Weak Prayer Requests
Help Darryl fix his sub-par group prayer time.
| Topics: | Group dynamics, Openness, Participation, Prayer, Problems, Sharing |
| Filters: | Coach, Facilitator, Group Leader, Host |
| Purpose: | None |
| Date Added: | November 14, 2011 |
Darryl loves to end his small-group meetings with time for sharing prayer requests and praying together. In past experiences with small groups, this has been a great time of connecting and growing as group members shared openly about their lives and struggles and prayed for one another. Unfortunately, the prayer time with his current group is a little different—specifically the prayer request time.
Michael is always the first to share, which is great. However, his requests are a little distant. He always asks for prayer for his cousin's husband's sister-in-law or his college roommate's neighbor's brother.
Vanessa always requests prayer for needs she sees on Facebook. Often her requests start with "I don't really know him, but I saw on this guy's Facebook status …"
Jake has a burden for people struggling with physical ailments. He always brings in the church's e-mail prayer chain that lists everyone in the church struggling with pain, sickness, or surgery and asks the group to pray for them all individually.
Tina is persistent in her prayer request. For the four months they've been meeting, her request has always been the same: "Pray that I will follow God well." That's all the detail she gives.
Jose shares what's on his heart during prayer request time. He shares passionately how he'd like the group to pray for him in his current situations and struggles. While it's great that Jose is sharing deeply, Darryl wishes he didn't take 30 minutes to share his prayer request.
The worst part is that Darryl's group normally spends more time sharing prayer requests than actually praying together.
What should Darryl do to help focus his group members' prayer requests and make sure they spend plenty of time actually praying together?
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Daryl could set parameters on prayer requests such as limiting them to personal requests only or putting a time limit on sharing. Another idea is to change up prayer time. Don't take requests every week and focus more on praising God in your prayer time.
Darryl could have the group break into smaller (2-4 people) groups to pray for specific needs or have people write their prayer requests down on a piece of paper and pray over these requests in smaller groups.
Ask each groupmember to bring one written personal prayer request At the prayer time, pass the request to someone else in the group (eg the person on your left) who reads it out and then the group pray for that request. This is repeated for all prayers It may be a bit stilted and awkward to start with but the group soon realises what their prayers sound like to others. Otherwise it's back to one-to-one counselling !
talk to the most likely one separately--ask him/her if he would pray for something for himself. don't have requests, just tell members to pray about what their concern is, and do it in such a way the rest of the group will get what it's about. if one prays for more personal concerns, I find that others follow suit. and it makes the whole group time so much richer to end that way. as the leader, model that for them, too. and pray!
Use the Word, Scripture verses, to pray for one another. You can choose a verse from your current study. Read the verse. Ask members to then pray using the exact wording or their own rewording of the verse as it would apply to them. You can do this for one person at a time, praying that verse back and forth, and then move on to the next person. Doing prayer this way helps prayers to be spiritually focused on the group members themselves.
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