All should launch an aggressive, balanced prayer process that seeks to engage the whole church in prayer. This is more than a prayer ministry. And yet, this church may not be able to set aside a room dedicated only to the purpose of prayer.
In some cases, a church may add to the aggressive, balanced prayer process, a dedicated prayer room – a place set aside as a kind of retreat for personal prayer and small prayer groups to gather. All during the week, people will check in and make use of this prayer room. Intercessors might gather before or even during services to support worship activities in prayer.
A few churches will be able to move beyond a prayer room which is a kind of personal retreat, to a prayer center where prayer is constantly organized and mobilized for both people and ministries. It makes the church a prayed for church! At the prayer center, prayer support for every ministry is mobilized. Prayer training is offered. Prayer stations (physical displays) inspire prayer. People drop by to pray and for prayer. Needs are emailed or called in to the phone center. Intercessors do the work of prayer – praying over church events, praying into needs from around the world, supporting ministries and missionaries in prayer! The community is bathed in prayer.
A very small number of churches will be able to move beyond a prayer center to a 24/7 prayer impact center. In such an arrangement, the church is constantly open for ministry and service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The doors never close. And prayer never stops. Teams are deployed from the church to respond to crises around the city – all hours of the day and night. Wherever there is a need, the church is responding! Wherever there is pain, the church is on-site offering the love of God!
The transformation of the church into a house of prayer for the nations is no small process. Plan on a three-to-five year transition. At first, the response will be glowing! Everyone will declare that they want to learn to pray, and they want the church to be a praying church. But when the newness of that idea wears away, sheer determination will be needed by a devout group of intercessory leaders to pursue the process. It is not merely activities that are being added. You are changing both the culture of the church and the daily disciplines of its members. Quite an undertaking!