Pray For Your Church3 min read

God’s Church advances through prayer.

We see it in Jesus’ commands to pray, “your Kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10) and to pray for “workers in the harvest” (Matthew 9:37–38). We see it again in the Early Church who gathered in prayer meetings before the outpouring of God’s Spirit (Acts 2:1, 4:31). Even today, when the Church sees remarkable growth in persecuted regions of the world, it’s a story that cannot be told apart from the great prayer that preceded it.

But over the years, even though Christians know the importance of prayer in the life of the Church, I’ve noticed people struggle to know how to pray for their church. Not because people don’t love their church, or that they don’t love God enough.

People struggle to pray for their church because they don’t know how to pray for their church.

PRAYER AS IT IS

In their defense, if you were to ask someone to pray for your church, think of all that could mean—

Do you mean prayers for the church building itself? Or do you mean the people in the church? Or the leadership? Or all of the above? Because the request is vague, the prayers that follow tend to be vague, as well:

“Lord, please bless my church. Amen.”

There’s nothing wrong with that prayer, per se. And yes, God can use prayers like that. But the problem with general prayers is it’s hard to know how God answered them, specifically. Isn’t He already blessing their church with his gifts and forgiveness? So how would anyone know if God responded to their prayer with some new blessing?

PRAYER AS IT COULD BE

Compare the vague prayers described above to a clear and detailed prayer for your church that asks, “Lord, give us attentive eyes and skillful hands to see and care for what’s been neglected on our campus. Show us what we can put in good order now so we don’t have an expensive repair later. If it’s broken, or dirty, or overgrown, forgive us, God, and move us to be good stewards of it, that your name may be honored even there.”

There’s no question the clear and detailed prayer not only looks expectantly for God to move, but also knows WHAT to look for, specifically! Of course, once you see a specific answer to prayer, it only inspires more prayer.

PROMPTS

But there’s one other problem keeping people from praying for your church. Even if you give people a list of topics to pray about, they still need guidance on how to pray for that topic.

Suppose you ask folks to pray specifically for the Youth Ministry leaders at your church. Without some prompting, even a specific topic of prayer will once again devolve into vague prayers, “God, please bless our Youth Leaders. Amen.”

The fervent prayers your Youth Ministry leaders want range from prayers for protection against the Evil One to wisdom in teaching to trusting relationships with parents. But the average church member doesn’t usually think or pray that deeply about topics outside of their expertise.

To pray for your church, you need both the topics to pray and the prompts to pray.

PRAY FOR YOUR CHURCH

Pray For Your Church is a website designed to “helping your church pray for your church.”

Each week we release a new prayer for your church that covers a specific topic and gives you a prompt to consider some of the ways you could pray about that topic. Each prayer is written in the first-person, and can be used by both individuals and groups.

Visit prayforyourchurch.com and sign up to get weekly updates and see what God will do when you Pray For Your Church.

This article first appeared on Prayforyourchurch.com, a website by Rev. Chris Paavola who serves St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Battle Creek, Mich.

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