In 2000 or 2001, our youth group tried the Lighthouse Prayer Method (it would be accurate but weird to say “at the turn of the century”).

The prayer activity was explained simply as “Pray a blessing on five neighbors five times a week for five weeks.”  The ongoing work was summarized in the phrase “Prayer, Care, Share”, with the end goal of sharing the gospel after establishing a relationship with your neighbors.

The document we used was a booklet, Make Your Home A Light-House, written by Alvin J. Vander Griend, Director of Houses of Prayer Everywhere (HOPE) in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  I can’t find the booklet in a quick Google search, but there are other similar possibilities and some monographs from the booklet available.

This is more of a long term commitment than a one-time Group Prayer activity, but the ideas can be helpful.

The first question we ran into was “What is a prayer of blessing?”  The booklet gives a list of generic topics using the letters of BLESS – Body, Labor, Emotional, Social, Spiritual. But the kids wanted to know more about how to pray for these things when you might not know the people very well.  Providentially, we looked at Numbers 6.22 – the High priestly prayer, combined with our understanding that we are a royal priesthood of believers (1 Peter 2.9), made that a natural “blessing.”  We also used several of the prayers in Paul’s epistles as models, particularly the doxologies.

The results and excitement varied.  Some had immediate answers to prayer, like the girl who asked if she could go to church with our youth group student.  Most started well but thistles and thorns got in the way.  We could have done a better job of follow up on the prayer requests and alerting the kids to upcoming events they could invite their friends to.

The concept is straightforward.  As the title of Chapter 9 states, it’s not a program, it’s people.  It requires persistence; maybe this is how the widow was praying for the unrighteous judge in Luke 18!