14 | December 2024
The Fastest Way to Get People Praying By Pastor Dave Early, First Baptist Church, Grove City
My publisher, Jon Graf, recently studied prayer mobilization in the Bible. He discovered that prayer was usually mobilized by a leader challenging the people. In the Old Testament, Nehemiah, Ezra, and Jehoshaphat challenged people to seek God and provided a venue for them to do so. Some of you would say, “That isn’t the case in the New Testament.” Perhaps for the first months and a few years in the early church’s life, people prayed without much encouragement from leaders. But by the time the epistles were written, we see Paul and James again challenging those under their care to pray. James’s passage in chapter 5 goes through a lengthy encouragement for people to pray more often. Paul asked people to join his missionary endeavors by praying (Romans and 2 Corinthians). He also challenged people to “pray without ceasing,” to pray when they had anxiety, and to pray for those in authority. I suspect all these challenges were caused by James and Paul seeing the people slacking off where prayer was concerned. What’s the answer? As leaders—pastors, elders, small group leaders, prayer leaders—we must challenge people to pray. Your people will not likely pray a lot without your encouragement and challenge. In light of that, I asked, “What prayer opportunities are the most effective in mobilizing a congregation to pray?” Here is what I consider to be the very best idea. Engage Your Congregation with a Prayer Initiative or Emphasis A prayer initiative is where everyone prays on a theme for a set period. The most popular is 24 hours, a week, two weeks, a month, and 40 days. If done well, a prayer initiative cannot be matched for pulling the most people into prayer. Every time you engage in one, a number will have such a good experience that they will catch the importance of prayer and be better at it for the rest of their lives. Why is a prayer initiative so good? A. Most use scripture-based prayer guides, which teach people to pray God’s Word and move people to pray a more kingdom agenda than their own. B. Because the entire church is involved, people are reminded week after week to participate. There is built-in accountability as people hear others talking about their experiences. That builds a desire to participate more. C. Prayer initiatives have a manageable time commitment. First, people are not committing to pray every day for the rest of their lives. Instead, they know they are committing to 30 days or two weeks. Second, most prayer ini- tiative guides ask for no more than a five to ten minute commitment each day which is not intimidating to people. January is the best time of year for an emphasis on prayer. Make plans now to join with hundreds of churches around the world who will be using 21 Keys to Answered Prayer in the 21-Day Global Prayer Event January 6-26. Links in the article: https://prayershop.org/21-keys-to-answered-prayer https://21daysprayer.org
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