CONFERENCE EVENTS

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PRAYER FOR YOUR CHURCH

Lord, I lift up my elders (church board) to You. Help us respect and honor them as they direct the affairs of our church. May they wholeheartedly give their attention to prayer and ministry of the Word. Keep them above reproach, devoted to their families, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable and able to teach. May they be gentle and honest as they deal with people. (1Tim. 5:17; Acts 6:4; 1 Tim. 3:1-2; Titus 1:7)
 
Home arrow December 2006 arrow Making Sense of All Those Days of Prayer
Making Sense of All Those Days of Prayer PDF Print E-mail
What’s a prayer leader to do? Clearly there are too many days of prayer! National Day of Prayer, Global Day of Prayer, International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem, Day of Prayer for Children at Risk are just some of the events clamoring for our participation.

Then there are the initiatives—Seek God for the City, Praying through the 10/40 Window, Praying through the 40/70 Window, 30 Days for the Muslim World, 30 Days for the Hindu World, PrayWorld. And what about the ongoing prayer calls—First Friday, the Presidential Prayer Team, Pray Hollywood (check name). To say nothing of denominational prayer emphases your church should participate in.

 

A given church can only focus on so much. How do we make choices as to what we should participate in and what we can forego? And should we participate with others or sponsor something in our own church?

 

Each church is going to be different in its needs, so my broad answer is that you need to genuinely seek God for His desires for your church. But let me suggest some guidelines to follow that might help you in discerning what events your church should participate in.

 

  1. Use the National Prayer Accord principles to help.

    The National Prayer Accord was originally devised by Jonathan Edwards and others prior to the First Great Awakening. Their thought was that each church would pray around the same basic theme of revival. But churches would pray weekly or monthly in their own circles, quarterly with other churches in their community and nationally once a year. A prayer rhythm that focuses this way can be a pattern that is easily handled.

 

Given this thought, make participation in the National Day of Prayer and/or the Global Day of Prayer be your once a year. Then look for three other times you can join with other churches in your community for a prayer event. They can be either a concert of prayer to highlight praying for your community, or select some of the other days to participate around.

 

  1. Select by tiers of importance.

    What seems to be a fit for the personality of your church? Is your church a strong missions church? Then you will want to use at least one missions focus. Does your church seem to have a strong heart for Israel? Then certainly make sure you highlight that day.

 

  1. Select by levels of effort.

    Another way to proceed is select at least one or two initiatives that take some effort to put on and then add anything that can be done with ease. For example, select a prayer initiative like Seek God for the City or 40 Days of Prayer. These will take some promotional effort and lots of publicity, but the rewards of participation are enormous for your church. The exposure to prayer for your congregation that a prayer initiative will bring long term results—more interest in prayer.

    As a prayer leader, however, you can only handle one or maybe two prayer events that require this level of effort. But you can highlight other events throughout the year that do not take effort. For example, even if you can’t spearhead a National Day of Prayer event, you can certainly find where in your community there are prayer gatherings on that day, and publicize them to your people. While you might not be able to do a big event around the Day of Prayer for Children at Risk, you can get information and prayer guides to people who might be interested in participating. While praying for Hollywood might not be something your entire church gets involved with, you can provide guides for those who might have that as a burden.

 

  1. What does your leadership want?

    Another possible plan of attack is to gather your pastor and key leaders in the fall of the year and review all the possible prayer events you could participate in the following year. Before such a meeting, gather all the information you can on every possible day, and bring it to the meeting. You may want to be ready to recommend your choices. Talk as a group about each one, and together map out the year. One possible starting point for information is past Pray! magazines. Go to the Empowered sections of each issue (one complete year is all you need). Look at the calendar. Most of the possible events are listed there.

 

While there are a lot of possibilities, we don’t need to be overwhelmed! Seek the Lord and plan ahead. Then watch what happens as you take advantage of these calls to prayer.
 
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