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During communion, people’s hears are more tuned in to receive from the lord and to surrender to His call on their lives. For this reason churches should have people trained who can pray for others and their needs. Here are two resources that will help train your people to minister effectively as prayer teams.
By using either or both in a day of training, you will see increased blessing in people lives as they open themselves up to effective prayer. If you use these resources in training sessions, make sure as a leader you prepare ahead of time by reading the book and viewing the DVD.
Praying Grace
While certainly people can pray for others with no training (after all, we have the Holy Spirit to guide us), most do not know how to listen to the Spirit before they pray for someone. Instead they pray a prayer to fix the obvious. Praying Grace teaches prayer teams how to lead people to the touch of Jesus. It teaches them how to discern what they should pray for the person with the need.
It is loaded with both practical helps (as simple as use a breath mint before ministering) and challenging truth to inspire you in the importance of ministering to people in this way. It provides multiple prayer points people can pray for various situations, each using the acronym G.R.A.C.E. In our opinion, Praying Grace is the best resource available to train prayer teams in the aspects of praying on the spot for others. It is available for $15 at www.prayershop.org.
Upfront: Training Prayer Teams for Ministry
Some people learn better through hearing rather than reading. Upfront is a 2-hour training seminar (on DVD) led by Dave Butts that focuses on praying for people who come forward for prayer.
Butts draws from his many years both in pastoral and in prayer ministry to inspire, encourage and challenge the listener to pray effectively for those who come forward for prayer in a service. It offers suggestions on praying for personal needs, physical healing, relational or emotional issues, or spiritual revitalization. If you want to develop people in this area of ministry—vital to a church—Upfront is an excellent resource for a Saturday morning or weeknight training session. Upfront is available from PrayerShop Publishing (www.prayershop.org) for $25.
We highly recommend using both Upfront (the visual teaching component) with Praying Grace (the written component) to really train people for this important ministry.
--Jonathan Graf
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March 2008 
