We used the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (plus Proof Texts) to start our Executive Committee meeting last week.  It allowed scripture to lead into prayer, everyone participated, and all were called to pray. It took about ten minutes.

Read the Question and Answer.  Then each person reads the next passage form the Proof Text list and suggests how it applies to and supports the catechism statements.

Once the passages are done, pray as led.  With this first question, especially pray that God would be glorified in the meeting.

Westminster Shorter Catechism Question and Answer #1

Q 1:  What is the chief end of man?

A:  Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Proof Texts:

Psalm 86.9

Isaiah 60.21

Romans 11.36

1 Corinthians 6.20

1 Corinthians 10.31

Revelation 4.11

Psalm 16.5-11

Psalm 144.15

Isaiah 12.2

Luke 2.10

Philippians 4.4

Revelation 21.3-4

 

Since this Catechism has 107 Questions, you can lead the prayers of your weekly meetings for more than two years!  Think about it.

See the posts from  10/9 and 10/21.  They give two methods of approaching the “key” prayer in Nehemiah 1.11: “Please grant me favor in the sight of the king.”  The long prayer preceding the strategically crucial supplication is also full of prayer potential, especially when the group or task force is working together on a project.

Read the circumstances and resulting prayer in Nehemiah 1.  Suggest that the following are included in that prayer: confession of sin, asking for mercy, offering praise, asking God to hear, reminding God of His promises.

Ask if the group can identify any other prayer topics from the passage; add responses to the list.

Have the group pray, applying the Nehemiah requests specifically to the project at hand.

See the post from 10/9/13.  The key prayer in Nehemiah 1.11 was “Please grant me favor in the sight of the king.”  Besides asking God to hear him, this was the one request in a long prayer.  It came at the end of an extended period of analysis and planning; Nehemiah knew that for his work to succeed, it was crucial to get the blessing of his boss.  This one task had to go well in order for the rest of the work to proceed – it was a “logjam-breaking” activity.

For a group in the midst of a planning process, a good question to ask the group is “what is a key question or concern you have about this project?”  Take notes on the responses, and have the group pray for God’s help in answering the questions and guiding through the concerns.

Using the words of a great systems analyst, this prayer is excellent when a group or task force must make a presentation to a decision-making body.  Several examples illustrate appropriate scenarios for this prayer:

–          Companies regularly apply for grants which are judged by a group of “readers.”  The readers  evaluate the components of each application and apply points based on a pre-set algorithm. 

–          A church task prepares a document that is to be submitted to the denomination for approval.

–          Groups often go before the city Planning Commission to ask for a zoning variance.

In each case, the long prayer in Nehemiah 1.5-11 boils down to the key request at the end:

                “Please grant me (us) favor in the sight of this man (the readers, the denomination, the planning                 commission)”

This is a very specialized prayer, but it is surprising how often it is useful. When the occasion arises have each person concentrate on a different aspect of “favor” – blessing on the evaluators, opening their eyes to your cause, making a good presentation worthy of favor.

See the upcoming post on 10/21/13 for an expansion on this prayer.

Have each person write out their schedule. 

If the circumstance is a one-time meeting with no expectation of follow-up, then suggest a detailed calendar for the next week.  For longer lasting mentoring or prayer partner arrangements, it will be good to add a “usual” current weekly schedule.

Pair up and exchange schedules.  Ask a few questions and then pray through the other person’s agenda.  Encourage everyone to take their partner’s list home and pray regularly for the events of the day.

Tomorrow, 9/25/13, the fourth Wednesday in September, has been designated since 1990 as national See You At the Pole (SYATP) day.  Students gather before school around the building’s flag pole to pray.  Youth Group members might want to attend not only to pray, but to identify other believers and be identified as Christians.

At URC we often had students attending seven or eight high schools in the Lansing area.  Our youth group leadership team would do prayer walks around the schools, particularly praying for spiritual revival and students coming to know Jesus as Lord and Savior.  We always went in the evening during our leadership meetings.  If we had had a more evangelistic bent and more than a few at a school, we might have been there during school hours, hoping to attract attention and questions.  Part of the explanatory answer would be asking what we could pray for the inquirer.

 

We were not marching or blowing horns like the Israelites at Jericho – we did not want the walls to fall down!  But asking God to work where there might be resistance is a tradition stretching back to Acts 4.29-30.  We wanted to pray for blessing, protection, and the Holy Spirit’s work in the school and for boldness in the Christian students there.

 

 

You don’t have to pray just at the beginning and end of meetings.  Nehemiah, the praying systems analyst, gives an example of praying continually, in chapter 2 of his book.  He lived in the capital city of Susa, and made a plan for the rebuilding of far-away Jerusalem.  He had been pleading with God that his proposal would find favor in the sight of the king.  Now Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king.

One day the king engaged Nehemiah in conversation and asked a very pointed “What are you requesting?”  Nehemiah had rehearsed his response but still paused in verse 4: So I prayed to the God of heaven. 

We don’t know what he prayed, but we know it was short, probably less than five seconds.  He might have said, “LORD, bless me,” or “Please give me the words,” or “Remember my prayer,” or “Lord, have mercy.”  We also know it was effective, since the king did grant Nehemiah’s request, once he heard the plan.

So, a group prayer activity at the beginning of the meeting would be to list some options for mini-prayer phrases that would be suitable for upcoming agenda items.  Pray the short requests together at the beginning, but then remind each other to use them throughout the meeting.  Say them aloud or in silence, remembering that God IS with you! Say the quick prayers many times during the meeting.

As a reminder, you could have the list in the center of the table, or pray when a new agenda item comes up, or bring a chiming grandfather clock (or an app on a smart phone) to the meeting so you can pray whenever the hour rings! 

The idea for a prayer walk is simple – keep your eyes open and pray for what you see.   An individual can choose a path and pray they go.  For a larger group activity, there are some logistical directions that will be helpful.

Meet in a central location (usually the worship area) to have an opening song / prayer and give instructions.

Suggest small groups (4-5) because too large a group will make it harder to hear and make it easy to spend too much time at one spot.

Publish a set of (numbered) stopping points where a small group can concentrate on specific ministries: Worship, Staff (officers), Sunday School, Youth Group, Prayer Room, Maintenance and Grounds, Fellowship (Kitchen and fellowship hall), etc.  The document can be augmented to include a few prayer topics, such as upcoming events or ministry participant’s names.

Using the numbering scheme for a “shot-gun start” – assign each small group a different starting point and have them move consecutively through the building.  This will give some direction and alleviate congestion.

If the weather is nice, suggest that groups might want to walk around the building or parking lot or even into adjoining neighborhoods.

Designate a spot in the central meeting area for a “virtual” walk, for those for whom the physical activity will be hard.  Arrange ahead of time for a designated leader for this group who will be at the location where the group will gather and lead the group by describing ministries and inviting prayer for each.

Set a report-back time when all small groups gather to share results and close in prayer.  Groups will usually have exciting prayer discoveries, blessings, adventures. 

Our church is located in a Big Ten college town, and we have a large children and youth program, so there is a school-driven cycle of events each year.  In the late summer our Tuesday morning prayer times focus on the campus and the children.  For this post we will concentrate on prayer for the Youth.

We used two sets of verses to begin our prayer time: 

Psalm 78.1-4, which includes “We will not hide them (what we have heard and known) from our children, but tell them to the coming generation.” 

Deuteronomy 6.4-9, the passage after the Ten Commandments which tells us to “teach them diligently to your children.”

And then we used a list of people (teachers, assistants, youth leaders, parents, staff, and the children themselves) and events (trainings, special activities, Sunday schedule) to focus our prayers, asking (like the believers did in Acts 4.29-30) that God would continue to work and that all the people involved would speak the Word with boldness .

Each summer we spend a whole elders meeting praying for the congregation.  Pastor Ben creates an extensive but not exhaustive prayer list by topics.  Members are listed under each topic and we move consecutively through the list, concentrating on the individuals in each section.  As you can see from the list below, many of the topics lead to supplication, but there are also praise, thanksgiving, and a catch-all “Additional Concerns.”

One of the benefits of having names listed under the categories is it provides the elders with an update.  They may need the information for their elder district work, and it will lead to useful conversations on Sunday mornings.

We have learned that even though we have two hours, we need to move more quickly at the beginning to make sure we cover the topics at the end.  The list of topics we used this past summer:

–          Health Concerns

–          Long-term health / lifestyle concerns

–          Moved or Moving

–          Graduating / Going to College

–          Seminary Students

–          Under Discipline

–          Unsaved Family members

–          Missionary concerns

–          Grieving

–          Looking for Work

–          New Members

–          New Staff Positions

–          Interns

–          New Building Team

–          Building Concerns

–          Church Finances

–          Marriages

–          Newly Married couples (11 in last 12 months)

–          Upcoming Marriages (8 in rest of year)

–          New Babies (10 this year so far)

–          Upcoming babies (9 that we know of)

–          Single Parents

–          Adoptions / Foster Families

–          Not seeing at URC

–          Additional Concerns