Do Young People Understand the Power of Prayer?
In my role with SIM I run a prayer night once a month at my home in which young people are invited to come along and pray for missionaries. I don't try to 'jazz it up and make it sound youthy' because I believe that if young people are serious they shouldn't need the frills.
I've found it constantly difficult to get young people/adults to come along. There are always other reasons why not to, sometimes quite legitimate ones (who am I to judge?) but I wonder whether young people really understand the power of praying. In March I had 8 come along, I was thrilled. April no one came at all. This month we've split in two, one north of the river and one south. I had one come to mine and I'm hoping the rest of them went to the north one.
Anyone got any suggestions in drawing young people in to come along?
posted by Amanda Hunt at 9:59 pm
6 Comments:
Amanda, Thanks for adding us to your blog roll!
In getting young people to pray, I've noticed that it helps to put a "face" on who they are praying for. This happens not by just sharing the missionaries' prayer needs, but actually becoming involved in the missionaries lives and finiding out who they really are.
If you know of a missionary that is on furlough--I'm sure he/she would be more than happy to visit your group so that they can get to know each other. That will give your students some great ammunition in praying, because they actually know and have met the person.
Just a thought!
I'm not sure what other activities SIM do amanda but prayer is often seen as a low priority or optional extra. To make prayer effective - and in my previous church we had weekly prayer attended by up to 100 people (not a big church either) - you have to show through your planning, communication and as Dan says reality and the earthiness of prayer's function (ie this is for these people in these situations), that prayer really is a priority. It's a hard to change to make but worth it.
Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately I've tried various angles of both of these suggestions with no results. It's very hard to encourage youth to pray when they aren't being taught it's priority in their own churches or homes.
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What I meant to say - typos notwithstanding - is that your only other option now is bribery ;)
LOL, can you believe I tried to bribe them with pizza instead of tea and coffee afterwards........didn't work!
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