During the first seven years of his ministry, Spurgeon saw a remarkable revival spring up under his ministry. Thousands attended his services, and hundreds made professions of faith and joined the church. But amid all the excitement, how did Spurgeon know that this was a genuine work of the Spirit and not just the product of some strange enthusiasm? One encouraging sign was that the weekly church-wide prayer meeting was regularly attended by 1,000 to 1,200 people. It’s one thing to draw people to draw a large crowd on a Sunday morning. It’s an entirely different matter to convince people to come out and pray on a Monday night. These new members were not only interested in Spurgeon’s preaching. They were growing earnest in prayer.
As the pastor, Spurgeon knew that he had a responsibility to make those prayer meetings engaging and edifying. Having led these large prayer meetings for seven years, he shared in 1861 these six ways to improve your church’s prayer meeting. As you consider your own context, how might you apply the wisdom of his experience?
1) Teach and model the importance of prayer
Let the minister himself set a very high value upon this means of grace; let him frequently speak of it as being dear to his own heart; let him prove his words by throwing all his vigour into it, being absent as seldom as possible, and doing all in his power to give an interest to the meeting. If our pastors set the ill example of coming in late, of frequently staying away, or conducting the engagements in a drowsy formal way, we shall soon see our people despising the exercise and forsaking the assembling of themselves together. A warm-hearted address of ten minutes, with a few lively words interposed between the prayers, will do much, with God’s blessing, to foster a love to the prayer-meeting.
2) Promote participation by encouraging shorter prayers
Let the brethren labour after brevity. If each person will offer the petition most laid upon his heart by the Holy Spirit, and then make room for another, the evening will be far more profitable, and the prayers incomparably more fervent than if each brother ran round the whole circle of petition without dwelling upon any one point. Compare the subjects of prayer to so many nails; it will be better for a petitioner to drive one nail home with repeated blows, than to deal one ineffectual tap to them one after another. Let as many as possible take part in the utterance of the Church’s desires; the change of voice will prevent weariness, and the variety of subjects will excite attention. Better to have six pleading earnestly, than two drowsily; far better for the whole meeting that the many wants should be represented experimentally by many intercessors, than formally by two or three. As a general rule, meetings in which no prayer exceeds ten minutes, and the most are under five, will exhibit the most fervour and life; in fact, length is a deathblow to earnestness, and brevity is an assistant to zeal. When we have had ten prayers in the hour, varied with the singing of single verses, we have far oftener been in the Spirit, than when only four persons have engaged. This is an observation confirmed by the opinion of our fellow-worshippers; it might not hold good in all cases, but it is so with us, and therefore we thus witness.
3) Involve younger believers
Persuade all the brethren to engage. If the younger and less instructed members shrink from the privilege, tell them that they are not to speak to man but to God. Assure them that it does us all good to hear their groans and ineffectual attempts at utterance. For our own part, a few breakdowns generally come very sweetly home, and awakening our sympathies, constrain us to aid the brother by our more earnest wrestlings. It gives a reality and life to the whole matter, to hear those trembling lips utter thanks for new life just received, and to hear that choking voice confessing the sin from which it has just escaped. The cries of the lambs must mingle with the bleating of the sheep, or the flock will lack much of its natural music. As Mr. Beecher well says, “humble prayers, timid prayers, half-inaudible prayers, the utterances of uncultured lips, may cut a poor figure as lecture-room literature. But are they to be scornfully disdained? If a child may not talk at all till it can speak fluent English, will it ever learn to speak well? There should be a process of education going on continually, by which all the members of the church shall be able to contribute of their experiences and gifts; and in such a course of development, the first hesitating, stumbling, ungrammatical prayer of a confused Christian may be worth more to the Church than the best prayer of the most eloquent pastor.” Every man feeling that he is to take part in the meeting at some time or other, will become at once interested, and from interest may advance to love. Some of those who have now the best gifts, had few enough when they began.
4) Encourage attendants to share prayer requests
Encourage the attendants to send in special requests for prayer as often as they feel constrained to do so. Those little scraps of paper, in themselves most truly prayers, may be used as kindling to the fire in the whole assembly.
(Note: Spurgeon allowed members to submit prayer requests, but he also filtered these requests according to the theme of the prayer meeting; see point 6.)
5) Prioritize praying
Suffer neither hymn, nor chapter, nor address to supplant prayer. We remember bearing seven verses of a hymn, ending in “he hates to put away,” until we lost all relish for the service, and have hardly been reconciled to the hymn ever since. Remember that we meet for prayer, and let it be prayer; and oh! that it may be that genuine, familiar converse with God which shall drive out the formality and pomposity which mar so much our public supplications.
(Avoid) mistaking preaching for prayer. The friends who were reputed to be “gifted,” indulged themselves in public prayer with a review of their own experience, a recapitulation of their creed, an occasional running commentary upon a chapter or psalm, or even a criticism upon the pastor and his sermons. It was too often quite forgotten that the brother was addressing the Divine majesty, before whose wisdom a display of our knowledge is impertinence, and before whose glory an attempt at swelling words and pompous periods is little short of profanity; the harangue was evidently intended for man rather than God, and on some occasions did not contain a single petition from beginning to end. We hope that in our own time good men are leaving this unhallowed practice, and are beginning to see that sermons and doctrinal disquisitions are miserable substitutes for earnest wrestling prayers, when our place is the mercy-seat and our engagement is intercession.
6) Maintain a unified theme
It is not at all amiss to let two or even three competent brethren succeed each other without a pause, but this must be done judiciously; and if one of the three should become prolix, let the pause come in as soon as he is done. Sing only one verse, or at the most two, between the prayers, and let those be such as shall not distract the mind from the subject by being alien from the spirit of the meeting. Why need to sing about the temptations of Satan just after an earnest prayer for the conversion of sinners? and when a brother has just had joyous fellowship with Christ in intercession, why drag him down by singing, “‘Tis a point I long to know”?