Greg Frizzell

Eight steps are foundational to God-led prayer meetings. These steps can help congregations prepare for powerful encounters with God. But don't think you have to embrace all eight steps at once. God mightily blesses even the tiniest first steps churches take to strengthen their prayer meetings. Our merciful Father will take you right where you are and will patiently lead your church into a glorious new relationship with Himself. Ask God to reveal specific ways He can revolutionize your church's prayer meetings. If you are ready to follow God's leading, neither you nor your congregation will ever be the same.

Step 1: View the Prayer Meeting as a Relational Encounter with God

We have a tendency to program so many events that little opportunity exists for a spontaneous relationship with God. If we're not careful, we can treat prayer meetings as just another program to implement. Spiritual power does not lie in a particular prayer format but in a right relationship with God.

Without a strong focus on God Himself, we can program the spiritual life out of a prayer meeting! We need to view the prayer meeting primarily as a relational experience with God rather than an event to orchestrate. The primary goal in the prayer meeting is to make significant time for people to experience a genuine, spontaneous encounter with God. If you as a church leader seek God's direction, He will guide you into a healthy balance between effective planning and close sensitivity to the Spirit of God.

Step 2: Promote the Weekly Prayer Meeting as a Top Priority

According to Jeremiah 29:13, our attitude toward prayer must be high intensity and top priority. Churches seldom develop dynamic prayer meetings until prayer becomes a genuine top priority. Such a major emphasis on the weekly prayer meeting requires a definite change in most churches' promotional practices.

A series of brief Bible studies that teach the importance of corporate intercession can help congregations gain a priority view of prayer meetings. It is absolutely vital that we teach congregations the central role of prayer in all great revivals and in all true evangelism. Until congregations fully grasp the importance of corporate intercession, they will continue to view prayer meetings as optional or unimportant.

Step 3: Prayerfully Plan the Weekly Prayer Meeting

Churches always reveal their real priorities by what they seriously plan, organize and promote. Today if prayer meetings exist at all, they are often poorly planned and underpromoted. Thank God this pattern is changing! Growing numbers of churches involve musicians, lay leaders and the entire staff in planning dynamic weekly prayer meetings. Though this takes work and preparation, such efforts make a huge difference in the churches that take the prayer meeting seriously. However, planning should not be so rigid that you lose sensitivity to God's Spirit. Your planning must leave room for the spontaneous response of God's people. God will teach you the proper balance between planning and spontaneity.

Step 4: Use the Weekly Prayer Meeting to Grow Your People in Intercession

Most modern believers do not know how to pray effectively. The weekly prayer meeting is the crucial setting in which to teach them. After all, we learn to pray by praying. If congregations hear weekly prayer teaching, see prayer demonstrated and then experience it themselves, they soon learn to pray on a different level. Nothing teaches people to pray like praying and hearing others pray.

The prayer meeting is also the time to give your people detailed prayer lists for key issues. By providing comprehensive prayer lists, we not only teach believers how to intercede but also deliver churches from the practice of praying mostly for health concerns. In this way, believers move toward an outward Kingdom focus rather than one that is inward and temporal. Effective prayer lists strengthen the weekly prayer meeting and lead people to more focused personal prayer times.

Step 5: Schedule Significant Prayer Time in the Weekly Meeting

Although many churches still call their Wednesday night service a prayer meeting, little time is devoted to actual prayer. The Wednesday night meeting typically consists of greetings, songs, announcements, a Bible devotion and perhaps five to seven minutes for prayer, most of which are spent discussing prayer requests.

People usually spend so much time talking about prayer requests that they spend almost no time in prayer. As a result, very few churches have anything that even remotely resembles the prayer meetings of the early church or of the great awakenings.

Churches must rethink the amount of time allotted for the weekly prayer meeting. Unfortunately, a great number of churches have gone to a 30-minute schedule. By the time they finish everything else on the schedule, five minutes or so remain for actual prayer. Now, you can have a meaningful 30-minute prayer meeting if you minimize other activities and maximize time in prayer. The other activities are not less important, but the primary focus of the prayer meeting must be actual time in prayer.

I suggest that you schedule at least between 45 minutes and one hour for your weekly prayer meeting. In the first 10 to 12 minutes, teach key Scriptures and allow testimonies of answered prayer. That allows 30 to 40 minutes strictly for prayer. Regardless of the length of the prayer meeting, the guiding principle is to schedule most of your time for actual prayer. In most churches this will require major changes, but the results will be worth it.

Step 6: Focus Prayer More on Eternal than Temporal Issues

When prayer is focused almost entirely on physical needs, the prayer focus is inward and temporal rather than outward and eternal. While God is certainly concerned about physical needs, He also wants us to seek His will and direction for the advancement of His kingdom and our involvement in it. The Father's heart is broken when we endlessly major on temporal concerns to the exclusion of His larger purposes. With a little planning, your church can achieve a healthy balance between eternal and temporal prayer concerns.

Step 7: Schedule Additional Prayer Meetings with Serious Intercessors

Develop strong prayer patterns, but do not make them so extensive as to eliminate the vast majority of participants. For your more serious intercessors, it is crucial to offer additional prayer meetings of greater intensity and length.

In my church the Wednesday night meeting includes various seasons, or periods, of powerful prayer. We also conduct an additional weekly prayer meeting for those who are willing to pray at length for lost persons, for needs in the church and for revival in America. The additional prayer meeting, open to everyone, is usually held Sunday nights after church or one night during the week. Although fewer attend this meeting, it is characterized by great power and phenomenal results.

Step 8: Promote the Weekly Meeting as a Time of Joy and Life-Changing Power

When a church conducts powerful corporate prayer meetings, many prayers will be answered, and it will have many reasons to rejoice. Many churches find it appropriate to begin prayer meetings with a time of sharing answered prayers. Nothing fills people with joy and prepares them to pray like hearing recent answers from God.

When churches expectantly approach prayer meetings, they quickly discover that true prayer meetings are not dry and dead. Music and worship can be especially powerful ways to enhance prayer meetings. If you choose songs that uplift and foster an atmosphere of expectancy, your midweek prayer meeting will become an incredibly vibrant service. If churches promote prayer meetings as exciting, life-changing events, far more people will attend.

This article is adapted from "A House of Prayer," compiled by John Franklin