I know there are plenty of 40 day challenges flying around our society these days, but I am being convicted to start a 40 day prayer challenge for the local church. I know we probably don’t go to the same church, but that doesn’t matter, I am convinced that each and every church can use some prayer. I just can’t help but feeling like the local church is under a great deal of pressure right now. It might be the recent legal action in Texas and Idaho, or maybe it is the financial struggles of our nation or maybe it is just an unrest in my soul. Whatever it might be, I am going to spend the next 40 days praying for our church, it’s leaders, members, guests and neighbors. I hope you will consider joining me! I know that your church, it’s leaders, members guests and neighbors will be blessed.
My plan is to start praying on November 1st and continue until December 10th. (You can certainly choose the dates that work best for you!) This will cover our church while everyone is preparing for the Christmas season, a season when many visitors will enter our doors, and many who don’t know Christ will be seeking to find some direction. It seems like the perfect time to make an impact for the Kingdom.
At first, I was attempting to find a different group of people to pray for each day of the challenge. Our church is fairly small, so I fell short and only came up with 27 groups to pray for. I have included the list just because it might help you come up with ideas of your own. I have decided that I will be using a 7 day rotation, this way I will be praying for each major group of people several times during the challenge. The rotation I will be using looks like this:
Day 1-Pastors and Ministers
Day 2-Boards and Committees
Day 3-Volunteers and Employees
Day 4-Members and Guests
Day 5-Outreach and Church Ministries
Day 6-Community Residence
Day 7-Christians throughout the world
I pray that you and your family will consider accepting my challenge to pray for your local church for the next 40 days. I am so excited to see what our churches will be inspired to do with this little bit of extra prayer, and how many souls we are going to be able to reach this Christmas season!
Prayer List Ideas:
1-Pastors
2-Ministers
3-Council or Board
4-Host Team
5-Lay Leaders
6-Choir or band
7-Behind the scenes (tech crew, altar guild, and such)
8-Sunday school teachers
9-Small group leaders
10-Youth volunteers
11-outreach ministries
12-nursery workers
13-cleaners and repair persons
14-Secretaries, Receptionists and Administrative assistants
15-Committees
16-Children
17-Youth
18-Singles
19-Marriages
20-Families
21-Seniors
22-Members or Regular attendees
23-Occasional attendees
24-Guests
25-Community members in our sphere
26-Community members in need
27-Christians all over the World
No comments:
Post a Comment