Develop Your Small Group's Prayer Life

You must help your class develop a deep prayer life if you desire discipleship that transforms. The power demonstrated through Jesus' prayer life is exactly like God's pattern throughout the Bible and history. He has always transformed people and the world through those with a vibrant prayer life.

 So how do you lead your class to deepen their prayer lives?

Create an Environment for Prayer
Your primary role as a prayer leader is to create a class environment conducive to praying. Prayer is more caught than taught. To create an environment conducive to prayer, you must:

• Motivate
  Help motivate your class through all means such as testimonies, teaching and challenge. Pray with expectation!
• Build a sense of mission/destiny/purpose
  All great prayer warriors in the Bible had a sense of being on mission with God. They always had a purpose bigger than themselves. This guided their praying to be God-centered, helped them not become discouraged and kept them in a position where God was more likely to answer their prayers. It also guarded against the tendency to have an inward focus.
• Renew
  When prayer lacks freshness, people fall into a rut and become duty-driven. Look for new ways to help them focus on and practice prayer.

Now that you have created an environment for prayer, here are some practical suggestions to help your class develop a prayer life. The Holy Spirit may use them to spark your thinking for something not listed. The important thing is to understand the principles, practice prayer and trust Him to build a praying heart in your class.

Schedule Your Prayer Time
Pray at the end of class. Scheduling prayer time in class serves as a model, allows people to understand it, and creates the opportunity to practice praying. Below are some considerations for praying in class.

• This insures the lesson will be taught, and it allows them hear the word of God first.
• Allow 5-10 minutes for this time.
• Guard against people's tendency to talk too much or share too many prayer requests.
• Appoint a class prayer leader to whom all requests will be sent during the week, and generate a list for members to use.
• Vary the format you use to pray: Pray as small groups, a large group, for the person next to you, etc. Pray in different ways: on your knees, standing, using conversational prayer or using Scripture. The variety will promote renewal and guard against staleness.

Pray with a specific emphasis
A long-term, specific focus helps the class more readily recognize God's answers because the repetition spurs them to remember what they are asking. You can accomplish this by choosing:

• A different focus each month. You might pray for the staff, missions, the lost or a specific ministry.
• An ongoing emphasis. For example, the FAITH program offered through LifeWay mobilizes and encourages praying for the lost in Sunday School classes and provides an excellent platform toward that end.

Pray outside of class
Here are some ideas on how to do this creatively:

• Have the class prayer leader generate a different prayer focus every month for which class members will pray during the week.
• Create a class prayer chain.
• Generate an e-mail prayer list that they can use during the week.
• Take advantage of other opportunities to pray (a church intercessory ministry, etc.)
• Organize prayer for special events such as revivals, etc.

How you encourage prayer is only limited to your imagination. Use all available means both inside and outside of class to help your members understand and practice prayer.

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