| I want to encourage pastors to implement some type of intercessory prayer focus for the Easter service. I believe we need to focus on prayer first during Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day when as they are times when unsaved people are most likely to think about God and/or attend church. Some things we have done, do and plan to do:1. Have a short time set aside during the Sunday morning service where we ask people to pray specifically for unsaved friends, relatives, co-workers etc. who they would like to see in church with them. We do this on Sunday morning rather than normal prayer meetings or small groups because like most churches that is when the majority attend.2. We have a weekly Tuesday night intercessory prayer meeting and apply the same intercessory methods there.3. Consider some informal home prayer meetings with the same focus. Usually we combine this with snacks but try to avoid the meal so more time is spent on a prayer rather than food focus. 4. Pastors please do not feel discouraged with small attendance at prayer meetings. The most enjoyable time of my pastorate is praying with other believers on Tuesday nights. Rather than focus on how many don't come I rejoice more than 10% of our Sunday morning adult attendees brave the snow, ice etc. to come out and pray after many do hard blue collar labor all day.5. I have no problem if God leads your church to do plays, Easter specials etc. However, the nice thing about intercessory prayer being known as our focus is that it gives me an easy answer when people ask if we can do whatever type of play or musical. I kindly let them know that we want to focus on prayer first as our foundation. Often I answer the question about specials that require practice with the question, Why would I want to burden people with extra things to do when they haven't made the time for the basics of prayer? |