Why do we pray on Sunday?

I long to be a praying church. I pray for us to be a praying church. I encourage private praying and having a prayer partner as often as I can, but it is also imperative for us to be praying when we gather corporately. I don’t believe the only measure of a praying church is prayer meetings or the number of minutes given to prayer on a Sunday morning, but we do have to model it in our gathered meetings. In Acts 6:4, when the pressure on the apostles of the early church was mounting and the first deacons were to be appointed, the apostle/elders determined “we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” Later as Paul was instructing Timothy in the order of the local church, he writes – “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people.” (1 Timothy 2:1) We take from this that the primary ministry of the elders is to be the Word and Prayer, and that various prayers are to be offered corporately by God’s people.

As elders, we gather regularly to pray for each other, for the people of Redeemer, and for the wisdom to lead well in mission. We know we can’t ask others to make prayer a priority if it is not also a priority in our personal lives and in our elder team. We also have established a pattern in our Sunday service to invoke the Lord’s blessing as we begin our service with a Call to Worship, and most Sundays we pause in our singing for Kingdom Prayer. This is a Pastoral Prayer beginning with Adoration and Thanksgiving, then Intercession as we ask God to Build His Kingdom through us (praying for other local churches and ministries in our community, along with the work of God among the nations), Build His Church through us (praying for specific dynamics within our local church Redeemer), and Care for Your People through us (praying for Redeemer members by name). This is modeled corporately with the intention that these are the prayers God’s people will then carry into the week, praying alone and with one another (our monthly Kingdom Prayer Guide). Confessional prayer is at the heart of our Family Sundays where we gather around the Lord’s Table remembering the finished work of Christ. Explaining what we do and why we do it is easier than actually doing it, so please join us in praying for Redeemer to be a praying church … and make patterns of prayer central in your day and week.