GREAT THINGS BEGIN WITH PRAYER!

Therefore I say to you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you will receive it, and it will be so for you.

— Mark 11:24

Just as prayer is a foundation for a follower of Jesus Christ — prayer must be a foundation to the course of creating a discipleship process for your church. Please do not take this for granted or skip over this critical element to get to the more logistical parts of the process. We strongly encourage you to make an intentional decision now to strengthen the prayer life of yourself, your ministry team, and your whole church throughout this process.

How many times have you heard someone say, "Start with prayer," when they were sharing some new ministry initiative? Well, you are hearing it one more time. Start with prayer! We believe making disciples is the most important ministry in any church, and every other ministry in the church flows out of this effort. As such, prayer and discernment are critical to leading us throughout this entire process. In this chapter, we will look at three separate but interconnected types of prayer in your church as they pertain to this overall initiative of creating a discipleship process for your church. First, we will share some thoughts and suggestions concerning your church's prayer team. Next, we will discuss prayer walking and how it adds a vital element to the program. Finally, we will look at the spiritual discipline of prayer and discernment for those individuals charged with creating a discipleship process for your church.

Prayer Team

Most churches have some type of prayer team in place. If your church does not currently have a prayer team, now would be a great time to initiate that ministry. Ask God's Holy Spirit to help you identify a few prayer-warriors who would be willing to meet at least weekly for an hour or so and pray. You might consider having everyone in the church do a spiritual gifts survey of some type to help you identify those who have the gift of prayer. Do not rush the process of identifying these individuals. Get to know them and ensure you have a good understanding of their current maturity as a disciple, and especially their prayer life, before you ask them to pray about being on this team. Even if the only person on the team at first is you, go ahead and start there. Pray for God to help you see others in your congregation who are gifted in prayer to join you on this journey.

Once you are satisfied with who is on your prayer team, focus on what they are praying about. Many churches have a prayer team that meets to pray for things such as members who are sick or in the hospital, concerns and praises of the congregation, or maybe events and activities of the church. Those are all great things. However, those examples are all inward focused prayers. If your church currently has a prayer team and you have a list of what they are praying about this week, take a look for yourself. What percentage of those prayer concerns and praises would you say are inward (connected in some way to the congregation), and what percentage are outward? Our challenge for you is to move the prayer needle for your church a little more outward than inward.

Depending on your situation, it might be best to start small and intentionally grow the outward percentage over time. Here are a few suggestions of outwardly focused prayers for your prayer team: local schools, teachers, students, principles, first responders, businesses, other churches, community leaders, and those who do not have a church home. Want to take this to another level? Have someone find out the names of a few of these individuals so you can pray for them by name. Imagine the power of praying by name for the local fire chief, police captain, mayor, school principal, business owner, and pastor of the church nearby! Each week, the prayer team should pray for those God is sending your church as first-time guests.

How does this connect to creating a discipleship process for your church? We believe a strong prayer team is the foundation upon which a church's discipleship process must be built. The prayers of this team will foster the transformation of the whole congregation, and prepare the way for all the work that will follow. To state the obvious, the prayer team should pray for the pastor, staff and leaders, along with the team in charge of creating and launching your discipleship process.

Prayer Walking

Prayer walking has been defined as "praying on-site with insight." To prayer walk is to take prayer outside the church walls as we walk through an area. Our prayers are "low profile and unobtrusive in appearance." We pray in the very places we expect to see God bring forth answers. Once your church has a prayer team in place and you are seeing fruit from that ministry, it is now time to take your congregation outside the walls to pray and listen for God's Spirit. Many people only know one posture of prayer: eyes closed, hands clasped, head bowed. While this is certainly a wonderful posture to speak with and listen to our creator, there are many other equally acceptable postures of prayer. One of them is for us to pray as we are walking.

We are going to share some best practices with you concerning prayer walking based on our experiences with other churches. Please do not see them as a how-to list, but as a starting point for you to adjust as needed, based on your individual church ministry. Read through the following items and then put together a plan for prayer walking with your congregation.

• Invite a group of people to join you at the church for a prayer walking event. Try to get as many people from the congregation as possible. Prioritize getting ministry leaders, staff, prayer team, discipleship pathway team, and other influential members of your church.

• Open with a prayer and a reading from scripture. You might consider Joshua 1:3: "I am giving you every place where you set foot."

• Explain the objective of prayer walking. "We are going to cover the areas around our church with prayer. We should pray for what we see and for what we hear from God. What is God saying to and showing us today?"

• Ensure everyone that all postures of prayer are welcomed by God. In fact, there are examples in the Bible of people praying to God...