How to get your Church excited about a Prayer Room - 3 May 2016
“Seasons of non-stop prayer are always great, but being part of a church community’s first experience of 24-7 Prayer is particularly exciting…”
We chatted to Phil (who also happens to run Prayer Spaces in Schools) about the very first 24-7 Prayer week in his Church earlier this year...
What is your church like, and what was its prayer life before the prayer room?
Each Sunday morning, 50-70 people meet for a lively, informal service. Members of our church serve the wider community in lots of ways, individually and collectively. Prayer has been a recent priority for our Church, but this was the first experience of a 24-7 Prayer week.
How did you plan the prayer room?
People often forget that preparing for a first time Prayer room is as much about preparing the people as it is making practical preparations.
We involved key people; children’s workers, youth workers, other leaders; in the process as early as possible. We scheduled a couple of talks about 24-7 Prayer - including one about the 24-7 Prayer story - and also featured slots in our morning services to address key practical and theological questions, such as “Why pray in a room?”, “Why pray round-the-clock?”, “What about security?
I think we were all amazed when two-thirds of the prayer slots were filled within 30 minutes and we filled them all by the week! People were hungry to pray.
How did you feel about running the Prayer Room?
Excited! Seasons of non-stop prayer are always great, but being part of a church community’s first experience of 24-7 Prayer is particularly exciting. I look forward to the “Wow!” moments; the “An hour isn’t enough!” moments; those moments when people encounter God in unexpected new ways.
What was the prayer life of the church immediately after?
It’s probably too early to answer this well, but we finished the week on a Sunday morning, then used the service to swap stories, share testimonies, and break bread together. People told wonderful, life-filled stories of encountering God in new ways: One of the teenagers said they’d booked a late night slot and had so much fun, they decided to meet up and pray every couple of weeks. They loved it.
If you could give someone who is about to run their first prayer room a piece of advice what would it be?
Give yourself plenty of time to prepare. Remember to prepare the church community, and not just the room. Anticipate questions early, and use every communication method in the church to inspire and inform - both are essential.
Talk personally with the key leaders and influencers. Get children and young people involved, get them into the centre; they need to feel like it’s their prayer room; not just an adults’ prayer room that they’re joining in with.
Organise an on-call rota for people to step in, and prepare for every security eventuality - it’s unlikely anything will go wrong, but if people can see that you’ve thought of everything they’ll feel confident, and they’ll book slots. If possible, organise a team of hosts to be in the building while the prayer room is taking place - having people available to offer drinks before a slot, and chatting with those who had just finished their prayer slots, was invaluable.
And of course: pray really big prayers.
Running a prayer room soon, or thinking about it? head to our prayer room pages to register and be inspired with even more ideas.
Do you have prayer room stories to share? Fancy being interviewed about your prayer room? Drop us an email; we'd love to hear about it.
