Home Outreach Leaders Articles for Outreach & Missions Your Church Needs a Parking Lot Ministry (No Really, It's Awesome!)

Your Church Needs a Parking Lot Ministry (No Really, It's Awesome!)

Lesson 2: Prayer Should be the Focus of Parking Lot Ministries

Do we really believe in the efficacy of prayer? Of course, I don’t expect many of my readers to do anything but affirm my question. Frankly, though, I don’t see much corporate prayer in churches today. Sure, there are the prayers at the designated slots during the worship services. I don’t take that time for granted.

But where are the pervasive and ongoing prayers of those in the church? Where is the sense of prayer in the early church, where the leaders devoted themselves to it (Acts 6:4)?

Why shouldn’t we train and equip persons to be men and women of prayer even as they are conducting the more routine duties of directing cars in parking lots? If we really believe in the power of prayer, does not that same belief hold in parking lots, where members and guests first arrive on worship weekends?

Lesson 3: Parking Lot Work Should Be a Ministry

I’ve been in many large churches lately where members are doing work in parking lots. They are working feverishly and with much dedication to point those in cars in the right direction.

I hope those men and women see their work as ministry. I hope they have a brief prayer for those in every car that passes them. Those cars include people who don’t have a relationship with Jesus. Those cars include people whose marriages are falling apart. Those cars include men and women who have serious illnesses in their families. Those cars include people who have recently lost loved ones.

We cannot know the impact of a prayer, of a kind word or of a smile on those who come to our churches. But we can demonstrate the love of Christ through our prayers, words and smiles.

Parking lot signage is important. So are well-marked spaces. And so is good traffic flow.

But they are not nearly as important as the needs, the hopes and the hurts of those who enter the lot.

Does your church have a parking lot ministry? Are you training your workers to be true ministers in their work? It really can make an incredible difference.