Seven Ways to Ruin a Prayer Meeting
Learn From My Mistakes As A House of Prayer Leader
The notorious “prayer meeting.” For me, the mere phrase conjures up a vision of a group of old ladies huddled in a basement, gossiping about the people in the church who need prayer.
As someone in full-time worship & prayer ministry for years, I have attended and led hundreds of prayer meetings. Quite a few of them, if not most of them, were bad — including many that I was leading or hosting. By bad, I mean lifeless, awkward, boring, or even prayerless.
So, from personal experience, here are some great ways to ruin a prayer meeting. For those of us leading houses of prayer filled with weekly prayer meetings, maybe we can learn how to make our times together more enjoyable.
1. Do not start on time
It is hard enough to get people to show up to a prayer meeting at all, better yet, to arrive on time. So if you continuously start late, then people will feel justified in arriving late. Then people will start to show up even later and later because it seems pointless to arrive in a timely fashion. Even if there are only two people there, go ahead and start on time. Folks will learn that when you say you start at 7 am, you mean 7 am. If they arrive late, then they will miss part of the meeting.
2. Skip the actual prayer part
“Not praying” can manifest in multiple ways…
The meeting gets cancelled. I have arrived at a church’s advertised prayer time only to discover the entire prayer meeting had been cancelled for a staff meeting or some other activity. Unfortunately, prayer always seems to be one of the first things to get dropped when there's a scheduling conflict. If you schedule a prayer meeting with the Lord, keep it! (R.A. Martinez talked about having an “irreplaceable prayer meeting” in episode 148 of the Presence Pioneers podcast.)
The meeting is spent on things other than prayer. I have attended multiple “prayer meetings” where I spent very little time actually praying. The group might spend 90% of the time talking about "prayer requests," and 10% talking to God. I have visited other "prayer meetings" that are really just morning coffee and hangout time. Some "prayer meetings" function more like Bible studies or small groups. If you are hosting a prayer meeting, then I urge you to spend 90% or more of the time interacting and communicating with God. Enough of our lives are spent on other endeavors. If we set aside time to be with the Lord, let's do it!
Everyone is too shy to pray, so much of the meeting is awkward silence. This is usually a result of poor leadership & planning (see point #3), a lack of focus (see point #4), or a lack of teaching (see point #7).
3. Go unprepared & leaderless
This is by far one of the most important points on the list. A good prayer meeting must be planned and focused. Churches plan their preaching, their worship, their youth ministry, and special events. Why should they not plan their prayer meetings?
The leader of the prayer meeting should be able to answer these questions:
What are we praying for?
Is the whole prayer meeting focused on one topic, or are we jumping around?
Who is leading and directing the meeting?
Is prayer being spoken out loud only by the leaders, or is everyone jumping in to pray?
How long should people pray at one time?
I have found that when the purpose and format of the meetings are planned and communicated clearly, people are much more bold to engage and participate. In planned environments, attendees will know exactly how to engage in the prayer meeting.
4. Pray whatever comes to mind
Tagging onto the previous point, prayer meetings should be focused. One of the biggest challenges to enjoying corporate prayer is pure randomness. One minute the guy with the shofar is praying for Israel, and then the next minute Sally is praying for Aunt Suzy's sick grandma's and then the pastor chimes in with a prayer for the upcoming evangelistic crusade. Wait... what are we praying for again? I like to call this pinball prayers.
Random prayer meetings without focus are confusing. When I attend a meeting like this, my default response is to shut down and disengage. Since I do not know what exactly we are to be praying for, I do not know how to jump in, come into agreement, or participate.
The prayer meeting organizer could choose one prayer focus for the whole prayer meeting (such as the church's needs, Israel, revival in your city, salvation of the youth, etc). Or the leader could break the meeting up into 15-20 minute segments and pray for a few topics in one gathering. The key is to stay focused on only one topic per segment. If you cover multiple prayer targets in one meeting, be sure to have a bold leader (see point #3) who is announcing the prayer targets and helping people refocus when they inevitably get off topic.
5. Be loud and dominate the meeting
Especially within Pentecostal and charismatic circles (my circles), it is common to find people who pray loudly and aggressively. While I am not opposed to praying boldly and loudly (see Acts 4:24), I find that someone who is unusually loud and dominating can stifle a good prayer meeting.
God does not hear louder prayers better than quieter prayers. Certain people's experiences and personalities push them towards praying more quietly, and that’s ok. We need to create a prayer culture that invites everyone to participate, engage with God, and pray in an honest way. If the loud, aggressive prayers are seen as more spiritual or powerful in our prayer meetings, then we need to take some time to validate the value of quiet prayer and encourage timid folks to join in. And we might need to ask the dominating personalities to tone it down in the name of love for their brothers and sisters who are in the prayer meeting with them.
Another factor is that sometimes people simply pray for too long at a time. Jesus' longest recorded prayer (John 17) only takes a few minutes to read. Prayers that are about 1-3 minutes work great, with about five minutes being the limit before people start zoning out from the long-windedness.
6. Leave your Bible at home
Learning to use Bible-based prayers is one of the best things that individuals or groups can do to strengthen their times of prayer. Praying Bible-based prayers has multiple benefits, such as:
Praying the Bible grounds our prayers theologically. I have heard quite a few prayers that were downright unbiblical. Forcing ourselves to pray from the Scriptures helps us orient our prayers in the truth of God's word. We stop asking for only what we want, and we start agreeing with what God wants.
Praying the Bible unites the Church. This is especially helpful when praying with Christians from multiple churches or denominations. All Christians agree on the authority of God's word, and praying Bible prayers gives us common ground from which to cry out to God together.
Praying the Bible gives us language. Many times, we do not know what to pray or how to pray. When we pray from the Bible, we always have something to say. If we're having a bad day or our mind is scattered, we can just flip open our Bibles and speak God's word back to Him. We always have language for our prayers.
The New Testament prayers of the apostles are called "apostolic prayers," and they can serve as a fantastic resource to help you begin praying the Bible. At our prayer meetings, we always had copies of these apostolic prayers available for people. Download a PDF list of apostolic prayers here.
6. Whatever you do... don't sing or worship
Without a doubt, the best prayer meetings I have ever attended were worship-based prayer meetings. Musical worship and intercession flow together in the heavenly throne room (Revelation 5:8), and adding musical worship to your prayer times is a great way to add joy to a meeting. When we draw near to God in worship, He gives us His heart, and we can pray back His desires to Him. Here are some ideas of how to incorporate musical worship in a prayer meeting:
Open up the prayer meeting with 10-20 minutes of music worship. A live worship leader is great, but recordings are fine as well.
If you have a worship leader, have them continue to play their instrument as you pray (or keep recorded worship music playing quietly). This helps "fill the gap" and creates a sense of "flow" between the worship and different prayers. The rhythm of music also helps people focus and be less distracted.
If you are feeling really adventurous, have the worship leader or other singers echo the prayer with spontaneous songs and choruses, singing the prayers that have been prayed.
7. Do not teach or train
Jesus' disciples did not ask how to do miracles or pray for the sick, or walk on water. They asked Jesus how to pray (Luke 11:1). It is amazing that we expect people to intuitively know how to pray together without any kind of teaching or training.
Teaching people to pray can happen in multiple ways.
Learning by example is a fabulous way for prayer to be "caught" rather than just taught.
Pastors can teach on the value and biblical basis of prayer on a Sunday morning.
Those who lead prayer meetings can also take a short time (5-10 minutes max) at the beginning of a prayer meeting and give a short teaching and exhortation to help people learn how to pray.
One can also provide books, podcasts, videos, and other resources to people in their praying community.
No More Ruined Prayer Meetings
I hope this was a fun and practical way to think about how we can pray together in more enjoyable ways. Dear prayer friends... as much as it depends on us, let us not ruin any more prayer meetings!
For more practical tips on how to lead a prayer ministry, check out the How To Build a House of Prayer Handbook from Brad Stroup.
