Lesson One: Group Prayer Strategies -  Conversational Prayer

Prayer is a conversation with God. When praying in a group, our conversation extends to the other members of the group. We talk to God as a group. One of the ways to do it is called `conversational prayer’. Just as in any conversation, there are guidelines that we follow to make it meaningful and enjoyable. 

     

A. Benefits of Conversational Prayer:

1. Encourages participation even among newcomers– simple,short prayers. 
2. Promotes unity- group members bear the prayer burden together.
3. Increases interest and length of personal endurance (mileage) for group prayer.
4. Praying in one accord/agreement releases God’s power.(Matthew 18:19) 

B. Guidelines

1. Listen with your heart. (Acts 1:14) For example, when praying for a problem child, a parent may be discouraged and feeling like a failure. You can encourage him by praying not only for his child, but also for the parent – for God’s comfort and grace to be upon him.
2. Stick to the subject of prayer until it is saturated (everything about it has been prayed for) before going to another subject. (Gal. 6:2)  By sticking to the subject of prayer until it is saturated, you are helping carry each other’s burden over that subject. Also, with as many group members contributing to the prayer subject, you are allowing the Holy Spirit who is at work in each of you to cover all the bases. Not everybody has to participate in saturating a particular subject(especially if the group is big) , and any member can pray more than once. 
3. Speak loudly to be heard by everyone in the group. Most people tend to pray with a softer voice than his normal volume. We have to consciously avoid this when praying in a group. Otherwise, you will not be heard, and people will lose connection with the subject of prayer. It will encourage minds to wander or people to lose interest in the group prayer. 
4. Keep your prayers short. Short prayers allow other members to participate in praying for the subject. Don’t be afraid that certain issues about the subject will not be prayed for. You can always pray for it on your next turn. It keeps the members attentive and participative. It encourages those who are just beginning to pray in public that even if they are not confident in saying long prayers, they can participate with their short prayers.
   

C. Practicing Conversational Prayer

1. Collect prayer requests from each member in the group. 
2. Assign a leader who will introduce each prayer request. 
3. Allow different members to pray about the prayer subject until it is `saturated’. 
4. Allow periods of silence in between the prayers. Don’t be uncomfortable with silence. It is important when people are trying to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit. Remember to observe the `guidelines’ of conversational prayer. 
5. The assigned leader will close in prayer after all the requests have been prayed for and saturated. 

Exercise 1:  Find a prayer partner with whom you can pray regularly, and practice conversational prayer with each other.