IDEAS THAT WORK - Christianity Today

REDISCOVERING THE PRAYER VIGIL

by Ralph F. Wilson

A 75-year-old man beamed at me and said, “At home I have trouble praying for five minutes. Here, an hour seems too short.” As we left the church at dusk, having prayed for an hour, our replacements knelt to begin another hour of prayer.

It wasn’t always like this. In our church, intercessory prayer had been meager, enthusiasm for prayer virtually nonexistent. For years I had struggled to lead members into a richer prayer life. Then, two years ago, we discovered a time-tested method to challenge and stretch people in prayer: the prayer vigil.

The idea is centuries old. Vigil indicates a time of vigilance or wakefulness, a watch. People used to keep vigils the night before a religious feast.

We schedule a prayer vigil two or three times a year. Good Friday naturally lends itself to prayer. We’ve also tried early September, before the program year gets underway, and the beginning of the Advent season.

The nice thing about a prayer vigil is simplicity of organization. We circulate a sign-up sheet with hour-long blocks of time, provide prayer resources, open the sanctuary at the beginning of the vigil, and see that the last person locks up.

For instance, last year we set aside noon to midnight on Good Friday for our people to pray an hour at a time in the church sanctuary. The previous Sunday we circulated the sign-up sheet in the shape of a twelve-hour clock. I later asked specific people if they would shift from crowded hours to the one or two vacant hours.

Prayer resources

Some people hesitate to commit themselves for an hour. “That was hard for me,” John confessed, “because I didn’t know what I was going to pray about for a whole hour.” People often feel inadequate at prayer; they don’t want to set up themselves to fail like the disciples in the Garden.

To allay these fears, we offer suggestions on how to spend the hour. We say, “Praying for an hour is like sitting down for a leisurely meal with a friend rather than ordering a burger and fries at the drive-up window. As you spend the time together, you find a lot of things to say.”

Here are some of the things we suggest:

Start by bringing along some things to discuss with God: your Bible, a hymnal, perhaps a church directory, and our church’s current prayer list.

Be yourself. Why wouldst thou pray like Brother So-and-So? Talk to God as you’d talk to your best friend.

Get comfortable. The stiffer you feel, the more formal your relationship will be. Sitting is fine. If kneeling helps, do it. You might want to take an hour’s walk as you talk with your Friend.

Try praying out loud, though not loud enough to disturb others. Being able to hear yourself pray improves your concentration. You’ll find your mind doesn’t wander as easily, and you can pray more fervently.

Don’t feel you have to do all the talking, however. Discuss something with the Lord, and then be silent. Sometimes God uses the times of listening to implant his answers in our minds. Gradually you’ll find prayer can be a conversation.

Consider these time suggestions. Don’t worry if your times are different, but these figures will get you started.

Preparation (one minute): Ask God to help you spend this time profitably with him. Give yourself to him for this hour.

Confession (four minutes): Spend a moment going over with him recent sins that weigh on you, but don’t dredge up old ones. Read 1 John 1:9. Ask for his cleansing, and then accept it by faith and thank him for it.

Praise and thanksgiving (nine minutes): Sing your adoration to the Lord using a hymnal or choruses you know. Now start to thank him for his goodness to you and your friends. There’s a special sense in which God “inhabits” the praises of his people (Ps. 22:3). As your heart begins to adore him, you’ll sense his presence more deeply.

Petition (nine minutes): Pray about life’s difficulties. Use this time to talk over with the Lord your own struggles. Discuss with him your relationship with your loved one or spouse, your family, your financial needs, your studies or job.

Intercession (nine minutes): Pray for friends, loved ones, relatives, neighbors, fellow workers. Don’t just read a list of names to God, but talk to him about their lives and needs. You can boldly ask him for their salvation. Ask God to bring Christians into their lives, to alter circumstances, and to give you opportunities for witness.

Prayer for the church (twelve minutes): Call on God for a deep renewal of love for him. Pray for your pastor and church leaders. Intercede for the Sunday school children and the youth, the families, the singles, the widows, the sick and shut-ins. Call on God for an increase in giving so the church can accomplish its work. Pray for the Christian organizations working with the college students, children, military personnel, and the homeless in your community.

Prayer for the nation (eight minutes): Pray that God will guide our president and legislators, our justices and judges, our governors and mayors, our police and firefighters. Pray for righteousness in government and a public policy sensitive to the needs of the oppressed both here and abroad.

Prayer for other nations (eight minutes): Pray for the work of Christ throughout the world. Intercede for unreached peoples. Pray for missionaries, for Third World pastors and churches, for the people of God who are suffering persecution. Pray for peace. Ask God to give food, shelter, and hope to the hungry.

Those prayers add up to sixty minutes. As people begin to visualize themselves actually praying for an hour, they are more willing to risk it. After one successful experience, they’re eager to sign up the next time.

Helping it happen

Entering the sanctuary for their hour, people find several helps on a table. Next to a log-in sheet are brief instructions for first-timers. A globe and letters from our missionaries stimulate prayer for the world. Slips with prayer requests from the previous Sunday service are found next to a constantly growing list on which participants enter other needs.

A kneeler is placed at the front of the church, though most of our people pray sitting with bowed heads. But some walk while they pray. Occasionally someone prays prostrate on the floor.

If several sign up for the same hour, they often worship and pray as a group for a portion of the time and then intercede separately for the remainder. One of our women remembers: “There were two or three people there. We sang as well as prayed. It brought a closeness we don’t experience ordinarily. I feel we’re still closer today as a result.”

Strangely, even praying alone brings a sense of unity with others. “Knowing that brothers and sisters are all praying about the same thing really stirs my faith,” Carol commented.

Before our first vigil, I didn’t think most people would be willing to commit themselves to a whole hour. Not so. After his first vigil, a 30-year-old man told me, “I just lost track of time. Before I realized it, I was there almost two hours. ” Cutting the time short-circuits this prayer experience that can permanently enrich the participants’ devotional lives.

Sensitivity to the congregation’s present level of commitment is important, however. Once after successful twenty-four-hour vigils, we tried thirty-six hours. That was just too ambitious for the size of the church; we had trouble getting enough people. We’ve found it’s better to begin small and grow gradually.

Benefits

“Can’t we just pray at home?” some ask. Not if we want the unique advantages of a vigil. The specialness of praying in the sanctuary lifts this hour above the sometimes-discouraging experiences of daily prayer. “At home,” Louise finds, “there seem to be so many distractions and interruptions. You think about all the things that need doing. But when you come to the quiet sanctuary, you can feel God’s presence.”

Rick, a father of five, explains: “The hour is so refreshing. I sense the Lord’s presence in a way I sometimes don’t when I’m off by myself for just a few minutes.”

The benefits endure. Our people have learned to intercede for one another. Having experienced the joys of a full hour, people are praying longer at home. The vigils have renewed our motivation as well. Instead of praying out of guilt, we’re finding a new longing to spend time before the Lord. We also have seen marked answers to prayer.

We still have a long way to go before we’re the kind of praying church we ought to be, but the prayer vigil has opened the door to a new dimension of prayer, allowing a fresh breeze of the Spirit to blow across our congregation.

Ralph Wilson is pastor of Lindley Avenue Baptist Church in Tarzana, California.

MORE IDEAS

Working Out Bugs in Visitation

When Pastor John Paul Clark arrived at Wesley Free Methodist Church in Anderson, Indiana, a few years ago, he began helping one faithful layman make evangelistic visits every Thursday. Soon, however, they encountered three obstacles, ones that hinder many churches’ efforts in visitation evangelism:

They needed more volunteers to help make visits.

They ran out of good prospects.

They often didn’t find people at home.

Clark tackled the first obstacle by announcing evangelism training for those who might be interested in making visits. Twenty people showed up for the first session, though only ten returned for the second.

“I must have scared some people away,” Clark admits. “But I was pleased that ten stayed, since that represented 15 percent of the congregation, and church-growth specialist Peter Wagner says usually only about 10 percent of a congregation has the spiritual gift of evangelism.”

Clark works to retain volunteers by beginning each Thursday evening with a brief training session (15 minutes) followed by prayer (10 minutes). “It’s a shot in the arm for them,” he says.

The next obstacle was the lack of prospects. To solve the problem, the church outlined a 5,000-home area surrounding it and obtained names and addresses for the homes through a city directory and credit bureau report (for families that have recently moved). The church then printed a six-page, full-color brochure explaining the church to unchurched people. Each month, 200 to 300 brochures are mailed with a letter from Pastor Clark. Five or six days later, several women in the church phone the homes that received them.

“The callers simply inquire whether the people received the brochure and where they attend church,” Clark says. “If they don’t attend anywhere, the callers invite them and ask if they’d be interested in a brief visit by a couple of people from the church.”

With the new procedure, Clark says, “We have more prospects than we can handle.”

Still, finding people at home is a challenge. To make it easier for the visitation teams, Clark provided each with at least 50 prospects from the brochures/calls. From these, a team needs to line up only two appointments for each Thursday.

“It takes work to line up appointments,” one team member told Clark recently, “but the super part is, we spend most of our time talking with people rather than running door to door to find somebody home.”

Further, these prospects are the team’s to visit and revisit. If, after the first 15-minute visit, the prospect is open to another, the team may return. “We realize that often we have to build relationships with people before they will accept Christ,” explains Clark. “One family was visited 20 times before they received Christ.”

By working on the three obstacles to visitation evangelism, Wesley Free Methodist has seen significant growth. In a year the church’s Sunday morning attendance rose from an average of 60 to more than 110.

Another church, Airline United Methodist in Houston, Texas, has found an effective way to recruit volunteers for home visitation.

Prospective visitors are asked to make visits only one night each month. People are more likely to consent because it takes only two hours each month. In addition, people can choose which Monday of the month they will serve. Through this approach, enough teams have formed to ensure that visits will be made each week.

To make involvement less threatening for some, each new person is paired with someone experienced in home visitation, according to Pastor R. Pat Day. And the church provides a nursery on the fourth Monday of each month so parents with small children can get involved.

Drive-Time Devotions

Members of suburban churches often commute long distances to and from work each day. The long drive or train ride may eat up time, but it also offers an opportunity to build a regular devotional life.

Phil Nelson, pastor of Oak Brook (Illinois) Christian Center, has found a way to encourage that process.

Each week he prepares a 60-minute tape that contains six short devotional messages, about eight to ten minutes in length. Usually the messages provide brief commentary on a few verses of Scripture with selected insights drawn out; in sequence they gradually cover an entire book or section of Scripture.

To receive the tapes, a member pays a one-time $5 fee. The church has a tape rack in the vestibule, and each Sunday, members return the previous week’s tape and pick up the next one. By recycling tapes, costs are kept low.

“I thought the tapes would be used only by commuters,” says Nelson, “but people have told me they use them for family devotions. Some listen to them while doing chores around the house, and several truck drivers are using them on their long-distance runs.”

Ministry Fair

A shortage of people to staff Sunday school and other Christian education ministries-it’s a common problem.

College Church in Wheaton (Illinois) has developed a creative solution.

One Sunday last May they held a “Celebration of Service.” The morning worship service, focusing on why Christians serve others, was shortened to 45 minutes. Then the congregation proceeded to the fellowship hall where they found 12 booths, each displaying pictures, crafts, brochures, curricula, and other items that explained the various Christian education ministries.

Handouts gave details: ministry goals, qualifications for volunteers, time commitment involved, and contact people.

In addition, at each booth people could talk to those who were already involved in the ministry.

“People circulated, asked questions, and gathered information,” says Mark Wheeler, pastor of Christian education. “Many signed up that day.”

Not only did the ministry fair give the Christian Education Board a head start on recruiting, Wheeler explains, “it also educated the congregation about the areas of service and how many people are needed.”

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