Growing up, my favorite part of missions conference every year was the missionary’s slide show. Maybe there would be a picture of a 30-foot snake or a pet monkey. Being able to visualize the exotic life of a missionary was powerful. The same is true today. You will see more effective prayer for missions if you can put “a picture” in front of people and keep it there. Regularly give them details of missions life. Here are some ways to gain information and to put it in front of people.

1. Use bulletin inserts and power point announcements. Get a copy of the wonderful missions book, Operation World. It is loaded with facts about every country on earth. It also provides important prayer points for each. Put together a fact sheet on one country each month (or week if someone is available to pull it together) and use it as an insert that can go in you church bulletin or newsletter. The starting point would be countries that have missionaries your church is supporting. You could also do a shorter version that could run during a power point announcement sequence. Here you would put one fact and one prayer request.  You could also put the photos of your missionaries, along with an up to date prayer request on power point. Run one missionary family each week.
2. Use flags and worship. Purchase flags of various countries (especially those where you have supported missionaries) and place them on the walls or from the rafters of your sanctuary. (If that is not allowed, put them in an adult Sunday school room.) From time to time, pray for these nations during the worship service. When a song such as “Ask of Me,” which comes out of Ps. 2:8 and speaks of the nations of the earth being given as an inheritance to Christ, is sung, spend a few minutes looking at the flags and praying for that inheritance to be fulfilled. There are many other songs that lend themselves to missions praying as well.
3. Participate in a global prayer effort. Such things as Praying through the Window (http://www.win1040.com), Adopt a People Group (http://www.adoptapeople.com), and the new Ethne’s Year of Prayer for Unreached People Groups (www.ethne.net) will provide you with great prayer strategies, guides, and other resources to help fuel prayer. If you are a denominational church, often your denominational headquarters or website has powerful information for you, including videos, guides, up to the minute requests, etc. The missions ministry your missionaries went out under (Wycliff, TEAM, OM, etc.) may also have valuable resources you can use to fuel prayer.

The point is, with some simple effort you can provide powerful prayer helps to get your people praying for missions. If you as a prayer leader do not have the time to pull this together, look for someone who has both a heart for missions and prayer who can act as a missions prayer coordinator.