Thursday, June 23, 2011

Making Prayer Missional: 6 Ideas

If you want to tap into the power of missional praying, how do you do it? At first it can feel intimidating because some assume that they need to have a very well developed sense of communion with God before they can show others what it means to walk with God. But that is a misnomer. We only need a genuine, honest relationship with God. People need to see us struggling to relate to God, which will be the reality for the rest of our lives. People don't need to see some form of dishonest perfectionism. They need to see saints who know how to walk with God through the ups and downs of relating to him.

That being said, here are a few ways to make prayer missional:
1. Seek God's presence in your group meetings. Bible studies are good. Working through video curriculum can be helpful. But if you are settling for a focus on these things and missing out on God's living presence in the midst of a group, then you are settling for less than the best. (I will have a post soon on how to lead people into God's presence.)
2. Develop some group practices for connecting with God so that you make it part of the life of the group, both during the meeting and in other settings. (This is the focus of chapter 7 of Missional Small Groups.)
3. Take a meeting to talk about the people in group members' lives who need a touch of God's love. Maybe it's a neighbor who's husband just lost his job. Or a co-working who has lost hope. Or a workaholic couple who's kids are home alone all the time. Make a list of these people.
4. Ask God about how you as a group can pray for the people on the list. Start off by spending some time in worship. Read and reflect on a passage like Luke 4:18-19. Listen to God's leading about how the group could be a blessing to anyone on the list.
5. Pray that God will open doors for conversations and ideas for ways to demonstrate more about how the group relates to God. For instance, host a cookout and invite some of the people on the list.
6. When talking with people, ask them "Is there a way that I can be praying for you?"

Do you have some additional ideas that can help make prayer missional?

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