Prayer and Culture
by John Kimball, CCCC Director of Church Development
In our CCCC Family, we say we’re developing a “culture of believing prayer and intercession.” It’s one of our Seven Guiding Values. In order for this to be a realized value of our Conference, it has to be a realized value of our local churches. But in my work with many churches, I see that it is an aspirational value instead of a core value. I have yet to meet anyone who believes we need less believing prayer and intercession, but I meet a lot of pastors, leaders and church folks who are dissatisfied with their current prayer life. Clearly, this needs to be a major focus for us.
Regardless of the starting point, I tell every congregation with which I work in Church Development that intercessory prayer is a mandatory foundation for church health and ministry fruit. Several folks have heard me say, “If you won’t gather to pray, there’s really very little we can do to help you.” It’s not a matter of recognizing a church’s prayer warriors — we praise God for these folks and realize that we’d already be dead without them. Rather, it’s something systemic we are seeking — consistently involving the whole congregation; otherwise, why do we talk about it in terms of “culture.”
Culture dictates virtually everything about a people: clothing, music, food, lifestyle, belief system, etc. Every local church has a culture. That culture is a mixture of things coming from ethnicity, community and what we believe about God. And it is this culture that determines what we believe about and how we practice prayer and intercession. If intercessory prayer is a real value for the church, then there will be ample time, resourcing and sacrifice given to keep that priority. The people will gather to intercede for their neighborhood and city. The people will take time daily to practice personal intercession. The church budget will include funding for prayer resourcing and support. But the reality is that most congregations struggle to get a handful of people to gather for prayer, and when they gather, most prayers will be about people and relatives of the church family rather than their community mission field. And I can only think of one or two churches I’ve met in my career that have made the resourcing of intercessory prayer an annual budgetary priority. It’s just not our culture anymore.
So how do we change this? It’s actually not difficult, but it does take time and a lot of leadership commitment. Here are six mandatory things that must be practiced for intercession to become a cultural norm in our churches:
It must be publicly taught and demonstrated by the pastor(s) — A congregation will not rise above their pastor in any area of service or spirituality. If the pastor does not see cross-cultural missions as a priority, the church will struggle to be a missions-hearted church. If the pastor does not regularly interact with pre-Christian people, the church will struggle to be evangelistically oriented. It’s the same with intercessory prayer. If the pastor does not make this one of his personal priorities, neither will the congregation. The pastor must put his own “prayer culture” on display (leading by example) by teaching and preaching regularly on prayer and intercession. In addition, he must demonstrate his own prayer priority, witnessing to the congregation about his own prayer life and consistently giving reports and evidence of answered prayers. If the pastor cannot give a list of answered prayers, chances are good he’s not consistent in intercessory prayer.
It must be led by the whole leadership team — The pastor alone cannot change and maintain a church’s culture. The fruit of a congregation depends significantly on leadership. If the church’s leadership team is merely a “board of directors” administrating the church organization, prayer and intercession will often be missing. But when the leadership team partners with a pastor who is already practicing these things and then leads the church and her ministry into the heart of Jesus’ harvest through prayer, everything changes. Church leaders should be front and center on Sundays and at all times, ready to pray with and for people, expecting God to move. Elder-level leaders who refuse to do this disqualify themselves from church leadership. It’s that critical.
It must begin with the children — One of the reasons we are witnessing a growing prayerlessness in the American Church today is because we stopped teaching our children how to intercede generations ago. Somewhere along the way we transitioned from teaching our kids how to have a conversation with the Almighty and substituted what I call “nursery rhyme prayers” instead. Please do not take offense but humor me for a moment. If we teach our kids “Now I lay me down to sleep…” or “God is great, God is good…,” we are not teaching them to pray but to recite. Proverbs 22:6 is important here. Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it. When these kids become adults, they will rely on memorized prayers rather than their own, they will not know how to pray in public, and they will not have seen many answers to their prayers — leaving them uncertain if God hears them or if their way of praying works. We need to change the next generation’s prayer experience by training them for intercession now.
It must be a consistent part of planning — Before any plans are made, the leadership (and often the whole congregation) should pray and intercede until they have confidence they have heard from God. God, by His Holy Spirit, determines the direction of a church, not a congregational vote. Little prayers at the beginning and end of meetings will not cut it. Don’t ask God to bless your plans — rather, take the time to seek out HIS plans and do them. A church’s activities, calendar, budget — literally everything — should be laid out in prayer.
It must be reason for public celebration — When this kind of prayer and intercession becomes normative, there will be ample answers to be celebrated! Celebrate them! When appropriate, declare them in worship, in small groups…everywhere! People inside and outside the church will begin to see once again that our God is awesome, still answers prayer, and works the miraculous. We dare not keep this news to ourselves!
It must be trained — People do not naturally know how to talk with God or to engage Him in intercession. They must be taught what the Scripture says. They must be trained (by example) how to enter into mountain-moving prayer and intercession. And they must be given the tools and resources they need to grow in this area of life and ministry. There are actually some very simple ways to begin this process if the people are willing to rediscover and practice the power of God through prayer!
This is certainly not an exhaustive list. What other “musts” would you include?
Would you like more information? Why not contact the Conference office at (651) 739-1474 and ask about our Church Development ministry? We’d love to talk with you.
