8 years
70 residential students
More than 100 community dinners
Hundreds of one-on-one meetings
And approximately 350 morning prayer meetings
Twice a week we have been praying with the college men and women who have shared life with us at the one-year residential discipleship program Trudi and I have led during these past eight years. But it’s (sadly) coming to an end this month. We are committed to continuing active ministry with college students, but in a less than two weeks, we’re moving out of The Berdhouse and into a normal house about a mile from Biola University where I teach full-time.
But before we say goodbye to this ministry, I thought you might appreciate a description of how we’ve been able to pray together so many times for so many years. Maybe you’ve been thinking of starting a small-group prayer meeting with some spiritually-minded Christian friends, but only have thirty minutes to allot to it. How do you host a vibrant prayer meeting in only thirty minutes?
I’m sure there are other ways we could have approached this, but to keep us on track, we decided to follow a simple plan. Such an approach has helped us actually pray and not use up our time in chit chat or extensive sharing of prayer requests. Here is one outline that you, too, could use to lead a successful thirty-minute prayer meeting.
Divide your time in half—more or less. During the first fifteen minutes, read and respond to a preselected passage of Scripture. During the second fifteen minutes, pray about one or two (rarely three) prayer burdens someone in the group has been carrying.
The First Fifteen Minutes
Start on time. Announce your preselected passage, allow everyone a moment to locate the designated passage—tell everyone ahead of time to bring a Bible—and then read the passage aloud. (HERE are seventy passages we’ve discovered work well for group prayer.) Keep in mind that you only have thirty minutes to pray. Latecomers can catch up.
After reading aloud the selected passage, the leader should briefly (and gently) remind the participants how to pray consecutively through the passage.
Here are your reminders:
1. Work from top to bottom (moving through the passage together).
2. Pray short prayers (no more than a few sentences).
3. Pray actively and repeatedly (avoiding too much silent space).
4. Prayers of agreement with what someone else has already prayed, responsive thanksgiving for a truth found in the passage, or a petition (praying for something to happen) that the passage elicits are all fine. Encourage people to respond in whatever way seems appropriate.
The leader can simply conclude the first fifteen (or so) minutes with “Amen.”
The Second Fifteen Minutes
Transition with a comment like: “Let’s turn now toward requests. Has anyone brought a prayer burden that you have already been carrying that we can join you in praying?
The key is to gently coach people not to randomly suggest something that just came into their minds to pray about, but only to share prayer burdens that they are already carrying. (Rather than: “I think it would be good if we prayed about…”; more along the lines of: “I’ve been burdened recently to pray this…”) The content could be personal (such as an individual crisis, someone else’s suffering, or the name of a friend who needs to come to the Lord), or it could be broader (like praying for revival or responding to a global calamity).
At this point, let me offer one suggestion. If you’ve been sitting for the first fifteen minutes, invite everyone to stand up for the last fifteen minutes of prayer. That’s been our practice at The Berdhouse. We have discovered that this keeps us awake and focused—especially since we normally pray together in the early mornings! Of course, it is possible to successfully pray without ever standing up.
During this second fifteen-minute segment, pray—again, relatively short prayers—about the one prayer burden that has been shared until you’re done. Multiple people should pray through the request (even repeatedly) until the Lord hasn’t put anything else on anyone’s hearts to pray. When the request seems to have been appropriately prayed through, the leader can simply say “Amen.” Sometimes this one request will take up the entire second half of the prayer time, though sometimes you will have enough time to pray through one more request (and infrequently through a third).
What if no one brings a prayer burden to share? If I’m leading, I will normally do one of two things. I will encourage everyone to bow their heads and ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind something that he wants them to share. Then I’ll add: “If something comes to mind which you think is from the Lord, go ahead and share it.” This can create a bit of space for someone to share a request that is a bit closer to home—perhaps something that he or she has been hesitant to share. Alternatively, I will sometimes suggest a specific prayer request for the global church. (See prayer guides HERE and HERE). Praying for our brothers and sisters outside of our own localities keeps our prayer meetings from only focusing on the little worlds we create for ourselves.
Again, when the time is up, simply say “Amen” and perhaps something like “Have a wonderful day in the Lord” to signal that the meeting is finished. It’s important to finish on time, otherwise people will be reluctant to come again in the future.
That’s been our pattern for the past eight years. There are probably other ways to successfully host a thirty-minute small-group prayer meeting, but this approach has borne fruit for members of The Berdhouse for the past eight years.
One additional thought: There are ways to kill a prayer meeting. If you’re the one leading a gathering for prayer, keep this in mind and gently coach your Christian friends with soft reminders each time you’re together. Many Christians have developed bad habits that negatively affect prayer meetings and require some gentle coaching to keep them on track. For more on this, see HERE.
Kindle Afresh 