A prayer team for a church or a ministry, or even just a personal one for a burden the Lord has put on your heart, is a wonderful way to encourage regular and fervent prayer for a group or a shared objective.
James 5:16b ESV reminds us that “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” It is an opportunity to grow in our trust in God to handle the obstacles we may face as we serve Him.
Bringing people together to pray as a prayer team, we can lift up these prayer needs in a setting that values prayer, can be trusted with sensitive prayer needs, and looks to God with hope to answer these prayers according to His perfect will.
These recommendations and tips guide you through developing and nurturing a prayer team for your church or ministry. It can also be helpful in building a personal prayer team for an ongoing crisis or situation, such as organizing a prayer team for a sick friend or family member.
Towards the end of this article, we’ll take a look at some of the common challenges of a intercessory prayer team or prayer group, and talk about how to overcome them.
For simplicity’s sake, we will talk about a prayer team for a church, pointing out from time to time how this might be different for a ministry prayer team or personal prayer team.
What a Prayer Team Is And What a Prayer Team Does
Why have a prayer team? After all, can’t God do all of this on His own? The answer is, yes, He could do all of this on His own. But He loves us so much and wants us to be in communion with Him as we grow in Him.
He wants us to know Him better and draw closer to Him. Bringing our needs to God in prayer helps us to trust God with the problems that matter the most to us, our friends, and our church or ministry.
It also helps us to see how great and mighty God is, and how we are strong in Him, even when we are weak. As the old hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, states, “What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!” We cannot bear these burdens on our own.
Praying together can be one way God comforts us, as He reminds us that we are not on our own. He is always with us, and the prayers of others can be a significant encouragement.
Some might wonder if organizing prayer is necessary. They might say, shouldn’t we just follow the Holy Spirit in our prayer life? And of course, we should follow the Holy Spirit.
But planning opportunities for prayer gives newer people an entry point for praying together with other people. It gives seasoned pray-ers the accountability of a scheduled event to remind them to pray.
A church prayer team is a group of people who come together to pray for the needs of the church, church members, and other prayer requests. It is a part of supporting the church in its ultimate goal, reaching people for Christ.
In that, a prayer team receives and prays for needs presented to them by church leadership, the pastor, church family, and those who ask for prayer. They foster a culture of prayer in the church, where problems are first faced with prayer.
A prayer team works in support of the other ministries of the work, but is not above the others for being more spiritual, or below the others for doing less “work”. Indeed, prayer accomplishes much!
In Turn: Remembering Our Foundations, Max Lucado says, “When we work, we work. But when we pray, God works.”
Not every prayer team will be formally organized or call itself a prayer team. It may be the faithful group of prayers at a prayer meeting each week.
For more specific prayer focuses, it could be the group of moms and grandmas who get together once a month to pray for their kids, or a collection of people asked to pray for an upcoming event like an outreach or a youth camp.
It can be a prayer ministry team that responds to people who want to pray at the end of a worship service or event. This purpose of a prayer team may be a great fit for some members of a prayer team, while others might feel uncomfortable or unprepared for it.
Other prayer teams receive lists of prayer requests to pray over. Some prayer requests from a proactive perspective, praying for visions, goals, and planned events for the church or ministry.
Some prayer requests come from reacting to a circumstance, such as an illness, crisis, or struggle someone is facing.
Church prayer teams often meet in person, but prayer teams can also take place over the phone, e-mail, Zoom, text messages, or other voice or text apps.
Whether the prayer team has a broad purpose or a specific focus, the goal is to be in prayer for these precious prayer requests, and trust God for the answers.
Vision and Purpose
With so many ideas, opinions, and options on what a prayer team is, it is best to define the vision and purpose of your prayer team.
Here are some questions to ask and pray over as you get ready to organize a prayer team.
Is it for a specific purpose, or is it a more general prayer team?
At a church, this could mean deciding if a prayer team’s purpose is to pray for all the prayer requests of a church, or only for a specific ministry of the church, like the Sunday morning worship service, the children’s ministry, or missionaries.
Churches can have more than one prayer team. Having an organized church prayer team who prays for everything seems ideal, but more people may have it on their hearts to pray for a specific event or ministry.
These focused prayer teams can be a great way to introduce people to the power of prayer and the fellowship of praying with others.
If you have organized people together to pray for you, your friend, or a family member for a need you have on your heart, this is usually focused on one central purpose as you pray someone through an illness or other crisis.
Being honest and clear about the scope of the prayer team can be helpful in organizing and nurturing it. Clear expectations may head off hurt feelings about what they thought the prayer group would be.
This would also be the time to decide if you are only going to ask a few trusted people to be on this prayer team. Some prayer requests are sensitive. The only wise place to share these requests might be with just a few people.
This is more likely for a personal prayer team, or an unpublicized part of a larger prayer team. Ask God to give you wisdom about this. The point isn’t to create a club, but it can be helpful to limit more personal requests to just a few people who have a history of being trustworthy.
How is this group going to meet, and how often?
In Bible times, the communication was pretty much limited to face-to-face interactions and scrolls sent to one another. Today, there are a lot of options!
In person is a common way to meet, but you can explore other ways that might serve your group better. This can especially be the case for ministry organizations that might have their prayer team spread across the country or even the world.
Some groups might not even meet together to pray, instead praying on their own through prayer requests they are sent. This group might be best for an e-mail based group or a text based group.
There are some free or low-cost services that help you have a prayer team via text. One good one is Flocknote, which allows you to set up groups and turn off public replies.
This can be a great alternative to the prayer team group text, as some may be overwhelmed by all the notifications. It also allows them to leave the group on their own instead of starting a new group text when someone wants out.
Find out more information and pricing here. A small church under 40 members currently has access to a “free for life” plan. They also have e-mail solutions that might be useful for a prayer team.
You can also send our prayer team lists via email. This might be a list that you set up in whatever service you use to manage church newsletters, like Mailchimp.
It’s best not to send it out to everyone on your general newsletter list, but just the people who have agreed to be on the prayer team.
Other prayer teams might want to meet through Zoom or Facetime, depending on the size of the group.
While we’ve heard of conference call prayer groups, this can be a difficult setting to have a prayer meeting. Whether it’s people joining late, not muting themselves, or interrupting other prayers, it can just be challenging to have a prayer time that flows smoothly.
If it’s an option you want to pursue, you may want to set up some guidelines/controls so that people enter in muted, and know when it’s their turn to talk/pray.
Who is going to gather and manage the prayer requests?
If you are reading this, you are most likely the leader of the prayer team, the boss of the leader, or someone helping the leader. You might be on staff at the church, or a volunteer. No matter who you are, this is a very important question to answer for your group.
This type of question mostly applies to the church prayer team who prays for all of the church – the current and future direction and vision for the church, as well as prayer needs brought to them.
The leader will typically take this role, or will delegate it to a trusted member of the prayer team. This person should be wise and discreet.
Not every prayer request is appropriate for every setting, and some should be kept private and not shared beyond the leader; others should not be shared outside the group. We go more in depth in our article, “How to Write a Prayer Request.”
That article is helpful as you prepare a prayer list for the prayer team, or if you need to word a prayer request into a few short sentences that respects other people’s privacy or feelings.
You may also choose to incorporate topics and themes to pray for, so that you are praying proactively for different aspects of the church. We have some free prayer sheets for this purpose that you can download here.
Building the Team
A prayer team is often open to anyone who signs up or shows up. But before you start promoting the team and signing up people, it is good to pray about the team and talk to a few people who would be core members of the team, and perhaps future assistant leaders.
These prayer partners would ideally be the people you already go to for prayer. You know they are faithful pray-ers. You have seen a spiritual life that is growing in them. And they don’t share the prayer requests that you’ve given them in the past, unless you clearly gave them permission to share.
While we may be describing those who perhaps pray more naturally or are more practiced at prayer, don’t overlook everyone else.
A prayer team should reflect the diverse spiritual gifts in the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 encourages us in that.
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.”
Everyone has gifts given to them by God. Your prayer team often has people who are good at praying out loud, who are patient and faithful in prayer, and who are gifted at welcoming people onto the team.
But it also needs people who can organize the calendar, who can keep an event on schedule, and have the people skills to lead a group of people.
It’s unusual that one person would have all those gifts. After praying about it, ask the people who you first think of. But also, ask people on the team that are willing and excited to grow in prayer, but might not be known as prayer warriors just yet.
Once you have asked a core team of people, it’s time to get the word out! Here’s an example of something that could be said in church announcements or a church bulletin.
“Prayer is important at [our church.] We want to cover our church, church family, and the community in prayer. Our prayer team meets on Wednesdays at 6:00 PM. Please join us for an hour of prayer over these prayer needs.”
You may have already asked people who will be assistant leaders, but don’t overlook asking other potential team members personally. Some people might have dismissed it out of hand, but would be willing to try it if they were able to get their questions answered personally.
Be prepared to answer these questions.
- Do I have to pray out loud?
- Do I have to attend every week?
- Is it really praying for an hour? Is it hard to pray for an hour?
- Can I come once to check it out?
- Who are we praying for?
Many people might be willing to try a prayer team or prayer meeting if they felt they had enough information to make a decision.
Structuring the Prayer Team
Before the first meeting, it’s great to have a structure in place to guide your meeting. A plan can help the prayer team stay on the task of prayer.
Some prayer teams use a structure similar to the ACTS model of prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Intercession. This allows the prayer time to not only focus on prayer needs, but the beauty, majesty, and provision of the One we pray to.
Moms in Prayer is a great example of this, with their 4 Steps of Prayer: Praise, Silent Confession, Thanksgiving, and Intercession. They focus their intercession time by praying through God’s Word on the characteristic they are featuring for the meeting.
Decide if there will be any teaching beforehand; this is more likely to happen at a weekly church meeting.
Consider if you will have any allotted fellowship time. Sometimes prayer meetings can leave little time for prayer when people are talking about what they want to pray about, and not actually praying.
If you decide that you will not have fellowship beforehand, and someone comes with a urgent personal prayer need or in crisis, proceed with prayer and wisdom. Sometimes, God wants us to be a listening ear.
Other times, lovingly saying, “Let’s go to God in prayer for that,” and starting the prayer time with that prayer need (even if it’s not the next thing on the prayer “schedule”), is the best thing that you could do for that person. Make sure to follow up with that person after prayer, taking time to listen if they need to talk more.
Preparing a list of prayer points (like these prayer points for prayer meetings) and prayer requests for your prayer team meeting helps you cover what you have prepared to pray for that week.
Covering a specific topic or theme each meeting, as well as urgent prayer requests, helps a prayer team focus beyond the circumstances of the day.
Consider if you will be splitting off from a large prayer group to smaller groups, perhaps when you get to personal prayer needs or an intercession part of the prayer time.
For prayer meetings, it’s best to keep the schedule you set for the meeting. Begin at the scheduled time, and end your meeting promptly. This is a way to respect other people’s time; they may be more likely to return, especially if they were concerned about the time commitment.
Practical Steps to Start
Here’s a handy checklist on how to start a prayer team at a church. It can be modified for ministry prayer teams or personal prayer teams.
- Pray over this project for wisdom, especially as you narrow the vision and purpose for the prayer team.
- Decide on:
- A broad focus or a specific purpose
- An open team or an invite-only team
- The method of meeting or communication (in person, text, email, online, conference call), and meeting frequency
- The structure of the meeting – casual and unplanned, or with a structured schedule
- The method of prayer request collection, whether it will be determined by the leader, or compiling prayer requests that may come in via prayer request cards, email, social media, texts, or phone calls.
- Invite a few core members to establish a tone for the team, and to help you recruit others to the team. Consider designating one person or a team of people as the prayer request coordinators, who will screen and compile the prayer request list.
- Publicize the team, announcing it in church/through your general communication channels, but also invite more people personally.
- Start the team, sticking to the intended plan for the first few weeks or months, and reevaluate after that time to incorporate feedback.
Encouraging Participation
There are probably a handful of people you know who will sign up right away for your prayer team. They love prayer, and are comfortable praying in a group setting.
There are others who might be reluctant to try the group because they have never been on a prayer team before. They might think they are unable to or are bad at praying out loud or praying with other people.
Maybe they are concerned about the time commitment. Or they haven’t learned a lot about prayer and need some encouragement and knowledge to help them along the way.
This is another reason it is good to have a clear vision of what you think God wants the prayer team to be. Is it a place for people to grow in prayer? Are you willing to spend time discipling people in prayer, or is this for people who are already serious about prayer?
These may be hard questions to answer. Some situations and circumstances might warrant more mature and experienced believers who are ready to faithfully pray with you. These types of teams shouldn’t be publicized and should be invite-only.
If the prayer team is open to everyone, then you will need to be ready to faithfully and patiently guide people through prayer.
This is part of creating a nurturing culture of prayer in your church or ministry. This atmosphere can help build the type of prayer warriors that you want in your church.
One thing you may want to do as you start and continue the prayer team is to share the stories of answered prayers in people’s lives – with their permission, of course.
Sharing our stories of how God answered our prayers can inspire others to learn more about prayer and spend time praying.
When sharing these testimonies, it can be tempting to only share the happiest outcomes – cancer healed, a prodigal returned, or a financial blessing. Yet it is also important to talk about the strength during difficult times, the closer walk with God, and the hope in Jesus Christ.
Showing the bigger picture of a life of prayer – that our prayers aren’t guaranteed to be answered according to our will, timing, and purposes, but God’s – is a beautiful and important lesson to learn.
These testimonies can be shared in person, online, through social media, or in a small group – wherever they would be encouraging.
You can also have one-time prayer events, like a special speaker or workshop on prayer, that might give people a taste of what your prayer team would be like. This could help introduce people to your prayer team.
Collecting personal prayer requests (like with these printable prayer request cards) is another way to remind people about the prayer team and invite them to join. Other visual reminders include setting up a church prayer wall, or having a prayer room.
Framing the church as a “house of prayer” can be helpful as you describe the prayer ministry at your church.
Overcoming Challenges
You would hope that a prayer team wouldn’t have any problems, that everyone would always love each other and be unified with one another. Yet we live in a fallen world, and we are going to have problems, even with other Christians.
Being clear about the structure and guidelines from the start can be a good way to handle expectations of what the group is, but it won’t solve all your problems. Here are a few of the common problems of a prayer team, and how you can approach them.
The size of the prayer team. You prayed about a prayer team, and determined it is what God called you to do. But no one or only a few people have shown up. What should you do?
First, keep praying. Just because no one is joining you right now doesn’t mean that they won’t in the future. Pray for that other person to pray with!
Second, seek feedback from a church leader, or another church leader. They might point out a scheduling conflict, like don’t have a prayer meeting on Friday nights during high school football season if you want parents to participate. Or they might point out a flaw on how it was presented.
Third, be content. You might not have the largest prayer team, but your prayers are being heard by our mighty God! He will honor those prayers.
Confidentiality. Moms in Prayer puts it this way: “What is prayed in the group, stays in the group.” This is an important principle. This should not be a place to gossip, or to obtain fodder for gossip. Instead, it should be a place where people can safely share their prayer requests.
Length of Meeting. You set aside an hour for your prayer meeting, but it quickly turned into two hours of praying. You love it, but you notice the numbers dwindling. What should you do?
This may vary from church to church. If your church regularly goes over meeting times but maintains the same type of attendance, then you may want to look elsewhere for the cause of the lower attendance.
But if most of your church events start promptly and end on time, then you may want to consider doing the same. It builds trust that they can go for the hour and have time for their other commitments or needs. The Holy Spirit can still work in a planned event.
Attitude. This challenge can present itself in various ways. Because of the more spiritual nature of a prayer team, some prayer group members can see themselves superior to other people at church, judging everyone who doesn’t attend a weekly meeting.
This may extend to how they treat other people in the group, especially if they don’t pray the same “right” way that they have decided is best.
This can be addressed as a group, as well as personally. In either case, it’s best to underline how we are all serving the Lord at the church. It’s a privilege to pray, but it’s also a privilege to clean up after an event, teach a Sunday School class, or hand out bulletins.
Also speak about how we are to support each other as we learn. Should bad teaching be allowed to spread? Of course not! But consider gentle and firm correction for incorrect prayer theology.
And consider whether you are trying to correct something that is to your preference rather than accurate theology.
Group purpose. You organized a prayer team, but it has become a mom’s fellowship group. You scheduled a weekly prayer meeting, but it’s a time where people sit around and complain about everything inside and outside the church.
Sometimes groups evolve into what God wants them to be. Maybe the young moms need the fellowship and the prayer. But other times, groups have devolved into something that doesn’t honor the Lord, like the complainers.
When faced with a needed change, it can be helpful to put the group on pause for a couple of weeks or a month to pray about it or seek counsel. Then, on the first meeting back, take time to reiterate the goals and objectives of the prayer team.
This can be a difficult situation to navigate; carefully share your situation with trusted friends for intercession and advice.
Discouragement. Has your prayer team faced a lot of challenges lately? Does it seem like every prayer request is met with a “not now” or a “no” answer from the Lord?
This is an opportunity to remind yourself and the members of the prayer team that God wants you to be faithful, even when you can’t see Him working. Our faithful God answers our prayers, but not always in the ways we pictured.
Or, you may be facing discouragement because you are tired. The prayer team is harder than you thought, and it’s hard to keep going every week.
This is a good time to share the leadership of the team with others. Can you trade off leading the group meetings? Can other team leaders compile the prayer list?
Try not to make big decisions when you are discouraged. Most decisions can wait another two weeks; see if you feel the same way then.
We all go through times of discouragement, but God uses these trials to make us stronger in Him.
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More Resources on Prayer
These articles and organizations offer more insights on developing an intercessory prayer team.
Moms in Prayer. As referred to earlier in this article, Moms in Prayer has a great prayer team model of moms praying for their kids. If this is the purpose of your prayer team, this can be a great organization to consider establishing your prayer group under.
If praying exclusively for your kids isn’t the objective of your group, it is still a great example of a well-organized prayer team and structure. Spend time looking at their objectives to see if a similar structure would work for you.
Lifeway. The Kendrick brothers, who brought us the War Room movie, offer this advice on starting a church prayer team: How to Launch a Church Prayer Ministry.
ChurchTrac. Is your prayer team more of a prayer chain? This Do’s and Don’ts of a Church Prayer Chain gives some helpful tips for organizing a prayer team system at your church.
These three books are a great way to learn more about prayer.
- Start with Praise is from the president of Moms in Prayer, Sally Burke, and dives deep into the four steps of prayer.
- The Complete Works of E. M. Bounds on Prayer is a recommended book to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of prayer.
- With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray is regarded as one of the classic books about prayer.
Organizing a church, ministry, or personal prayer team can be challenging, but the work is well worth it.
Praying for the needs of the church, the church family, and other prayer requests helps us see the power of prayer as God hears the prayers of His people and answers them according to His will.
Spend time praying over these steps and choosing the right solutions for your church or ministry.
May God bless you as you serve Him in this way!
If you liked 5 Steps to Develop an Effective Prayer Team, you may also like 156 Ideas for Your Church Prayer List and Prayer Points for Church Service.