the church geek

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been slowly working on the culture of prayer in our congregation. It’s not the quickest or easiest thing to do to change the spiritual ethos of any congregation, but here are few things we’ve done to help with that.

* About three or four months ago we began to publish a list of prayer requests in our worship bulletin. As a result, during the week, I’ve been getting phone calls and e-mails from congregation members wanting various people and needs put on the prayer list. A number of people have shared with me that they appreciate knowing that their concern is being lifted up by others in prayer. Right now the list leans heavily toward prayers for health concerns, but I’ve been thinking about expanding that and including other areas of concern on the list.

* When I first started here, I began our session meetings with a scripture and a short devotion and then asked session members for their joys and concerns. We have a prayer we say together and then I invite elders to pray, as they feel led, for the various joys and concerns as they’ve been mentioned. Sometimes, I’ll ask an elder at the end of the session meeting to close us in prayer too. I’m sure some are terrified by this, but I’m always surprised and pleased when an elder I haven’t heard pray before steps up to do it.

* I haven’t done as much of this as I’d like, but I’ve tried different types of prayers as models during the pastoral prayer portion of the worship service. I’d like to experiment with this more. In the past I have prayed model prayers, for instance I’ve used the five finger prayer and the Lord’s prayer as an outline and then prayed for specific things within that framework. I have also used bidding prayers where I suggest a category and invite people to pray for things silently (one time a congregational member actually prayed out loud, I’d love to hear more of that, and have wondered about encouraging more of that!!) I hope this helps people think about all the types of things they can and should be praying for.

All of these things I think are helping to re-shape the spiritual ethos of our congregation. I hope they are helping people see the different ways they can pray and I hope they are helping give them more confidence about prayer.

I’d be curious to hear if you have any creative ways of encouraging the growth of prayer in your congregation?

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