t is a famous story. Charles

Spurgeon loved to take people to

the “boiler room” of his church.

Confused why he wanted to show

them the heating system, they soon

learned that it was actually a prayer

room where hundreds of Spurgeon’s

church members met to pray for him

during his sermons.

While he preached, his people prayed. And God heard.

Spurgeon is still called “the Prince of Preachers.” His

preaching stirred more than the ten thousand listeners

that gathered each Sunday to hear him in 19th century

London. Manuscripts of his messages stirred people

across the globe, and his sermons are still read today.

One church prayed and nearly every Bible-believing

church in America has beneﬁted—because it would

be very unusual if your pastor has not read Charles

Spurgeon.

God is not partial to Londoners over a century ago.

He is ready to answer prayer today. He is looking to

demonstrate his power in any church, anywhere, that

will give him that same opportunity to honor prayer.

What does your church need? If your ﬁrst answer is

some program or ministry, or change in music style, or

better preaching, then prayer won’t be a priority.

There is a quotation from A.J. Gordon hanging on my

ofﬁce wall: “You can do more than pray after you have

prayed, but you can never do more than pray until you

have prayed.” If we really believe what our churches

need is more of God then we will pray ﬁrst and

work on everything else afterwards. Usually it

is the other things we depend on to make our

churches what we want them to be. But if we

became serious about making our churches

what God wants them to be, prayer would be

given the highest priority.

How can we increase prayer in our churches?

I suggest looking at prayer in three categories:

formal, informal, and personal.

By formal I mean the scheduled, structured

prayer times in a church. These need to

be planned and they need to be attended.

Encourage your leadership by attending

the prayer times already scheduled or

encouraging them to start scheduling them.

These may be a mid-week prayer service, a

prayer time for the sermon right before the

morning service (or during the sermon as one of my

churches did for me), a Saturday morning men’s prayer

breakfast, or a ladies’ prayer time perhaps connected to

a new mothers ministry. My church has a ladies’ prayer

time speciﬁcally to intercede for the children and their

teachers in school, especially in public school.

Informal prayer is given spontaneously as the church,

the body of Christ, interacts. As believers gather for

fellowship, a time of prayer—perhaps for an urgent need

of a beloved member—can be such a blessing. When

people share about a trial, how meaningful when the

person listening says, “Can I pray with you right now

about that?” I often saw two people with heads bowed in

the hallways of my church before and after services.

Finally, personal prayer is the private praying each

member does alone. Jesus called this our “closet”

(Matthew 6:6) where we commune with God and

intercede for the church. A speciﬁc place and time

for this is best for most people who otherwise forget.

Make a prayer list or use prayer cards such as the ones

missionaries provide. You can make your own prayer

cards on index cards for the pastors, Sunday school

teachers, shut-ins, and others you want to remember.

Don’t be discouraged if you are not a praying person

now. Just determine to start by praying short prayers

throughout the day as God brings things to your mind.

Charles Spurgeon said he never prayed more than

ﬁve minutes at a time, but he never went more than

ﬁve minutes without praying. Didn’t the Apostle Paul

encourage us to “pray without ceasing”? This is what he

meant.

Prayer doesn’t have to be difﬁcult to arrange in our lives.

If we think we need to ﬁnd a quiet place, get on our

knees, confess all our sins, pray for every missionary,

and do it with tears in our eyes we are mistaken about

the kind of prayer God hears.

Anyone can pray. And your prayer may be what God

is waiting for to do something special in your church.

When I ﬁnish praying I often remind myself that because

I prayed, God will do more than he would have done if I

had not prayed. God is loving so he will act on our behalf

even if we don’t pray—but he does more when we pray.

Friend, pray just a little more.

David Childs is Vice President for Student

Services at ��Ƶ and

a member of Maxwell Hill Baptist Church.

He and his wife, Linda, have two sons,

two daughters, and two grandchildren.

His interests include history and cowboy

movies, which inspired him to build his

own muzzleloader.

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