From my blog at www.redriverministries.org/blog Prayer When I look at the overall landscape of the church today, I notice a disturbing trend. There is, in the average church in the United States, a lack of prayer. I have seen this throughout my Christian walk, so this is not anything new. However, prayer is one of the most vital, life-sustaining ministries of a church. The average church service usually looks something like this: Call to Worship (usually either a Scripture or a greeting of some kind, this may also be when the announcements are read, and the prayer requests of the church are prayed over) Song Song Prayer over the Offering Receive the Offering Song Sermon (usually the pastor will pray briefly at the beginning and end of the sermon) Invitation Benediction Dismiss (with prayer) Now, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this model. It works for many churches. In fact, the church I attend uses a model that is fairly close to this one. However, it is lacking. Where are the times of prayer? Unfortunately, at least in the American context, we are so focused on schedule that we have decided to cut out some of the more lengthy aspects of the worship service. We have done so to our own detriment. We are a people who are so entertainment driven that the idea of sitting and praying for even five minutes during a church service has become sheer boredom. We don’t stand for it in our churches because it does nothing to move the service along. What a pity! I can remember going to some older churches where prayer was still revered as part of worship and we would spend anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, on Sunday morning, pouring our hearts out to the Lord. We would pray for the sick among us. We would pray for the pastor. We would pray for the lost around us. We would pray for the rest of the service, that God would have His way. We would pray and seek forgiveness of our own sins and shortcomings. Whatever we prayed for, we would pray. This might not work in every church. Some people would be uncomfortable going into a church where the entire congregation is praying. However, I want to propose a few small changes to the worship service model that we saw earlier. Call to Worship from Scripture Prayer over the Service Song Song Pastoral Prayer over the Congregation Receive the Offering Prayer of Thanksgiving over the Offering Song Sermon (with prayer at beginning and end as usual) Congregational Prayer of Repentance and Restoration to God and Response to the Sermon Invitation Benediction with Prayer to close the Service. This revised model for a worship service will only work if we are less focused on getting out at a certain time and more focused on spending time in prayer and communion with God. Prayer is our way of communicating our needs to the Father. He knows what we have need of already, but that should not be a reason for us to be lazy in our prayer life, especially as a church body. Of course, this revised model is not a “one size fits all” type of model either. There are most likely many churches who would benefit from making changes here and there. However, the important thing to remember is that we need to be praying in our worship services as well as singing and listening to a sermon. The average church service lasts about an hour to an hour and a half. During that time most churches spend less than five total minutes in prayer. We can do better. We must do better if we are to see a change in the world around us.