By Jonathan Graf

While as believers, we should all have some desire to pray, often our prayer lives are affected by the various seasons of life. We pray more when circumstances require it, or in seasons when we have a deeper understanding of its importance. One of the general truths of most churches is that the one group of people who likely pray the most are its seniors.

The problem in many churches, however, is that they do not recognize what a prayer force this group can become. Churches often ignore this group’s ministry potential. Churches just try to keep them active and busy with events and fellowship opportunities. Instead, they should foster this group’s desire and ability to minister within a church through intercession. The church that fuels seniors’ ability and interest to pray, will be highly blessed spiritually . . . and with unity. People who are actively praying for a ministry are far less likely to be grumblers and complainers about that ministry!

Here are a few ideas on how to use seniors.

1. Pastor, make seniors your personal prayer team. Provide them with items to pray each month (at the least) and weekly is even better. It doesn’t have to be a lot of items, but they should be meaningful and specific. Having a handful of prayer needs related to your ministry and family on a 5.5 x 8.5 sheet each week or every other week will suffice (some items can even be repeated week after week).
2. Develop seniors into an army who will storm the gates on behalf of your church. Organize them into teams who will pray while a church board meeting is going on. Put them in teams to pray during the morning service. Ask them to come in once a month or every other week to pray for the spiritual life and health of your church. If you stress how important that role is, and continue to encourage them in that ministry, they will be blessed and will bless your church.
3. Use them to cover those time consuming every day needs. Most churches’ entire ministry of corporate prayer revolves around praying the “make my life better” personal needs of its members. While it is important for the body life of a church to cover those things, seldom do church prayer meetings focus beyond them. If you have a group willing to focus on those things—like a seniors’ group—use it. That is a valuable ministry. Not only does it focus prayer on something that needs to be covered, it frees up time in other prayer meetings to focus on the kingdom things in the life of your church.

A century ago, at age 26, Wilbur Chapman became the pastor of a famous Presbyterian church (Bethany Street) in Philadelphia. His first Sunday there an older gentleman came up to him and said, “You are much too young to be the pastor of such a fine church as this.” Wilbur thought he was a kook. But the man went on to say, “But I have determined to pray for you. And I have a friend who will join me. Each week we are going to pray that the Holy Ghost’s power falls on you when you step into the pulpit to preach.” Wilbur reported that those two men soon turned into 10 men, than 20, than 50, and eventually more than 200 men would come each Sunday morning to pray for the Holy Spirit’s power to anoint Chapman. Over the next three years, that church saw more than 1,100 people come to faith in Jesus Christ through its ministry. More than 600 of them were men.

Your seniors can be a warring army if you encourage them to be!

--Jonathan Graf is the president of the Church Prayer Leaders Network. He is a popular speaker, and is available at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .