Enliven your daily prayer meeting

Here are some ideas to help you maintain energy and interest in daily prayer meetings:

• Start with time for praise and thanksgiving to remember the God who has brought you together, and how good he is! Don’t spend a lot of energy providing music, but if you can, bring a guitar, or sing a cappella.

• Pray for topics that concern all in the group, so that you all can agree on the requests. (Don’t start with your cousin in Idaho who has the stomach flu. Do pray for your biology test, and also pray for your witness in the biology class.)

• Pray “measurable” prayers, so you’ll know when they are answered (“Please bring at least one new person to our next large-group meeting” versus “Please bless our fellowship and make it grow”). Ask yourself if you believe God can do what you are asking for, and don’t pray bigger prayers than you have faith for. (Pray for one newcomer, not one hundred!) This is what Rosalind Rinker called “faith-sized requests” in the wonderful little book, Conversational Prayer.

• Keep track of your prayers in a prayer meeting log, or using a prayer tree (described in the article above) or in some other way. Each time you meet, announce answered prayers and thank God for them.

• Those who attend can pray for more people to join, and can invite friends to come along, not out of guilt, but to experience what God is doing in your group.

• Vary the format at times, using silence, listening prayer, “buzz prayer” (where everyone prays at once, as the Spirit leads), Scripture readings, conversational prayer, a liturgical form of intercession, or picking a single topic for a meeting.

Rosalind Rinker, once an IVCF staff member, popularized the style of prayer that has become very familiar in our small groups, called conversational prayer. Take time to remind the group of some “good manners” for your conversation, so everyone can participate:

• Use everyday language, and keep sentences short.

• Stick to one topic, until all who wish have had a chance to speak. (Instead of praying a paragraph of prayers for Iraq, the Chemistry quiz, world hunger and your friend’s conversion, just pick one topic, and let others add on. After a lull, you can change to a new topic.)

• If someone says what you were thinking, say so! This is one of the ways that we see the Spirit is leading us “to agree in prayer” and it encourages the whole group.