From Kevin DeYoung.
They are useful for everyone’s prayer life, whether you participate in prayer meetings or for your own personal prayers. We learn a lot about prayer ourselves as we listen to the prayers of others.
Here are the headlines, details at his blog:
1. Prepare.
2. Use forms with freedom.
3. Pray Scripture.
4. Don’t footnote.
5. Leave the preaching for the sermon.
6. Share some details of congregational life, but not all.
7. Pray so that others can follow you easily.
8. Keep it relatively brief.
9. Remember you are praying with and on behalf of others.
10. Order your prayer. Make sure there is a flow and direction.
11. Beware of verbal ticks.
12. Show proper reverence, confidence, and emotion.
13. Pray before you pray.
In particular, I’d like to draw attention to points 8-11.
Five minutes is long enough. If you have problems write it out and time yourself or keep your eyes open and look at the clock.
For those who have a big struggle keeping to a reasonable time, omit the words ‘just’ and ‘pray’ or ‘we pray’ from the prayer. That’ll probably save 3-5 minutes.
Try and structure it so that people can follow a flow, even if you vary that structure from time to time.
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