Another part of the process of establishing an effective prayer meeting is to identify those people who are gifted for intercession. These intercessors need to be raised up and trained to take their place in the prayer ministry. People who are gifted for intercession are able to press through in difficult situation where many would just give up. It may be helpful to encourage the entire local church body to participate in some sort of Spiritual Assessment Inventory. There are many of these assessments available for free on the Internet. These simple tests can help determine who is moving in the gift of intercession.
A great starting point for many people might be establishing a prayer card ministry. These can be printed and distributed to those who show an interest in prayer to help them develop their gifting. Prayer cards can be used to instruct people on how to prayer for the church, the pastors, their families, political leaders, missionaries, etc. People that have trouble staying focused during prayer will find prayer cards very helpful for staying on task. Another important prayer ministry function needs to be the ability to respond quickly to a situation. To manage this need for speed a prayer chain should be set up. This can be done by telephone where from a central location the top of list is called and then each person has one phone call to make to the next person on the chain. Because it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it is sometimes a good idea to start the request from both ends of the chain. When someone receives a call from the person they are supposed to call every link in the chain has been reached. An email prayer is another effective method of getting urgent prayer requests responded to.
As the prayer ministry develops there are some other important prayer ministries to consider adding. A team of people who are willing to pray for the Pastor while he is preaching is a powerful ministry. Charles Spurgeon had large groups of intercessors praying in a basement room under his pulpit in each service while he preached. He called it his divine ‘furnace room’. The intercessors pray for people to be open to hear, receive, and respond to the message. A team of people who serve as a prayer shield for the Pastor is another important prayer ministry to get started. C. Peter Wagner speaks of three basic levels of intercessors for leaders:
- “Level Three intercessors have a distant relationship with the leader. In some cases, these intercessors have never met the person(s) they are praying for. For example, many people have prayed for Billy Graham on a daily basis and yet have never met him; many others pray for missionaries they have never met.
- Level Two intercessors have a casual relationship with the leader. There is some regular two-way contact, although it may not be one-on-one, intensive, or sustained over any length of time. This may include, for example, Sunday morning worship attendees who pray for their Pastor.
- Level One intercessors have a very close relationship with the person they are praying for, which allows them to pray for items that are personal and possibly confidential. These people have personal contact on a regular basis.”
The people involved in this ministry need to have a love for their pastor, a willingness to be used by God, and have a passion for prayer. At Church Growth Consulting we are confident that following these simple guidelines and seeking the Lord in prayer should be a big help in establishing an effective prayer ministry at your church.
We hope you are finding this series of articles about prayer on Church Growth Consulting helpful. A designated place for prayer is another way of demonstrating the importance of a Prayer Ministry. Churches routinely have rooms for children, youth, fellowship, etc. It makes sense to have a Prayer Room as well. The prayer room needs to be comfortable and allow for not only sitting, but also for kneeling and even for times of being prostrate on the floor.
The prayer room should be set up to be informative as well. A bulletin board with the latest prayer requests posted is a good way to keep prayer focused. It is sometimes helpful to provide soft background music. You may want to consider adding some computer terminals hooked to the Internet to provide a world perspective for prayer. There is a great prayer site located at www.worldprayerteam.org that provides current worldwide prayer requests and even offers free online prayer journals. Establishing a prayer room and talking about it from the pulpit will help to gain people’s interest in participating in the prayer ministry.
The people who make up the Church are very observant. If the pastors and leaders only give lip service to something as being important but don’t get involved, the people quickly follow suit. In establishing an effective prayer ministry in your Church the people of the church will need to see the Pastors and leaders involved in regular and devoted prayer. While it is easy to get caught up in the business of the church, the Pastor needs to model an effective prayer life. The Pastor also needs to preach and teach regularly on the importance of prayer and on the value of having an effective prayer ministry established. It is also a reality that the Pastor can’t do it all and that putting the full scope of another ministry on the Pastor isn’t feasible. This is where the appointing of a Prayer Coordinator is a vital part of the process. At Church Growth Consulting we hope to encourage pastors and leaders to delegate and give away ministry when you can.
The Prayer Coordinator can be a lay person who has a heart for prayer. The Prayer Coordinator should be spiritually mature and have gifts of organization, encouragement and leadership. In most churches, this person is already there. In your prayer times ask God to show you who the candidates are. Establishing a Prayer Coordinator will also add credibility to the Prayer Ministry.
Once we realize how important it is to establish a prayer ministry our knee jerk reaction is often to jump in and try and organize the prayer ministry into being. A prayer ministry, like every ministry need to first be established in prayer. We need to seek the Lord for wisdom on how to lay the foundation. We need to ask for divine input to know where to start. An effective prayer ministry must grow out of the heart of our relationship with God. Prayer must be at the START of everything. In order to have a successful prayer ministry we need to receive some vision from God which will help encourage the leadership and eventually the congregation to prayer. The pastor and a few key leaders should begin the process by routinely seeking out the Lord for His answers.
There is no hurry, as ultimately seeking the Lord on behalf of the prayer ministry is the beginning of the prayer ministry. Praying and waiting and listening for God will make His will for your prayer ministry known. He may reveal a great deal of His plan or He may only reveal the next phase but after hearing from the Lord a plan will begin to take shape. Our next article about Prayer Ministry on Church Growth Consulting will help you to work with the plan that God gives you.
Prayer is perhaps the most important ministry in the Church. The Church cannot depend solely on marketing programs in order to grow and complete the mission given to it. At Church Growth Consulting we want to emphasize the importance of an established prayer ministry. The Church needs the direction and presence of the Living God. Jesus reminds us that it is our mission to be a House of Prayer. In order to truly become a House of Prayer there needs to be a vibrant functioning prayer ministry in the church. This series of articles is designed to help you establish an effective prayer ministry in your church.
We will talk about the importance of appointing a prayer coordinator to oversee the ministry. We will consider the idea of setting a side a specific room in the church for prayer. We will discuss ways to find out who the intercessors in your church are. From there we will discuss ways to begin to include almost everyone in the church in some form of prayer ministry. Weekly or monthly prayer cards could be instituted. Teams of people to pray during the services can be established. Teams of people to pray specifically for the Pastors and leaders of the church can be set up. Prayer-chains can be developed for phone calls as well as by e-mail. Prayer teams can be trained to pray for those in need at each service. The prayer ministries that can be developed are virtually endless. We hope that these articles will bless you in establishing your own effective prayer ministry.
We are getting ready to do a new outreach we are calling a “Free Lunch”. We had the idea last week as we were doing a free car wash event. We hold our free car washes on Saturday mornings in the parking lot of a local bank that is right on the highway near a busy intersection. We usually set up a few tables for people so they have somewhere to sit while we wash their cars. We also provide free coffee, donuts, sodas and water. We had some new tables at the car wash this week that had some nice umbrellas and it looked life we had set up a little outdoor cafe. Then we had the idea. Let’s try a free lunch. We already have permission from the bank for a Saturday in November. We are going to set up tables and chairs and make half the parking lot look like an outdoor cafe. Making the parking lot look festive will be important to get people to stop. We will take over a couple of grills and cook up some burgers and hot dogs. Chips, pickle, soda’s and some condiments will complete the package.
We will put some people on the road with “Free Lunch - No Kidding” signs to draw some people in. We will have volunteers from the church to get people parked, seated and served. We are also going to add a simple flyer to the process. We will probably use the flyer to put plastic forks and knives and condiment packets in. When they unroll the flyer to use their plastic ware and condiments the flyer will say this:
Huh? There is such a thing as a free lunch!
I wonder what else might be true………
John 3:16
We will have to experiment with a few of these events to see what works but we feel like the idea has potential. we will give a try and report back to you on the results here on the Church Growth Consulting site.
Thanks Court. I appreciate you taking a look at the site! 
This theme looks amazing!! Well done. :)