Just Start Praying
How can pastors help their church become a praying church? I have a really brilliant suggestion that works every time. Pastors should start praying for that. It is sort of counterintuitive. We instinctively think—particularly in a Reformed world—that we have to have a plan. There is nothing wrong with having a plan, but I think it’s actually good to put planning in the backseat. You don’t want to kick it out, but in order to get the Spirit of Jesus in the front seat of the car and actually driving you, you need to slow down and be attentive to him.
So I just encourage pastors to get a prayer card—I use three-by-five cards as prayer cards—and just ask questions like, Show us, Lord, what it means to become a praying community. How do we start? How do we keep prayer from becoming boring? How do I learn how to lead a prayer meeting that isn’t boring?
A Praying Church
Paul E. Miller
Paul E. Miller, bestselling author of A Praying Life, has written A Praying Church to cast a vision and provide direction for a return to the simple yet life-changing practice of praying together.
It’s just being like a little child when you’re faced with this huge, impossible task. It’s okay just to launch into it, but even before you announce it, I actually encourage pastors not to preach a sermon on prayer. If your congregation is prayerless or if your own life is prayerless, just develop your own prayer life.
Just let the Spirit’s work grow slowly. I love Luke 16, when Jesus, in his reflections on his own parable of the unrighteous manager, says that whoever is faithful in little will be given more.
So be faithful in the little of prayer. Or just start praying with your spouse or praying with a good friend and letting that grow quietly and begin to let your faith grow. Because if you create structures in your church that are bigger than your faith, they’ll calcify. And so you want to create a structure that’s about the size of your faith—maybe a little bigger than your faith.
Paul E. Miller is the author of A Praying Church: Becoming a People of Hope in a Discouraging World.
Paul E. Miller (MDiv, Biblical Seminary) is executive director of seeJesus, a global discipling mission that mentors through seminars, cohorts, and interactive Bible studies. He is the bestselling author of A Praying Life and J-Curve. Paul and his wife, Jill, live in the Philadelphia area and have six children and fifteen grandchildren. Listen to the Seeing Jesus with Paul Miller podcast or learn more at seeJesus.net.
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