderful!”