So you want to involve your whole church in a prayer initiative. For an effective prayer initiative try the following steps.

1. Get Leaders on Board

To be effective you need the full support of the pastoral staff and other spiritual leaders of the church for your prayer initiative. Cast the vision clearly. Highlight the expected outcomes. Acquaint your leaders with the resources you expect to use. Seek their approval based on understanding. Challenge them to participate.

2. Recruit a Planning Team 

Recruit a planning team. The team leader should be a person with gifts of organization and a passion for prayer. Choose the team members for their skills and interests. Look for persons who can help with small groups, communication, worship and youth ministries. Have a staff member on the team to be sure that the initiative gets integrated into the other ministries of the church.

3. Lay a Prayer Foundation

Challenge existing prayer groups as well as members of the congregation to give strong prayer support before and during the initiative. Supply a fresh prayer guide with pertinent prayer suggestions to intercessors every few weeks. Regularly report answers to prayer.

4. Communicate in Different Ways

Repeated communiqués are important. Try to communicate your message in several different ways such as bulletin announcements, bulletin inserts, the church’s newsletter, letters or e-mail, posters, banners and power point presentations.

5. Create Dynamic Small Groups

Try to organize the whole congregation into small groups that meet weekly to study and engage in prayer during your prayer initiative. Use existing small groups if you have them, or start new groups for the initiative. Begin by choosing leaders or leader couples for the small groups. Provide a leader orientation session in which you take the prospective leaders through the first small group session that they will lead. Encourage designated leaders to recruit members for their own groups, or have members of the congregation join a group at a sign-up table.

6. Build Prayer into Worship

The weekend worship service is the defining event in the life of most congregations. Enhance your prayer initiative by building special prayer activities into the worship service to help members learn new prayer skills. Try to relate these prayer activities to sermon themes. A sermon on praise might be followed by small group prayer in which members finish the sentence: “Dear God, I praise you for…”. A message on intercession might end with individual worshipers silently praying for a hurting or unsaved friend.

--Alvin VanderGriend is the author of Love to Pray and the developer of the “40 Days of Prayer” initiative.