By Joel Comiskey, Empowered to Lead
Prayer dependence should be seen in the cell and the celebration—not just one or the other. Cell prayer and church-wide prayer provide the one-two punch to the cell-driven church.
In past blogs, I’ve talked about prayer at the level of the entire church. Here are some ideas to jump-start cells for prayer:
- Break into groups of two or three. This allows more people to enter into prayer and is less intimidating for quieter members.
- Ask individual cell members to intercede, calling on them by name.
- Train your group to pray short, conversational prayers that provide greater interaction and agreement. This allows more people to pray and helps prevent one person from dominating.
- During the last fifteen minutes of the cell, ask the men to go into one room to pray and the women to pray in another room. Often there is more liberty to freely share prayer requests among gender-specific groups.
Cells are simply the conduit of the Holy Spirit; they are not an end in themselves. Prayer empowers cells and makes them a blessing to others.
Prayer, along with worship, fill the small group with God’s presence and power. Non-Christians are converted when feel and experience God’s power because God created them for Himself and hearts will remain restless until finding rest in Him alone. Prayer power creates the atmosphere for these same non-Christians to “fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’ ” (1 Corinthians 14:25).
The cell church is uniquely capable of raising up an army of warriors who go forth in God’s power, penetrating a lost world for Jesus. When this happens through churches on their knees, a new day will dawn for Christ’s church. The best is yet to come.