Jon's Blog

Recently I was leading a Sunday PM concert of prayer at Kenmore Alliance Church in Kenmore, NY (Buffalo). There were about 60 people present and we were in six or seven prayer groups for the times when we went to intercession.

I was intrigued by something that happened during the prayer times that got me thinking. Do churches have corporate passions when it comes to prayer?

I believe that most individuals who pray much, do have burdens or bents toward a particular subject when it comes to prayer. It might be missions, maybe the lost, and so on. But I have never thought about churches having a corporate bent.

Following a time of worship and a season of personal confession to ready our hearts, we moved into a time of prayer based on my morning message. I had spoken on being a House of Prayer out of Isaiah 56--the idea that we can only call ourselves a house of prayer if we are completely accepting of anyone who walks through our door. That we will do nothing to thwart people from seeking God. But we need the Father's heart to be able to accept and love people unconditionally. So we prayed asking God to give us His heart, asking Him to work on our attitudes toward others, and so on.

It went fine. I could hear prayers being raised up in each group. It was a nice din of multiple prayers rising to heaven.

Then we had a little more musical worship and moved into a second time of prayer. This time we focused on community transformation around the church and local people coming to Christ through the ministry of the church. Well I could not believe what happened. The volume of each group rose, the passion of many showed as people jumped in to pray in each group. Anyone comparing the two seasons of prayer would have marveled at how much more passionate people were in the second prayer time.

Kenmore Alliance has a long history of being an outreach minded church and it showed in their prayer passion that night. A little hint if you want to grow more corporate prayer in your church. Try to have prayer meetings focus around the corporate passion or bent of your church. Is there one? Use it to rally prayer.

 Jon Graf

I recommend this resource if you are a prayer leader, elder or pastor. It is available at www.prayershop.org . Click on the photo to go there.