“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.” (Mark 11:17)
If the church asked me to suggest one thing that would make the greatest improvement in all they do, I would not hesitate.
I would make their worship center a house of prayer.
While that could involve a number of things, the most obvious change would take place in the worship service.
1. I would make the front of the church—what we call the altar area—conducive to people coming to kneel and pray.
2. I would schedule a time in every worship service when the congregation is invited to come and pray. Usually, that would be the invitation time, but not always.
3. And I would see that this is regularly mentioned in the church bulletin as well as by the worship leader. We want to let people know “you are invited to come and pray,” and “we expect you to come and pray.” Their coming is no interruption.
Give the people a place to pray and a time to do it, and keep this before them, and a hundred positive things will take place. (We will make no attempt to come up with that list of 100 blessings from making your church a praying people, since it would vary from church to church.)
Your people want to pray, pastor.
That they need to pray is a no-brainer. “Men ought always to pray and not to lose heart and quit” (Luke 18:1).
My observation is they want to pray in church. And, they want to pray with one another.
They will need leadership on how to do this.
There needs to be a place to pray. This means a comfortable place to kneel, room for some to stand and space on the front pew for others to sit and pray. Not everyone is physically able to kneel and then get up, so we encourage them to “come and pray while standing or to take a seat on the front pew.” We would add, “When you finish, you can return to your seat, or if you would like, you can share with a minister, who will be happy to pray with you.”
The front of the church has to be cleared of too much furniture, too many displays and too much clutter. Some churches have small fronts, which are filled by the Lord’s Supper table and a piano. In those cases, the front pew may need to be removed in order to make space for people to pray.
Why does it matter that people come to the altar to pray? Answer: I don’t know. I only know that it does.
We do this every Sunday in our home church.
Last Sunday, when I returned to my pew, I was interested in noting that more men and boys were kneeling at the altar than women and girls. Sometimes, it’s the reverse. Either way, the fact that people come to pray speaks volumes about the health of the congregation.
