A. Fifteen steps. Prayer should not become a program or a lifeless process. Any process needs to reflect the leadership of the Holy Spirit and the needs of the congregation. Use these fifteen steps to encourage ideas that can help you create a Great Commission prayer strategy. These are suggested tactics or approaches to help you complete the overall plan of reclaiming your church as a house a prayer with a passion for the lost.

1. Select a prayer coordinator for the church. The pastor may need to serve as the prayer coordinator in small membership congregations. Even there he usually could use the help. There is a job description in Appendix A.
2. Select a prayer council. The prayer council works with the prayer coordinator to help reclaim or renew the congregation as a house of prayer with a passion for the lost. Surely a church that has a kitchen committee or a flower committee can see the need for a prayer team, committee or council.
3. Ask the pastor to take the lead by preparing a sermon series on prayer that will remind the congregation of the importance of biblical prayer. Encourage the staff to have intentional and extended prayer times together.
4. Encourage individual prayer through any of the resources available or in the bibliography.
5. Launch new prayer groups at work places, through the Sunday School, in small groups and Discipleship Training. Encourage prayer groups to meet before and during the worship services.
6. Provide a prayer room. Include resources to help people pray specifically.
7. Refocus the Wednesday night prayer meeting into a time to pray for believers, unbelievers and individual spiritual growth. Provide national and international prayer needs and opportunities through NAMB (1 800-554-PRAY) and IMB (1 800 395-PRAY) prayerlines. Download requests from www. namb.net/prayer and www. imb.net/pray.
8. Create praying affinity groups for people in your congregation and community. Affinity groups can be created by ethnic group, profession, or interest. Men, women, singles, youth, ethnic groups, lawyers, construction workers, etc., can pray specifically and intentionally for others in their profession locally, nationally and globally. Postal workers, police officers, and other service providers have found particular joy in praying for the homes on their routes.
9. Develop prayer lists of lost people and prospects in the community. Send evangelism teams to bring in the lost people the church has been praying for. Pray for the names in the telephone book.
10. Participate in North American and International Seasons of Prayer. The trend of some congregations to have a single missions offering and prayer emphasis is reducing specific prayer for missionaries and missions work.
11. Schedule a prayer time during the worship service. Occasionally pray in groups, pray for missionaries, make prayer a vital part of the worship service.
12. Create a lighthouse of prayer in every community or every street.
13. Include Prayer Journeys for as many groups as possible and as often as possible. Participate in Campus Prayer Journeys.
14. Plan a mission trip that includes a Prayer Journey.
15. Work with the associational prayer coordinator.

B. Means to the end. Be diligent that none of these activities or events become an end in themselves instead of a means to accomplish the strategy.

II. Response Time: Pray for a church prayer coordinator and an associational prayer coordinator. Pray for a core group of praying believers to lead the church in prayer. Consider specific ways to make your church a house of prayer with a passion for the lost. When could you begin making some of these suggestions happen in the church? Which ones would you do first?

The follow-through and intentional prayer for any of these options continue for months and years. Mildred McMurry leaves a concluding reminder, "Prayer is rooted in faith, not in believing that a specific prayer will be answered, but faith in God as the Giver of all good things."