Getting People Involved in Prayer Gatherings

Prayer gatherings are about getting many people involved in prayer and taking their next steps in growing in prayer.  Here are a few ways we try and do that at our Monday night prayer gatherings.

1. Prayer Ministry Time
    Having people stand for various needs and all the people around them gather around them to pray. This helps everybody be involved.  We usually encourage 1 or 2 of these people to pray out loud for that person.  This involves the people praying out loud but also models for those who have never prayed out loud how to do that.  We might pray for single moms one night or people dealing with hopelessness or people who are dealing with illness, etc.  We often do this toward the end of our prayer time.

2. Open mics.
    We may pray for a particular topic for the night such as revival.  We let people come to the mics at will and pray.  We do have parameters.  People are encouraged to pray sentence and paragraph prayers and not pray chapter prayers.  We have some people assigned to mics to lay a hand on the shoulder of anyone who is going too long and straying away from the topic that night.  On another night we may have people give thanks to God as we did this past Monday night.  We asked people to pray sentence prayers beginning with "God I am thankful for..."

3. Specific people praying.
    We may pray through various topics in a given night.  I may say take a moment and pray for people to get saved this coming weekend.  We give everyone a few minutes to pray and then someone that has been asked beforehand will pray on a mic to close that topic.  If you aren't a large prayer times you can do the same thing with just having those people specified to pray out loud.

4. Prayer Teams
    At the end of our corporate prayer we have teams of people up at the front to pray for anyone who wants to come forward and receive prayer.  We have worship music praying in the background for 15 minutes after prayer has dismissed.  Our prayer teams have gone through a 1 and 1/2 hour prayer training before they can be on a prayer team.

These are just a few of the ways we try and get people involved in our prayer gatherings.  We know that Jesus said his house should be a house of prayer.  We are trying to get as many people involved in helping that happen as we can.

Setting an Environment for Prayer

We have found that a little preparation before the gathering on the environment makes a big difference in the gathering itself.  One of the elements we put into play in our weekly prayer gathering is playing worship music 15 -20 minutes before prayer begins.  We have found that this little thing begins to move peoples hearts towards a focus on God before we begin the corporate gathering.  We have people that will come and just sit during this time and be with God or pray as they wait for the gathering to begin.  Another thing we do is turn the lights down as the music begins.  This helps the mood of the evening.

Highlights from this past month

Monday nights at Experience Life continues to be the fuel that drives our engine.  In the past weeks we have focused on larger topics God has given us to pray; salvation for our city, revival for West Texas, power for our local and foreign missions partners, and Gods continued guidance and empowering of our own vision.  Here are some highlights.

• Showed a video of the account of the Asbury seminary revival.  People were moved by it.  We opened the mics and people openly confessed sin and came up to pray.
• Brought out canvases filled with people who we are praying get saved.  Used worship time to come up front and pray for names
• Prayed for couples going to unreached people groups
• Shared a powerful email from a missionary who God delivered from the hands of bandits.
• Began praying for an impossible request: 500 saved at Easter.

Some comments from this past month or so:

• Phenomenal! ..... I don't know why I even bother wearing makeup!
• After the open mics for confession - Monday Night Prayer at eLife tonight was one of the most powerful times we've ever had together!
• Amen! To both most powerful and not wearing makeup :) lol
• it was my first time i usually go on sat nite but we decided to go tonitw to try itvout i absoulutly loved it i have goose bumps the whole time i felt Gods presents there ....i will b there again on moday nite.
• 3 people committing their life to Christ on Monday nights the past six weeks.
• such a good night at prayer...taste and see the Lord is good