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

The Focus of Corporate Prayer

I read an article on prayer by Jonathan Graf recently.  He made a point about corporate prayer that I thought was important.  His article was on the focus of corporate prayer.  Here is what he said.

Most prayer that takes place in church settings is not corporate prayer. It is more often individual prayer in a corporate setting. Let me assure you that individual prayer in a corporate setting is not wrong. It is an important, valid, needed kind of prayer. But it's not corporate prayer. True corporate prayer seeks God's face as one body in one voice about one thing.

How often do you hear people who gather for prayer praying about 1000 different topics.  This is valid prayer but not corporate prayer.  Corporate prayer is when the group has a focus and is praying together for that focus.

I am convinced God wants the church to pray big focused prayers together.  We should pray for salvations, we should pray for revival, we should pray for vision, we should pray for missions.  This focus of corporate prayer will bring big results.  Many times we are thinking too small as we pray.  If we can get Gods heart for our corporate prayer times I think He will lead us into requests that are bigger than we could think of and bigger than we could complete on our own.

Let your corporate prayer times be a time of being one body in one voice about one focus.

Specificity Helps Repentance

From time to time at our corporate prayer gathering we have times of repentance and confession.  We had one of these times recently and it seemed to go well.  As i was talking to some of our prayer people they let me know they appreciated the specificity of the repentance time.  I read from 1 Corinthians 13 about what love is.  I would read a verse at a time:  "Love is patient" then I would say "have you been impatient in the past week at any time?", then read "Love is kind" and "Have you been unkind to anyone this past week.  People can review the week and think of specific situations when you give them some direction.

Monday Night Prayer

Here are some highlights of Monday night prayer this past month.

• Seeing hundreds write the names of lost friends, family, & hardest hearts in our city on a canvas so that we can continually pray for their salvation.
• Hearing hundreds pray out loud for those lost ones.
• Hearing Erin and Casey's story about a young relative who died and their remorse at not sharing with him the gospel and their new commitment to be involved in the lives of their families to share the gospel.
• In worship singing "In their lives be glorified, in their world be glorified, in their love be glorified" as we prayed for the lost.
• Having communion at prayer and inviting all to be prayed for by one of our prayer teams.
• Having one of our prayer team ladies lead her first person to Christ while on the prayer team for  Monday night.
• Hearing of God speaking to various people at prayer.
• Watching a clip of a Shelly Hundley video where she shares how she came to Christ.  "I was the hardest heart on my campus".  "Go after the hardest hearts".
• Asking God to give us his understanding and heart to pray for the lost.

Coming up at prayer

• Feburary 21st - our first extended prayer time of the year.
• February 25th - Prayer training for intercessors, prayer teams, & anyone who wants to know more about prayer.

Focus and Guidance in Prayer

Recently I was reading the story of a young black man growing up in the south.  He lived in times of great racial prejudice which could have dramatically destroyed his life.  This young man surrendered his life to Christ.  He sensed God was giving him a life verse of Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."  He was trained as a scientist.  One day in the lab he asked God "What was the universe made for ?"  He sensed an impression in his heart, "That's too much for your little mind.  Ask for something more your size."  He then asked "Tell me what man was made for ?"  Again he sensed, "little man you are still asking for too much."  So then he asked "Tell me why the peanut was made ?".

This man who could have been overwhelmed by the life situations of the times ended up inventing 300 uses for the peanut.  This young Christians name was George Washington Carver and he invented a little food product called peanut butter.

God not only uses prayer to help us do impossible things in this life.  God uses prayer to guide us to where he wants us to influence others.

We'll Give Him All the Glory

Our last Monday night prayer of the year was a time of celebrating the answers to prayer for the past year and experiencing Gods continuing presence among us.  Here are some highlights.

• Remembering the night we blessed single parents and seeing people in long lines to give financially and pray for them.
• Lucys story of God speaking to her about how he put together all the pieces of her brokeness and made a beautiful mosaic out of it.  She shared how vulnerable she felt sharing this, but how it had impacted many.
• Loud applause as we announced that around 900 people had come to Christ this past year.
• Erins story of how God spoke to her one night at prayer about how lovely she was to Him and how she was the bride of Christ.
• Lora encouraging everyone that God uses all the things we have been through in 2010, good and bad, to grow us and to make us useful in the kingdom.
• People who God is calling to take a next step in their lives standing for prayer and others surrounding them and praying for them.
• Stories from our giveBIG outreach to the city.  
• Ending with the choruses of "Oh Come let us adore Him", "For He Alone is Worthy", "We'll Give Him all the Glory", and "We'll Praise His Name Forever".

I am pumped about how God led us in prayer this past year and how people at Elife caught the vision of prayer.  Our prayer gathering more than doubled this past year.  I have a real God anticipation about how God is going to move as we pray in 2011.  We are set up to have about 1000 commitments to Christ by years end.  I am praying our prayer efforts double in 2011 so we can see at least double the commitments to Christ this year.

Jesus, your amazing and we give you all the glory for what you have done in 2010 !