10 minutes: Pray for Our Church, the Staff Members, and Their Families
Pray for protection for your church. We’re working hard to reach people for Christ and Satan is never happy about that. Ask God to protect the members, family units, small groups, and leadership. Take your time and think through each family, group, and lay leader and lift them up by name. We also need pray for the missional direction of the church as it moves forward, increasing relationships with one another, the Lord, and unchurched families in our community.
Pray for each staff member by name and ask God to give them encouragement and joy in their work, peace in their families and homes, and wisdom as they serve God and the congregation. (Add the names of your church’s staff members here.)
Pray for Yourself
Petition God to be the kind of fellow small group member, friend, husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, father, ex-husband, or ex-wife that he would want you to be: slow to anger, quick to praise, full of wisdom, and to become a person of greater patience and grace.
Thank God for each person in your small group and family by name, highlighting one or two ways you see God shining through them, including skills, abilities, and talents. Then petition God to be the kind of supervisor, employee, co-worker, or student that is a ray of hope, refreshment, and encouragement to those around you. If you are willing to be specific in this area when you pray, you’ll run out of time!
10 minutes: Pray for the Lost
Pray for deeper connections with unchurched friends, relatives, co-workers, fellow students, and neighbors. Thank the Lord for each person by name, highlighting one thing you love about that person. Then ask God for boldness with those you just prayed for and a new or stronger desire to tell them how Christ is working in you. (If you don’t have any unchurched people in your life, use this time to ask God to show you the people on the landscape who are desperately looking for a friend like you.)
How to pray for an hour as a group:
- Invite everyone to drop to their knees and face the outside of a circle of chairs.
- Invite everyone to pray aloud and ignore everyone else around them. This way, everyone gets to pray for a whole hour instead of listening to the bold people pray while the timid ones remain silent.
- Start praying on time and end on time.
- After the hour, ask your group what God spoke to them during the hour.
