Spurgeon's 8 Tips for Powerful Prayer Meetings
Making prayer the powerhouse of your church
CH Spurgeon regularly had 2,000 at his church prayer meetings. He believed they were the powerhouse of the church.
What lessons can we learn from his example in prayer?
Here are 8 suggestions for powerful prayer meetings:
1. Pastors value prayer
A pastor should come with a heart-felt address that will stir the congregation in prayer.
But this can't be faked.
Only if the pastor highly values the prayer meeting and sees it as important will he be able to stir his congregation.
2. Don't go too long.
Spurgeon recommends 10 prayers in an hour long meeting.
There is no doubt too brief prayers (although for the young in faith short is better than nothing).
But if one person dominates the prayer meeting praying, it kills the general spirit
3. Lambs in Christ should pray
Spurgeon says: "The cries of the lamb must mingle with the bleating of the sheep".
It may be natural to young Christians to let older Christians take the lead.
But there is a great benefit to the congregation in all expressing themselves to God.
4. Special requests
It may be helpful to gather special requests beforehand.
These can be shared by the pastor before the time of prayer begins.
Spurgeon notes that many requests scrawled on scraps of paper have become good "kindling" for prayer.
5. Nothing must force out prayer
Spurgeon warns of hymns, bible readings and sermons taking up too much time.
The main focus of the gathering should be to pray.
Preachers should give 10 minutes of address no more and make sure prayer gets the majority of time.
6. Don't mistake preaching for prayer
We've all heard those prayers that are actually sermons. They're not spoken to God, but to the others around us.
Most of these are similar to the Pharisee "Lord I thank you that I am not like other men"
Prayers should be addressed to God.
7. Beware of repetition
If you pray for the same thing every week, people will begin to wonder what the point of attending is.
Wisdom is needed here, but perhaps the best way is to use requests (stated above) to vary the meeting.
8. Pray for revival
Spurgeon saw prayers as the engine-room of his incredibly fruitful ministry. If we want to see souls saved and true feeling in men's hearts, we need to regularly be praying.
May the prayers of your church see fruit borne as well!