God’s House of Prayer–XME (part 5 of 5 continued)

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A Local Church as a House of Prayer

The congregation I serve as pastor can illustrate some possible ways to go about the call of being a house of prayer.  As a sort of prayer push I conducted a Saturday morning Prayer Seminar.  My goal is to expand their horizons to marvel at what God has given us in giving us prayer.  I want to stretch the people’s understanding beyond the confines of the prayer list to the God’s breathtaking design for prayer.  I liken it to the interface of astonishing simplicity with profound complexity undergirding it. [click here for my iPrayer 7 blog]

During the Christian Education Hour we are offering Community Houses of Prayer (CHOP).  CHOP is a ministry tool to equip and involve believers in evangelistic prayer as they seek to draw near to people for Christ and to Christ for people.  It incorporates weekly group meetings and directed daily private prayer to renew those involved in God’s grace, to shape their attitudes as instruments for Christ in their life-spheres, to train them in the discipline of kingdom prayer and to engage them in ongoing communication of the gospel.

In order to reinforce biblical teaching on prayer and to train in the practice of prayer, we intend to encourage every member to be part of a Prayer Cell.  The purpose of prayer cells is to disciple believers in prayer through instruction and participation. These limited-time groups would serve as an orientation, an equipping forum to help inculcate a mentality of prayer and to cultivate a culture of prayer.

Each hour meeting of the prayer cell would involve a 10-minute reading and discussion of a section of the booklet Why Do We Pray? to provide instruction in prayer. The 50-minute remainder of the hour would involve actual prayer centered around three areas: sharing, Psalm and sermon. “Sharing” involves prayer in response to personal concerns of the group. The approach would be pray-it-rather-than-say-it, to minimize using the time in travelogue rather than prayer. A person would lead aloud in prayer for his or her own concern.  Details can be shared outside the prayer time. “Psalm” involves prayer directed by a designated Psalm for kingdom focus.  Selected psalms would be spread across the 18 meetings. [click for Prayer Cell Agenda]. “Sermon” involves prayer in keeping with God’s direction in a recent sermon, reinforcing the truth taught and seeking God for its application to life.

We are considering other ideas for how best to keep the winds of prayer circulating in the community of believers, such as mobile prayer stations where we take prayer on the road and using our church website and social media to promote and prompt prayer.  As part of their regular topics for prayer, the elders have agreed to seek God to lead us in building a house of prayer.

All these efforts represent but some ideas for cultivating a culture of prayer in our local church. The important thing is that each church give attention in light of its own situation to how it can be faithful in serving Christ as a house of prayer its people are to be.

Stanley D. Gale

September 2012

NOTE: The full article, “God’s House of Prayer—Extreme Makeover Edition” can be found on the Community Houses of Prayer website “Resources” page.