I have heard thousands of prayers in prayer meetings that are genuine, heart-felt, meaningful, conversations with God about Who He is, what He has done, and how we would like Him to help us live life and serve Him better.
But even where the prayers are meaningful and heart-felt, there are still numerous pitfalls to prayer meetings.
Questioning Prayer Meetings
For example, have you ever noticed that the true “prayer warriors” of the typical church rarely come to “Prayer meetings”?
Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever thought it odd that when you ask your pastor to pray for a pressing need in your life, he writes it down, and then says, “I’ll bring it up at the prayer meeting this Wednesday”?
Has it ever seemed strange to you that although there can be dozens of people out in the community loving others, serving the poor, meeting needs, and helping the homeless, the “truly spiritual people” are those who come to church on Wednesday night for the prayer meeting where they pray for the poor, the homeless, and the other needs of the community? Why are the ones who pray about these needs more spiritual than the ones who actually go meet the needs?
Prayer Meeting Slogans
And then there are all the sermons and slogans about how the church advances on its knees, how kneeling men are real men, and how the attendance at the prayer meeting reveals the true health and vitality of the church. Aside from the fact that I am just not sure these ideas are true, it seems that these sermons and slogans really don’t get people to pray more, but simply guilt them into showing up for another meeting in the church building.
Prayer Meetings Teach Bad Prayer Habits
The main reason a church might want to consider letting prayer meetings cease is that even when prayer meetings are healthy and people don’t learn bad types of praying, they still teach people bad habits about prayer.
Rather than show people how to pray without ceasing, they teach people that there is a time and a place and a particular method for prayer. We must sit in a circle, clasp our hands, close our eyes, bow our heads, and only then, will God hear our prayers. Prayer meetings teach people that prayer is more effective when there are several people gathered in a room praying about something. They teach people that aside from attending church on Sunday morning, the next most important thing in their life as a follower of Jesus is attending church on Wednesday night.
But none of this is actually true!
Prayer is vital, and gathering with other believers is vital, and praying together with others is vital, but none of this requires a regularly scheduled prayer meeting, as practiced in some churches today. Learning how to pray, learning what to pray for, and learning how prayer is answered, might best be accomplished in other ways.
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Great post.
Pitfall back in the 80’s was awesome. The sad part is I am sure I spent more hours playing that game than I have spent in eyes closed hand clasped prayer 🙂
I LOVED pitfall. My wife saw this post, and the first thing she said was, “I loved Pitfall!”
Was there anyone who didn’t love pitfall?
XBox 360 has nothing on Pitfall…
Pitfall is awesome! But I gotta say, Galaga is the best
I agree that we need to be praying w/o ceasing, but some concentrated prayer time is a good thing too.
Rick,
Absolutely. I will address both in some of the posts during this series on prayer. I am not against prayer, and I am not against corporate prayer meetings. I just want to raise some awareness of how prayer and prayer meetings can be even more beneficial than they already are.
Jeremy. I agree that prayer meetings are tricky and often counter-productive. Any time something promotes exclusiveness and self-righteousness in those who participate and guilt and fear in those who do not, something smells. When praying together becomes a religious performance, it has become not just ineffective, but damaging.
I have witnessed these ‘prayer performances’ like many you have described in this series. It does inhibit actually communication with God. It has been my experience that those church leaders who are more into control and performance will get very uncomfortable and irritable when someone joins the group who actually want to talk with God in order to learn from Him, rather than talk (or yell) at Him in the hopes of sounding super-spiritual and maybe even manipulating something out of Him. In some cases, the leader only want the rest to listen to his prayer performance ans affirm at the ‘appropriate’ moments. Ugh.
However, I have been in small groups praying together and it can be a beautiful thing. It depends a lot (as is so often true) on the individual hearts of those there. The one I have been going to started very nice, but as it has grown – and different people with different backgrounds join in, it is becoming trickier. Sigh.
Basically, in my opinion only, if you are not praying at all privately, you are probably not really praying in a group.
Katherine,
All true. Starting with tomorrow’s post, I will begin to focus on the positive elements of prayer and prayer meetings, and what Scripture says about both.
Prayer meetings obviously meet a need for some people, especially those who are elderly, disabled and so on. However, I identify with your fifth paragraph. I don’t even have to think about, “Should I spend a couple of hours at a ‘prayer meeting’ or should I spend that same time with people I know who are lonely, broken-hearted, living on the sidewalk” and so on.
Those people usually want prayer, but they also want me to sit with them, listen to their stories, bring them a tarp to sit under when it rains and something to eat when their belly is empty. Praying for them is good, and I do that, but they need prayer and a tarp, a sandwich and (you fill in the blank).
Absolutely. I will be writing a whole post on the importance of being an answer to our own prayers. This means not just praying for people, but also helping meet the need that we just prayed for.
I feel the same way about “prayer chains.” No where in Scripture do we find to get a whole chain of people praying and then God will listen. How many people on the “chain” actually stop and pray?
They may be helpful to some, but I think most of us who get involved in prayer chains are “guilted” into it, which then, as you say, leads to not many of us actually praying.
I believe the article is trying to address hypocritical prayer. That said, the church needs corporate prayer today like it has never before. Acts 1 & 2 tells us the apostles and saints were all gathered together in one place for prayer – this is when the power of the Holy Spirit came.
Many may see prayer as just a duty – this is because they have not known the presence of the Holy Spirit of God in prayer.
The author of this article may be well meaning… have you heard the expression “throwing the baby out with the bath water”?
Brad,
I think you may have missed reading the very first sentence in the article:
I am not throwing any baby out. I am trying to restore prayer to its rightful place within the church.
OK, I just didn’t get the sentence “have you ever noticed how the true ‘prayer warriors’ of the typical church never come to ‘Prayer meetings’?”
We have Spirit filled prayer meeting at my church and the prayer warriors are there.
Perhaps you are trying to talk about the pitfalls of prayer meetings, but I see a possible hint of resentment – OK maybe I am wrong on this – please forgive if so – my concern is the Church today needs more prayer. The article does not appear to me that it is not clear enough in stating that.
Benny,
Yes, we need more prayer.
This post doesn’t really make it clear, but it is part of a long blog series on prayer in which I am arguing for more and better prayer in church.
I am not thrilled with everything I wrote in that series, and will eventually rework it and put it out as an ebook to my newsletter subscribers.