On a couple of occasions recently I've been called to lead a time of corporate prayer for ministries I'm involved in that face some real challenges. Of course I asked God how He wanted the prayer times to be led—and He gave me a picture. In my mind's eye, I saw Jesus, similar to how He is described in Revelation 1, walking among these ministries. He was talking to us, sometimes smiling, putting a hand warmly on a shoulder, sometimes looking serious and concerned.

Continuing my reflection, I turned to Revelation and meditated on the first three chapters. With what I read there along with the picture God gave me, I sensed how He wanted the prayer times to be led. The format was very simple. It went like this:

Start with worship. In Revelation 1, John has a vision of Jesus that literally causes him to fall on his face. Although John was probably Jesus' closest friend on earth--intimate enough that he rested his head on Jesus' bosom--this is the glorified Jesus John is seeing now, and his response is holy fear, awe and worship. Worship is an excellent way to start a time of prayer for your church or ministry. Whatever challenges it faces, a vision of Jesus in His glory puts things into perspective. During one of our prayer times we started the worship part by singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" and then offered short prayers of praise and worship.

Thank God for the good. When our churches or ministries are going through hard times, it's easy to lose sight of what's going well. In our recent Revelation-based prayer times, we recalled that as He walked through each of the seven churches in Chapters 2 and 3, Jesus commended the good He saw there. He noticed how different churches had exhibited hard work, perseverance, faithfulness, and so on. So we asked Him to help us see the things in our fellowships that bring Him pleasure. We listened quietly for a while, then thanked Him for what the Holy Spirit brought to mind. There were some surprises--joys we'd nearly lost sight of in the midst of the more recent challenges. Being reminded of and expressing gratitude for those goodnesses gave us courage and hope.

Repent of personal sin. However, Jesus did not only commend the good. He also had things "against" the churches. When He looks at our fellowships, I'm sure He also notices where we're falling short. Often it's easy for us--okay, for me--to think the "problem" is everybody else. But guess what, I'm part of the body, and I make my contribution to its dis-ease. So in our prayer times, we allowed everyone a chance to invite the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and then confess what He revealed. Many of us confessed sins in our reactions to the problems our ministries are facing. Reactions of bitterness, detachment, discouragement, pride, anger, frustration, fear-of-man, arrogance, futility, and so on. It was really good to receive God's forgiveness for these. Doing so put is a much more humble and understanding place to move on to the next part.

Intercede for what is not going well. In each case, those of us who gathered for prayer had ideas of what we each thought was out of line. But as we prayed with this Revelation format, asking Jesu to show us what He saw, some of those ideas were adjusted, others dropped, new ones added. How Jesus saw us was not exactly how we had seen ourselves. He revealed heart attitudes, spiritual warfare, seemingly trivial actions--things we hadn't seen or considered--and led us to confess them on behalf of the body and intercede for repentance.

Close with confidence. At the end of Revelation 3, in a verse familiar to most of us, Jesus says that He is knocking at our "doors." If we will hear Him and invite Him in, He will share a meal with us--He will fellowship with us. Knowing this gives me great confidence. Whatever challenges and distress our ministires find ourselves in, Jesus is still knocking, not giving up, wanting to come in and be with us and lead us into life. So we closed our prayer times with declarations of our confidence in Him--His love, guidance, truth, help, rescue, healing, and so forth.

It's too soon to know the big-picture outcomes of our prayer times. But I do know that all of us who participated went away knowing we'd connected with Jesus, and that inspite of our struggles, He was still with us and for us and and working among us to make things right and whole. If you lead prayer for a ministry that is facing tough situations, perhaps you'd want to try leading a prayer time with the Revelation format. Let me know how it goes.

Two weeks ago I promised that I'd share with you some of the details about how my church prayer ministry set up our Easter Weekend prayer vigil. Before I do that, I want to remind you that each situation is different, so what worked for my church may not work the same way in yours. For that reason, make sure you spend plenty of time in prayer--especially in listening prayer--to see how the Holy Spirit would like to tailor your special time of prayer. With that in mind, here are some basics for how we set up our prayer time.

• We started by praying for favor, and then asking church leadership for permission and support for the prayer vigil. Whenever possible, it's always important to get leadership behind prayer efforts.
• We invited pastors, elders, and deacons to model the importance of prayer by agreeing to facilitate one hour of prayer each. This they readily agreed to do.
• We provided sign up sheets with all 24-hours charted out. Facilitators committed to one hour. After all the elders and deacons had signed up for their times, we took the remaining openings to our prayer team and asked for their help in facilitating. They came through and all our times were covered.
• We put announcements in the bulletin and asked for microphone time in the church service to explain to the congregation what the prayer vigil was, why it was important, and how to participate.
• To enhance the announcement time, for three Sundays in a row, we invited different people to share testimonies of answered prayer (in the areas of finances, relationships, and health).
• We had sign up sheets for congregation participation in the lobby after services. We requested no more than 10 people sign up for each hour of prayer. In this way people were distributed across all 24 hours, and no group was too unwieldy.
• We provided prayer cards to the congregation three Sundays before the vigil, inviting them to share their prayer requests (with or without their name attached). We collected these to pray for during the prayer vigil.
• We asked pastors, staff, and lay ministry leaders to share prayer requests. These were typed up onto sheets to be distributed during the prayer vigil.
• We asked the children to write prayer requests, too. These were done on colorful construction paper cut-outs and kept separate from the adult requests. At the prayer vigil, people were given both adult and children's requests to pray over.
• We prayerfully developed an "order for the hour." This included a Scripture theme, general prayer topics (praise, confession, petition) based on that Scripture, times for intercession, a short time for listening prayer ("God, how would you have me to respond to what I have heard during this hour?") and a closing Scripture prayer to be prayed responsively. We provided a handout with this outline so everyone could easily follow along.
• We offered facilitator training prior to the vigil. During this time we thanked them for their help, instructed them on the way in which the hour would run, gave them suggestions for creating an environment conducive to group prayer, and answered questions.
• We enlisted several "watchmen" to be stationed near the door to welcome people as they came in for their hour of prayer, to point them where they needed to be and answer questions, and (especially during the night hours) provide a sense of safety.
• For four weeks Sundays prior to the vigil, we set aside an hour for prayer team members to meet together to intercede for the prayer vigil and those who would attend.

These things worked well for us. However, as I've already said, God has different purposes and ways for each group. Next time we do a prayer vigil, He may show us an entirely different way to do it. But I hope these points will provide a general idea and encouragement for you as you consider an all-church prayer event.

Have you led an all-church prayer event recently? What did you learn that the rest of us readers could benefit from?