One of the most common questions I received at our onething conference in December had to do with the location of prayer meetings. Many were asking what I thought the best location for a prayer meeting would be. I’ve seen a lot of different ones. I’ve seen church sanctuaries, living rooms, lecture halls, courtyards, coffee shops, and even an actual boiler room in a basement.

If I may, let me offer three practical pieces of advice when deciding on where to have your prayer meeting. The three C’s if you will.

Is your location clear? In other words are you easy to find? If it’s tucked away in a basement then you make it harder for people to find you, thus harder to attend. I appreciate that you are doing it only for the Lord but you can still make it clearly visible so that it’s easy for people to join.

Is your location conducive? You need to think if your location is conducive to prayer. Spots that I would say that fall into the clear but not conducive category would be courtyards and coffee shops.  Sure the atmosphere might be cool, but over the long haul it’s difficult to pray when espresso orders are being shouted out and if the weather changes and you forget your jacket. People already get distracted in prayer enough. Let's pick somewhere that minimizes that.

Is your location consistent? This one is really key. If you will show up consistently (as the leader) in the same place (reliability) then people are more apt to attend as well. If they have to wonder if you’ll be there, if the location moved again and they don’t know where to go, they will be less likely to show up.

These are just a few tips and I hope this helps you in your journey.

One of the greatest challenges to sustain corporate prayer for the long haul is keeping people motivated to pray. It’s true. If people are motivated (for the right reasons) they will pray and they will keep praying even in the midst of the monotony and mundane.

One of Luke18 Project’s primary mandates is not only to plant prayer furnaces, but to help fuel them. In actuality we don’t fuel prayer furnaces, we teach people how to have their hearts fueled in the place of prayer and that, in turn, fuels the furnaces.

Two of the greatest motivators for prayer are intimacy and urgency. It’s true. A person who is in love with God (or rather living with an experiential knowledge of God’s love) prays.  A heart that has been touched at the emotional level with how God feels about them prays more often with more fervor and perseverance.

At the same time a person convinced of the urgency of the hour is motivated to pray as well. Whether it’s urgency that you are living in the generation that will see the return of the Lord (and all that it entails) or the urgency of a serious need (e.g. personal, family, or national crisis) you are driven to the place of prayer not by fear but with the urgent and confident conviction that God alone holds the answer.  Regardless of it being intimacy or urgency (or a combination of both) the Lord uses these things to fuel our prayer. And in turn it brings us to Him—which is the point.

On a practical level if you open your Bible and begin to read through it you will find this truth staring right at you.  When I read in the Bible how God feels about me, I want to pray. When I feel the weight of the severity of what’s coming as portrayed in Scripture, I’m energized to call upon the Lord. Be filled. Get in the Word and then watch your prayer lives, corporate and personal, explode.

One thing to think about in your prayer meeting is who prays. Of course we want everyone in the meeting to be engaged as much as possible. In fact, we want everyone to pray in the meeting. But you should consider who leads the meeting in prayer out loud. I have found that over the years one of the easiest and effective ways to "keep the fire burning" in your prayer meeting is by assigning people to pray.

Now this might sound anti-spontaneous, but it really helps maintain a consistent prayer focus for the meeting, avoids prayers hard to agree with, and helps with the general flow of the meeting.  All you do is meet with the people you want to pray out loud during the meeting before the prayer meeting.  Assign the prayer focus, have the passages you will all pray from picked out, and go into the meeting ready to go.

You'll be amazed at how the prayer meeting flows and people engage more easily with a little structure in place. I hope this helps.

One thing you cannot do is deny that the Bible makes it clear that it’s okay to yell in prayer. In fact, the majority of prayers in the Bible were either prayed loudly, sung or a combination of both. I find great solace in this (remember I’m a yeller). When I think about a prayer meeting, I think of a “book of Acts style” meeting as in day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1), with the sound of a mighty rushing wind type of gathering.

However the majority of prayer meetings I’ve attended have fallen short of those expectations.  :-)

But my point is this: sometimes you need to raise your voice.  It’s okay to bellow out the song. It’s good to shout “amen” in agreement with the person praying. These are good things. These are biblical. These are encouraging.

When you are praying, you want agreement without sacrificing agreement for the sake of style and volume.

When doing these things, remember that your spirituality isn’t measured by volume and neither is the person’s in seat next to you. Be mindful of that the next time you gather to pray.

Over the next few weeks I want to comment on an important issue that is bound to come up for those holding weekly prayer meetings. The question is concerning prayer volume in our meetings.  In other words, is it okay to yell at prayer meetings? Or is not okay to yell at prayer meetings?

For me, I’m a yeller. Yep. I like to yell. In fact, I love to yell, especially in the context of a corporate meeting. Nothing gets me more pumped than a bunch of people in a room crying out to God in prayer. I love it! I think that praying at full volume is good and has its place.

But recently I was presented with two very provoking questions:  First, is my yelling actually serving the prayer meeting? What I mean is that even in those gatherings where I am feeling it, it doesn’t mean the person next to me is.   In fact, they might not like to yell at all. They might fall in the category of the majority of people who are afraid to pray aloud in a corporate setting let alone yell at full volume.

The second question to ask is, does my volume dictate God’s response? Is the Lord more or less likely to respond based on the decibel level of my prayer? This one seems obvious but most people including myself pray to God like He is hard of hearing.  :-)

My point in these next posts is not to dictate the style of your prayer meeting, it’s to get us to examine our methods and ask ourselves what serves the people in our meetings. We must find the most practical way to maintain intensity yet have the mindset to sustain prayer (and our vocal chords) till Jesus returns.

If you are involved in leading a corporate prayer meeting I think one of the most important aspects is your commitment to show up. Sounds simple, I know. But when the rubber meets the road this seems to be the most difficult thing for everyone involved to consistently pull off. There are always tons of good reasons why we might want to cancel the prayer meeting or not show up. But at the end of the day, the Lord’s eyes search the whole earth looking for someone who is committed (2 Chr. 16:9).

What this means is that when He finds someone who is committed to Him and His purposes, that person makes him/herself available for the grace of God to operate more fully in his/her life. After 7 years of being in the prayer movement it is still difficult after a long week to get up when that alarm goes off, especially when it’s still dark out! But each time I do, I feel the Lord’s pleasure on me. I feel His grace on my heart because I know He loves my commitment, even if it’s weak at times. So keep showing up. Keep being committed. Heaven’s eyes are on you. His pleasure is over your life.

One of the key dynamics in sustaining effective and anointed corporate prayer is the understanding that worship and prayer is ultimately the same thing. At their core they are agreement with who God is and what He wants to do.

Biblically, worship and prayer find their foundation in agreement with who He is. Think about it. When Jesus taught us to pray He began with recognition of who we are praying to (cf. Mt. 6:9, Our Father). In fact, biblical prayers found in the New Testament begin with this agreement. Worship is no different. We enter into high praise when we sing to God about God (Ps. 149).

Next, we must see that worship and prayer directed to who God is releases His divine activity. The Bible clearly testifies to the power of prayer and worship.  Prayer and worship move the supernatural realms (angels and demons) which in turn affects the natural realm. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is filled with examples of what happens when saints cry out. One of the clearest examples in Scripture is the Psalms. The Psalms are prayers to God and they just happen to be songs!

So whether you are singing song, lifting up a prayer or both, do it with understanding and know that God moves at the sound of your voice.

God made us to sing. I once heard the encouragement that if you couldn’t sing well then to just sing louder. The truth is that we were made to sing TO God.  We will do this in eternity so why not begin now?

One of the most basic tools to fuel and sustain a corporate prayer meeting is by integrating times of worship within the meeting. We’ve all been to meetings where everyone stands in a circle, shouts out a thirty second prayer only to realize that after everyone has had their turn, only 15 minutes has gone by and you allotted 2 hours for the prayer meeting!

Since we were made to sing then we should sing. Take time at the beginning of the prayer meeting and sing a few known worship songs together for the first 15-20 minutes.  This can be with someone leading from a guitar/piano/etc. or everyone singing along with a CD. Either way works and it counts before God. This is one of the easiest ways to have our hearts engage with the Lord and it prepares us to pray effectively and fervently according to His heart.

Then at regular intervals throughout your prayer meeting go back into a worship song after a time of praying biblical prayers. It could be the same one or you could change it up. A good rule of thumb is to pick songs that sing directly TO God instead of only about God. You also want to select songs that are known to your prayer group so everyone can participate.  You’ll be amazed at how easy and enjoyable this makes a prayer meeting and how it helps to keep people engaged together for longer periods of time.