Our groups end their time together in prayer as separate, smaller groups of men and women. We love this. We encourage this. However, we know that some groups struggle to see more than a handful of group members participate when it comes to praying out loud, or maybe you feel like your group follows the same prayer format week after week and you'd like some fresh ideas.
If either of these are true for your group, here are 6 ideas you might try:
- Have group members separate even further into groups of 2 or 3 to pray (moving to separate spaces in the room - or to other rooms - can be beneficial).
- Ask each person to write out a simple, one sentence prayer request on an index card. Have them pass their card to the person on their left. Take turns reading the cards aloud.
- Ask for simple, single sentence prayers. No use of the word "and" allowed. Ask that each person pray at least once, and as many times as they'd like.
- Read a Psalm together and ask everyone to take turns reading each verse. A few suggestions:
- Psalm 19
- Psalm 63
- Psalm 84
- Psalm 96
- Psalm 119 (This chapter is written in 8-verse sections. Have each person read a section until you've gone all the way around the group.)
- Use a fill-in-the-blank prayer format. Have group members pray and fill in the blanks for the following 3 sentences:
- "God, I'm thankful for____________."
- "Father, I praise you because You are__________________."
- "Lord, please help_________________."
- Establish a rule that just for tonight, group members can only pray for a personal concern. Nothing for your neighbor's mother-in-law's co-worker's knee surgery.
