Helping My Church to Pray

How to develop and sustain global intercession

Can you name some churches that have lots of their people praying for global missions? This question is often answered with a sigh and silence. Ask a church about their intercessors and usually they name a few retirees. But the whole congregation? Children and teens? Busy parents? Even the pastors? Maybe not so much.

This article doesn’t offer any panacea for stimulating prayer. Perhaps the most important admonition is to consider whether our own practice of intercession is as passionate and regular as it should be. It’s too easy to let ourselves off the hook by thinking, consciously or subconsciously, that our job is to be the captain while the troops do the praying. But we know that Jesus carved out time for extended prayer and lived life constantly in touch with His Father. If He chose to do so, it’s clear we must.

In this issue, we share some models that are not completed success stories but prayer-mobilization efforts still very much in development. We conclude with suggestions and a link to more resources.

Multiple Churches Praying for the Same Initiative

Converge International Ministries is launching consortia of US churches, each focused on one of their 20 global initiatives. Prayer is designed to be a core component. Some of these consortia involve a significant number of churches committed to supporting a well-developed, on-the-ground team. The Togo consortium is one of those. Here’s their story.

Last spring, the Converge workers in this West African nation suffered a particularly virulent spiritual attack. Voodoo is practiced in this region, and the spiritual warfare was evident: Workers were hearing what sounded like crowds of disembodied voices asking in English, “What are you here for?” There were other unexplainable events and a noticeable lack of spiritual fruit.

Alerted to this spiritual assault, Consortia Catalyst Chuck Lewis contacted the prayer coordinators for this initiative, Gary and Maureen Albers. Even though they had never done such an event before, the Albers decided to hold a virtual prayer walk and invited every church that supported workers on the Togo team to participate.

The field workers chose 10 locations where they felt that spiritual warfare was the greatest including the witchdoctor’s house, the soccer field where the gospel had often been shared with players without response, and a church building where attendance had dwindled to a handful of children. The organizers were thrilled when 90 people showed up online to pray. Five minutes was allocated to each location. The prayer event was held in real time with one person in Togo running from location to location using his phone to pan each particular spot as earnest intercession went up.

Chuck explains, “All I can say is, we bombarded heaven. We called on the Captain of heaven’s army. I get very passionate when I pray. Others were praying quietly. We believed that the enemy had come and stood his ground, but now Jesus’ team was coming to take it back.”

Shortly after the prayer session, soccer resumed on the field and once again, the gospel was shared. A young man gave his life to Christ. The next Sunday, he brought three friends to church, and they came to Christ, too. Soon thereafter one of the pastors met eight girls on the road and shared the gospel. Eager to hear more, that group became the beginning of a new congregation which today includes over 80 people meeting in a simple church building with a thatched roof and a dirt floor. Worshippers overflow the space so that many have to crowd around outside and listen through the windows. Young herdsmen bring their cows near the windows so that they can hear while keeping an eye on their livestock.

It was abundantly clear that God had used that virtual prayer walk to launch a gospel breakthrough. However, the enemy was still at work. Spiritual harassment continued, now specifically targeting the global workers.

A second virtual prayer time was scheduled a month later. This time, the focus was the Converge missionaries. Each family sat on their front porch, and again, someone with a phone ran from home to home so that the virtual prayer team “visited” each family. At each stop, the intercessors prayed over the home and each member of the family.

Months later, ministry continues to flourish. Multiple village chiefs are asking for someone to come to their village and plant a church. A voodoo practitioner and his whole family has come to Christ. The Togo prayer team now meets weekly to pray although the group is usually just 8-10 people calling in from various parts of the US. An email with requests and answers goes out each week to a much larger group.

Prayer coordinator Maureen Albers emphasizes, “We did a Bible study on importunity. The man in the Luke 11 story desperately pounded on his neighbor’s door because he had nothing to feed his visiting friend. As we pray for Togo, we are equally desperate. We have nothing to offer in ourselves.

“God must take the blinders off and convict people of their need for Christ,” Maureen continues. “We can never convert someone. We are praying for 190,000 disciples in Togo and Benin, and for 100 churches in Benin. But we are totally helpless to make this happen. So we come in great anticipation each week to beg God to do it.

“We know God has brought us together in a unique way. We don’t know each other outside of this online prayer group, but we believe that God is working, and we come together virtually with the anticipation that He will do more than we can ask or think.”

The prayer team has also seen the Togo field workers growing in their realization of the importance of prayer. Maureen says emphatically, “Intercessors don’t need thanks, but we do need to know results. And that is dependent on workers reporting answers to prayer. Hearing about what God is doing is feeding this group; it’s what keeps them committed.”

Maureen keeps a running list of all of the answers. “Looking at this list reinforces our resolve to pray. Every week, something gets answered,” she shares. “Sometimes we just stop and spend a whole session thanking God. He’s running ahead of us. We can’t even keep up! He’s doing more and doing it faster than we can pray!”

Growing People in Prayer When It’s Hard

Another Converge consortia prayer team has had a very different experience. They are praying for an initiative in a high-security part of the world where just one Converge couple serves and spiritual fruit is very slow in coming. On top of that, for much of the pandemic, these workers have not been able to be on location.

When Jan Hoffman agreed to be the prayer coordinator for this initiative, she assumed someone was going to give her a plan. Instead, her group has developed organically, figuring it out as they went along. Their monthly virtual prayer times focus around Scripture and specific prayer points shared by their global workers. Praying scriptural requests back to God increases the intercessors’ confidence in asking with boldness even when they don’t see quick results.

This group has also done a virtual prayer walk—made more challenging because their missionaries weren’t on site at the time. Instead, the workers shared photos taken pre-Covid of various locations in the city where ministry takes place. Some technical difficulties as the prayer session began reminded them that the enemy wanted to prevent their event. The problems were resolved, and they had a great virtual prayer tour.

Jan also sends out a regular email with prayer requests. She tries to vary the approach to keep it fresh. One month she shared seven items all beginning with the letter “P.” Besides using the “Ps” to direct their online prayer, she encouraged her team to continue to pray for one “P” request each day.

“In order to grow in prayer, we need to be with people who are prayer warriors,” Jan shares enthusiastically. “I have grown in my own prayer life through this initiative because I’ve been praying on a regular basis with people who believe in prayer. Prayer is talking and listening, so any believer can do it. But beyond that, we have been learning to pray Scripture.”

Now that their workers are back in country with stricter security protocols, it is harder to exchange information. Undaunted, the prayer team has been spurred to redouble their efforts, knowing that the workers are relying very much on their prayer covering in this restricted context.

Jan is saddened that so far no one from her own church has joined the monthly sessions. So what makes her keep at it? “I’m encouraged by answered prayer. I’m stimulated by learning from other committed prayer coordinators that I talk to; for example, the idea of doing a virtual prayer session came from others who had previously done it.

“Most of all,” Jan continues, “I’m encouraged by the people who show up month after month for our online intercession time. I spend far more time praying with people I’ve never met than with the people in my own church. Praying online was a new thing to me when we started our Zoom sessions, but now I’m very comfortable praying with people I’ve never met in person. These are sweet times together.”

1. Multi-church collaborations focusing on one worker/team. As described above, the ease of meeting online makes it relatively easy to build a global prayer group around a global worker or their whole team. All supporting churches and interested individuals can be invited to join. Intercessors often feel alone in their prayer ministry within their own church, but by banding together, they encourage each other and feel the power of coming before God’s throne as a group.
2. Including global workers and indigenous partners. Time zone differences can make this tricky, but it is valuable to find times that work for the intercessors and global partners to be online together. Instead of just praying for the workers, groups can pray with them as well as with national partners. A business Zoom account facilitates simultaneous translation, overcoming some of the language barrier. If there are security concerns, the prayer coordinator must take responsibility for making sure that intercessors understand the need to use creative language and refrain from mentioning names, etc.
3. Introductory, time-delimited prayer events. Those new to intercession are more likely to participate in a one-time event, or a one-week or one-month challenge rather than make an open-ended commitment. The annual 40 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World focus is just one example. There are similar focused events for the Hindu and Buddhist blocs. Churches can use the related print resources for any time period they chose. Another possibility is creating a focused prayer initiative immediately before or after the field worker visits the church. These build anticipation or follow through, making “I’m praying for you” more than hollow words.
4. A prayer community for the church’s missions focus. Churches can send out a short, weekly update via email or text that focuses around the ongoing story of what God is doing among their people group or project. Just one or two focused requests will more likely be read and prayed over than a long list. Including answers to previous requests is essential.
5. Missions Monday. In order to develop the discipline or habit of prayer in their people, the Presbyterian Church of Fullerton, CA, sends out a prayer request each Monday morning and asks everyone to take five minutes to pray in faith around that topic. If each of their approximately 50 members prays for five minutes, they have stimulated more than four hours of intercession. That’s powerful!
6. Concerted prayer during crisis times. An exciting opportunity or a difficult challenge facing global workers is a great opportunity to call their churches to concentrated prayer. Leaders may want to make this a week-long focus with designated times to pray together, in person or virtually. Setting these up at different times of day will give opportunity for people with varying schedules to participate. Or everyone may be asked to stop and pray at a certain time of day or for a defined amount of time (keeping the time short encourages beginners to block off the time). A daily email for those seven days can list one or two very specific requests. It’s essential to share updates and answers, even if there is no breakthrough; the congregation needs to know what happened. If the need continues, those holding the ropes back “home” should be urged to continue to pray and provided with regular updates.
7. Prayer that mentors new intercessors. When meeting together, seasoned intercessors often use a certain language in prayer and pray for relatively extended periods of time. Both of these can intimidate those who are just being introduced to global intercession. Experiment with various prayer models that help create a context where everyone can feel comfortable participating, thereby helping the whole group stay engaged. Examples: (a) Use a conversational style of prayer where everyone prays just a sentence or two around one topic before moving on to the next one. (b) Write out various Scripture prayer promises on paper, then invite individuals to pray one of these back to God. (c) Play or sing worship music that expresses desire for spiritual renewal and encourage intercessors as they listen or sing to ask God for that renewal to warm the hearts of their global partners. New prayer styles take effort to implement but pay wonderful dividends if they develop the congregation’s prayer “muscles.”
8. Kids’ prayers. Never discount the power of children’s praying. A church’s best source of new intercessors may be children. Develop some prayer groups for kids as part of your Sunday morning or weeknight program. Children pray with passion and vision if it is modeled for them. Their sincerity can stimulate adults to pray with greater faith.

Creative prayer suggestions may be helpful, but Jesus demonstrated for us that the practice of prayer is more caught than taught. Why did His disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray? Doubtless because they watched and listened to Him making it a priority. If our churches lack intercessors, likely the place to begin is examining our own prayer life. We develop new intercessors as we invite them to share times of passionate prayer that are organically at the core of our own missions service.