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From my tweet yesterday about congregational prayer, I received some questions about what this looks like at Trinity. Here are a few things:
1. We decided about this time last year to make "renewal-seeking prayer" our theme for 2020. (God really knew what he was doing, haha)
1. We decided about this time last year to make "renewal-seeking prayer" our theme for 2020. (God really knew what he was doing, haha)
2. We have congregational prayer every Sunday: a leader sets a theme and opens, for 10-ish minutes folks pray aloud, a worship leader closes. We do it after assurance in our liturgy.
2b. It took about three months to not feel awkward and for a while, we'd ask 2-3 people to plan to pray. Now it's the #1 feedback we get from visitors saying what they like.
3. We also began Friday Night Prayer about 11 months ago: 1st & 3rd Friday evenings, we meet in a member's home, provide childcare, no chit-chat, just get in the living room and pray for 90 minutes. We typically have only 8-15 people there, but it's a major culture-builder.
4. We established a prayer ministry leader to plan these meetings. Having a point person for prayer ministry is one of the big things I heard from others. If you have worship, kids, students deacons/staff, then you need a prayer lead.
5. We have preached 15-20 sermons on prayer this year. We did 11 weeks in the Lord's Prayer over the summer, then 3 or 4 from Acts, doing another 3 or 4 in a Renewal series.
6. We've done a few 24-hour prayer initiatives before key events or during Covid struggles (made a google doc with 48 thirty-minute prayer slots, anyone could sign up for one or more slots).
7. We've also done some congregational fasting (pick a 24-hour period, ask folks to consider fasting from food if they're able) during early Covid. I've preached on fasting twice too.
8. Finally, several informal prayer meetings have started up: groups of 3-5 friends getting together before work to pray. That's maybe the coolest thing--hearing about a prayer gathering that's been going on that I didn't know about.
That's everything I can think of for now. But in less than a year (granted, we're a new, small church) it has become central to the life of the church, and *so good* for my own soul. Plus, it's a lot of fun to lead and preach when everyone's been praying all week :)
