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Frequently Asked Questions

Many people can lead prayer in a church, but seldom does prayer spread widely without the strong encouragement and involvement of the lead pastor.

Prayer will become a dead work if it’s not vitally connected to a living Savior in a love relationship. Prayer is meant to be like a spinal cord connection between Christ the Head and the Church as His body. Re-emphasizing the love relationship will keep life in our praying. Prayer will always be boring if it is only a monologue. We must listen as well as talk.

Pray Scripture. Read God’s Word back to Him and agree with Him out loud verbally as you read. Take time to craft Scripture verses into prayers and ask the Lord to bring them to pass in your life and church.

This takes strong leadership. People feel urgent about outer man needs like health, money, and schedules, so we need to introduce Scripture prayers for the inner man like Ephesians 1 and 3. We also need to repeat again and again that conformity to Christ is the ultimate reason for all outer man struggles. Sometimes a practical help is preparing a group list ahead of time with physical needs listed last. If done in love, most will understand and learn these priorities in prayer.

The pastor-shepherd must be convicted about the need for prayer and start by including more and more people in his prayer closet. He must disciple every leadership body into becoming a praying entity. There are always those intercessors in the congregation who will come alive when they know the leadership is praying together.

Don’t be afraid to start small and persevere. Many small prayer cells scheduled throughout a week can become very effective and can spread.

It begins with a deep conviction that the real church is owned by Jesus Christ alone. “Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28).” No human being owns the church; we are only stewards.

A second driving conviction of leadership is that Jesus will build His church. (Matthew 16:18) This takes us out of the driver’s seat and causes us to be careful observers of His activity. Leadership begins with convictions based on Scripture.