Getting people to pray
How do you develop a stronger prayer life in H/ABF members? Many of you do some great things. What are they? What’s worked? What’s not?
One good thing we’ve done in our ABF is occasionally hand out 3×5 cards. Everyone is asked to write their name down on it, a character trait they want Christ to develop and a specific prayer need. The cards are then given out by gender. We ask the class to pray for other person that week. I always find myself drawn to the person I’m praying for. Try it sometime.
Groups Guy 
We ALWAYS start ABF with a feedback time. “How was your week? What’s new? How can we pray for you? Any answered prayers? How did your___ turn out? Etc.” This provides substance for 7-10 mins of prayer. Now nearly everyone prays aloud. Emphasize sentence prayers. Celebrate answers. Email prayer chain w/reports and requests. Nothing does more to promote the reality and power of Christian living as much as this first half hour.
I like the card idea. Some weeks we take extra time and have people pray in groups of four… the trick is to not let the groups be too big or they can’t hear (and take much longer).
Last week we weren’t planning an extended prayer time but I also wanted to make sure there weren’t any we were missing… so I went to pray-as-you-feel-led, asking folks to make their requests within their prayers.
I’d be interested in what’s worked for other folks.
One Purpose ABF passes around a legal pad at the beginning of class for people to write their prayer concerns. Our prayer leader than reads these at one time. This streamlines the reporting. We then get into small groups and pray. This has made prayer more timely and meaningful.
One other good idea I’ve seen by Scott Montieth. Anytime someone would share prayer request he would write down the request on a 3×5 card. He would then give the card to someone else in the ABF, who would be asked pray for that person during the week. I thought it was good for both the person with the request and the person who’d be praying.
Here’s another idea Jay has always reminded me about prayer in ABF. Don’t throw out to the ABF, “Does anyone have a request?” That might seem strange, but here’s why. Many times a person or several can take 10 minutes explaining the prayer need. If you have a couple people do that the whole time could be spent in talking about a need and NOT PRAYING. Prayer solves problems. The other factor is that the energy of the room can quickly diminish as someone goes on for while to explain their problem. We need to listen deeply to the pain, but that’s probably best dealt with one on one during coffee time or after church at lunch. Encourage folks to write down their requests as they come in and hand them to the leaders for a quicker explanation and more prayer time.
We just spent the last time we met as an ABF in prayer during the entire class. Its a great way to spend time in a relaxed time of open prayer. We used the the acronym P-R-A-Y (Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield). Even though we had bumpy start in praise because of my fault, after the first 10 minutes the group got into the right mood. We praised, we repented. We had an extended time to pray for important requests. At the end we were all glad we spent so much time praying! It reminds me everytime I pray with others how much I like to do it.