Are our prayer meetings fit for purpose?

I recently conducted a brief and very unscientific poll on Twitter about church prayer meetings. It’s not going to pass any test for being representative or statis-tically reliable, but nonetheless the anec-dotal results tell a clear story. I asked how many church members attended the weekly church prayer meeting.

34% of respondents said that less than 25% of their church members came. The next two categories (25-50% and 51%+) scored 27% and 13% respectively. The last category ‘we don’t have a weekly prayer meeting’ scored 26%.

There are, of course, a myriad of circumstances and situations behind these statistics and I am wary of using them to berate anybody or cause any sense of inadequacy. For the most part, I don’t believe Christians have stopped believing in prayer. Instead, it’s an opportunity to ask whether our prayer meetings are fit for purpose.

It was a trip to Lowestoft that got me thinking about this again. I was speaking at a Keswick-style local event called ‘Lowestoft Living Word’ that has been running for almost 100 years and dates back to just after the Lowestoft fisherman’s revival of 1921. The revival stories are amazing and centre on the preaching of one or two particular men; but as with all revivals, the story really starts with prayer. In this case it was a prayer meeting started at the London Road Baptist Church by the then minister Hugh Ferguson in 1919.

I’m not making a case here for any formulaic approach to revival, but I do think it behoves all those involved in church life to make local church prayer a priority and that means constantly rethinking how we create opportunities for prayer in church life.

Consider the time of your prayer gatherings. We cannot presume that church life should continue unchanged with every meeting taking place just as it has done in living memory. Such a view is a travesty of history, in fact. Taking the broad sweep of church history, meetings have not always happened at 7.45pm on a Tuesday. If you don’t have an evening service, why not consider meeting then? What about 7am somewhere near the station for commuters?

Or how about something even more radical? I am very attracted by the idea of a church meal every week which could then be followed by an all-church prayer meeting – an idea proposed by Brian Edwards some 15 or so years ago in this newspaper.

Consider the content of your prayer gatherings. It is not wrong to be praying for the needs of the church community. As the hymns puts it, ‘what a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!’ But we must appreciate that our dependence upon our heavenly Father is not just for our ‘daily bread’ but also for his ‘kingdom come.’ We need to help one another pray bigger prayers. Paul’s prayers are a great help in this area.

Consider the structure of your prayer gatherings. I wonder if we can over-structure our prayer meetings: here’s a little section on this issue, now a little section on that. Perhaps we can be brave enough to let things develop as they may! People will generally pray for things that are on their hearts. Open prayer can be discouraging for leaders as we learn how inward-looking we all are. But it’s also an opportunity to teach and re-align our priorities so we share the Lord’s heart as we pray.

Consider the format of your prayer gatherings. Corporate prayer meetings can be overwhelming places for some, especially new believers. And yet there is nothing quite like hearing a brand-new Christian cast themselves upon their heavenly Father. It’s always worth asking ourselves whether our chosen format (sitting in a large circle or rows) is intimidating to some. Let’s not be afraid to find ways to make it possible for everyone to participate, even if it means doing some things differently.