Purpose of New Online Prayer Groups
In the light of the current worldwide crisis, and for the purpose of the growth of God’s Kingdom generally, we are launching some online prayer groups.
These groups will be for:
- supporting one another in prayer
- praying for new Christians and enquirers that we know
- praying for common causes
- praying for people we want to see come to Christ
Biblical Basis
“Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:19-20)
Strategy
Facebook chat groups are the best place to gather people together, but they are not the best medium for interactive video conferencing. For interactive video conferencing, sign up with Zoom (https://zoom.us) or with https://lifesize.com – which gives longer free meetings.
We will announce times – ideally weekly, when we come together for 15 to 30 minutes to prayer together. Again, short concise prayers full of power, so that everyone can have a chance to participate.
Multiplication Strategy
In order to mobilize the Body of Christ worldwide to pray, everyone should be part of two groups. One group you will have been invited into. Please stay in that group. The other group is a group you start, by finding people online who want to pray with you in the same way.
In this way, we can cover the world with prayer faster than the Covid-19 Corona virus spreads.
Guidelines / Rules
These rules are suggested and may be enforced by group leaders. The reason for them is to stop people from spoiling the groups by posting long screeds of information, long prayers that take a long time to read or hear. It is recommended that you pray long prayers in private. Here is a place to come together in agreement and faith. When you have faith and you are abiding in the Lord, you don’t need long public prayers.
If anyone is allowed to post too many lengthy prayers, comments or sermons, it will result in others quietly leaving and not returning. This is totally unhelpful.
With this in mind …
On the Facebook groups, keep your prayers to roughly 140 characters or less (like Twitter). Keep your audio prayers to less than 90 seconds.
We encourage frequent participation, not long communications which people may not have the time or desire to process.
Be concise. Put up prayer requests that you believe are not totally out of reach of the group’s current faith level.
Pray the Word of God when you can – but try to avoid praying your theology as a kind of teaching lesson to show your knowledge.
You can find a lot of inspiration for Biblical prayers at https://prayerz.org. You may even wish to register on this site and add Biblical prayers. Contact Michael Fackerel on Facebook if you have a desire to help with this.
Do not pray for more than one theme at a time. Give others a chance to join you in your prayer for one theme. This fosters agreement and unity. Afterwards, if people still have desire to pray together, you can pray another prayer on a different theme or Scripture or for a different person.
Give everyone a go and an opportunity. Encourage the introverts to pray, and do not dominate if you are an extrovert.
Turn off your microphone and pray in the spirit while others are praying in your native language (for example, English for most of us).
Participate in the group. If you don’t participate, you can expect to be removed from the group to make way for an active member. This is not a personal rejection. It just means you are taking the place of someone who might have time and desire to participate. You can always start your own group if you wish. Find people you can agree with. No one forces you to stay in a group where you can’t get along with others.
Promote unity in the Spirit in your group so you can achieve things together.
Seek loving relationships outside your group with your own family/spouse/church friends so that your prayers will not be hindered.
The Facebook Group for this is Online Prayer Network.
Michael Fackerell