When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. . . . After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Acts 4:24, 31
We have seen what a single person can do in prayer. We have seen how Daniel defied the world and shook the heavens, and we have seen how the prayers of a leader can have an impact on both the spiritual climate of his or her church, home, and community. We have focused, so far, primarily on individual prayers. There is a secret place with God, a time of hidden prayer, to which each individual believer is called, but we are not always supposed to pray alone. There is also a time when we are to pray together. There is an altar where a community of believers join together in agreement. An altar where we combine our voices and find our prayers amplified before God. I want to show you why praying together is so important and how your church can learn to do it.
If you read through the stories of the first days of the Church, there are some obvious patterns you will notice. Certainly, you will recognize the way they went into the world proclaiming the Gospel, but perhaps even more prominent than their preaching was their praying. And they did much of that praying together. In chapter after chapter of Acts, the Church was gathered in prayer. They prayed when there was cause for celebration, when they faced opposition, and in the normal rhythms and routines of everyday life. The early Church was constantly praying, and they were doing it together. The early Church was a community of prayer.
After Jesus’ ascension, a small group of His believers met in the Upper Room to pray. As Jesus had commanded them, they prayed until they received the Holy Spirit and the boldness that came with Him. Before they turned the world upside down with their preaching and miracles, they prayed for the power to do it. The first collective act of the Church was praying together. And it didn’t stop. That pattern of prayer only continued.
In the very next chapter, we encounter Peter and John going up to the temple during the hour of prayer. Even after Jesus had ascended and the Spirit had fallen in that Upper Room, the Church stayed committed to a regular time of prayer in the temple. Just as Daniel continued to kneel daily at his window to pray, so, too, the Church continued going daily to the temple to pray. Their commitment to pray together wasn’t sporadic. They had a regular time and place for it.
When the chief priest and the temple leadership began to threaten Peter and John, warning them to stop speaking about Jesus, the two men returned to the Church with the message. How did they respond to these new threats? They prayed. Acts records, “Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God” (Acts 4:23–24).
That is the picture Acts consistently paints of the Church. They sang hymns, they broke bread, and they studied Scripture, but nothing was more central or consistent than their raised voices of prayer. The Church praying together is the driving force of the book of Acts.
Why did they do it? Why did they so consistently turn to prayer? They prayed because they had witnessed firsthand the power of their collective prayers. As they began to pray against the demonic threats that sought to keep them quiet, Acts says the room where they prayed was powerfully stirred. “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31).
If you want to know what made the early Church so effective, if you want to know how they changed the world, how they witnessed the miraculous, how they boldly preached before kings and beggars, and why they sacrificed their lives, the answer is simple: they had a regular and prioritized practice of prayer that shook the earth and empowered them with supernatural boldness to keep on speaking. It all comes back to prayer.
Something dynamic happens when we pray together. It is that simple. God hears every prayer, and Christ intercedes on behalf of every believer—even those who pray silently or in isolation, but Scripture shows us that the authority of our prayers is multiplied when we join together. As Jesus reminded us, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).
For as often as Jesus prayed alone, He also joined with His disciples in prayer and participated in the regular prayers of the temple and the festivals. It was Jesus who reminded Jerusalem that the temple itself was a house of prayer, a place in which all followers of God came together to pray.
The consistency of community prayer is so prominent throughout Scripture that it is hard to overstate its priority. The Church is not the Church without prayer. Yet how many believers today go through life never learning or practicing communal prayer, never becoming confident enough to raise their voice with others? We might listen to other people pray, we might close our eyes together, or we might add “amen” at the end of a prayer, but how many people really know how to agree together in prayer? Perhaps the prophetic weakness of today’s Church and the fear we have of sharing our faith reflects our diminished practice of prayer. For when the Church prays, the house is always shaken, and the people are always emboldened. The Church needs believers who know how to pray alone as well as how to pray together.
It is my experience that most individuals tend to be drawn to either personal or corporate prayer. Perhaps it is connected to our individual personality traits, perhaps something about being introverted or extroverted. Many find it quite natural to pray in private but may struggle to publicly add their voice to the corporate time of prayer. Others may pray publicly with boldness and even volume but struggle to make a private practice of prayer consistent. It is easy to develop ruts and fall back into what comes easiest for each of us. But that is not how the Bible presents prayer.
Prayer is not about what makes us comfortable or what best fits our personality. We are all called to pray both in private and together. That will certainly mean moments of challenging ourselves and stretching beyond our own comfort, but we can’t afford not to.
And it can be learned. Praying is not a personality type, praying is a responsibility we accept as God’s people, His ambassadors on earth. We don’t learn to do anything well without regularly practicing it. You won’t wake up and find that you are suddenly experienced at prayer. And your church won’t suddenly become dynamic at it, either. It takes a willingness to learn and grow. It takes leadership and regular intentional effort.
As our lives have become more complicated and our church participation minimized, there are simply fewer chances for us to pray together. It is hard to discern a specific pattern of prayer in the early Church because it seems almost constant. There were daily times of prayer in the temple, evening prayers in homes, and stretches of prayer in which they didn’t leave until something happened. Prayer was far more than a single segment of a weekend service. The Church was prayer. Their lives were immersed in it. It’s what they did.
If you are going to build a culture of prayer in your church, if you’re going to experience the power of the Spirit at work in your people, prayer must become more than what many churches are used to. You must find ways to practice it. You must find ways to work it into not only your services but into the life of your church. It matters more than you may realize.
Here is why this practice of prayer is so important. There are things that cannot be done without a regular place of prayer. It is a truth given to us by Jesus Himself. One of Jesus’ own disciples had to learn this principle in a difficult and embarrassing way.
While Jesus was transfigured on the mountain before Peter, James, and John, the rest of His disciples were trying to cast a reluctant demon out of a young boy. They had done it before. They had cast out plenty of demons on their own. This time, however, things went wrong. What they had done before just didn’t work. They couldn’t seem to drive this particular demon out.
As Jesus came down from the mountain, He found them with the boy and the boy’s father. Apparently, the boy’s manifestations must have drawn the attention of those around, because a crowd had formed. The father’s words are so sad to read. He told Jesus of the boy’s seizures and how the demon constantly cast him into fires and into the water. In a poignant statement, the father admitted, “I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not” (Mark 9:18).
As a father myself, I can feel the pain and sorrow of the burden this father carries. He was desperate, and the disciples, who I imagine said they could help, could not. Jesus cast the demon out with a single command.
Later in private, the disciples asked Jesus for an explanation. Why couldn’t they cast the demon out? Jesus explained to them, “This kind can come out only by prayer” (Mark 9:29). It is a remarkable statement. Jesus seems to indicate that there are certain demonic powers and forces that require a particular kind of prayer if they are going to be driven out. Jesus’ language is also interesting. What the King James Version translates as “prayer and fasting” is actually a single word in the Greek. It often describes a place of prayer, a recurring discipline of prayer practiced in a particular place.
Certainly, the disciples knew how to pray, but Jesus suggests that there are certain demonic forces that can only be driven out by a consistent place of prayer. It may be that the kind of devils that are now present in America are the same kind of devils Jesus was speaking of. This present manifestation of evil is of a kind we have never faced before, and it will require a different kind of prayer to defeat it. Better preaching and music, more saturated calendars of activities, more fellowships and fundraisers will not affect them. A new level of prayer is required when there is a new level of devil.
This is what so many churches are missing. They might know how to pray. They may even pray individually at home. But they do not have a recurring regular place of prayer in which the Spirit is given opportunity to drive out the most entrenched forces of darkness. There are things that simply cannot be done without a regular commitment to praying together. Jesus and His followers have long understood that. It is a truth the Church today cannot afford to continue ignoring.
What does the Church do when it prays together? Ask a group of believers to gather in prayer and most will begin with prayer requests. What can we pray about? Who should we be praying for? Who is sick? Who is facing a personal crisis? There is nothing wrong with praying for these needs. Scripture encourages us to lift our needs and pray for one another. It’s important to pray for people, but we are also called to pray the Kingdom forward.
After having been warned to cease speaking about Jesus, the early Church began to cry out to God in prayer. They collectively raised their voices to Him. What were they praying for? It wasn’t an individual need. What they prayed for was the advancement of the Gospel despite the world’s hostility and the threats of its rulers. Remarkably, they left us an account of the prayer they prayed. Acts records:
“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one.’ Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
Acts 4:24–30
Do you recognize their model for corporate prayer? The Church prayed for great boldness and for a move of the Spirit that would unleash healing, signs, and wonders across the city. They were praying for the advancement of God’s Kingdom. They prayed for it in the name of Jesus. They also prayed the promises of God from Scripture. They quoted from Psalm 2, acknowledging the way the powers of this world had long opposed the things of God. They connected Scripture and the promises of God with their own day and requested the same miraculous interventions God had done before. Their model of prayer was for the Kingdom to move forward based on the promises of God in Scripture.
What came of their prayers? First, the house where they prayed was shaken. The Kingdom was moved on earth as it was in heaven. Second, Acts tells us they left with supernatural boldness. They were changed. This answer to prayer was not simply an individual’s need being met, although that for us is often an area of focus. In this instance, the whole Church was changed. The whole Church was shaken and empowered. And so, too, was their city. Miracles happened. Signs and wonders came. The name of Jesus was proclaimed with power. And for all their attempts, the rulers could not keep them quiet.
This is what the Church needs. It is what your city needs, too. It is what our nation and the whole world needs. We need a move of the Spirit and the bold witness of the Church. But that doesn’t come through workshops or conversational techniques. It doesn’t come by workflows or pipelines. You can’t buy it or program it. All you can do is pray and pray until it comes. Your city will be changed, and your people emboldened when they learn to pray together.
When I teach on prayer and help pastors reprioritize it in their congregations, one of the questions I often hear is, “How can I grow in leading corporate prayer?” Often our churches fail to pray simply because we don’t know how to lead them into it. But just as a congregation can grow in prayer, you can grow in your ability to lead your people to pray.
This is one of the reasons I have previously spent so much time describing the priority of personal prayer in the life of a leader. You cannot lead others into prayer if you don’t know how to do it on your own. Your ability to lead in prayer is directly connected to your personal discipline of prayer. No advice I give on leading corporate prayer is a replacement for your own prayer life. There is no way to shortcut praying, and there is no technique that is a replacement for a genuine desire to be with God. That must always come first. But there are things we can learn from the prayers of the early Church and how they went about praying together.
Acts 4 not only demonstrates the power of praying together, but it also gives us a model for how to do it. When the Church prayed, they did so based on Scripture and the promises of God. You can see it in the prayer I previously quoted. The early Church prayed the Kingdom forward and pushed back the darkness around them. They began by recognizing a place of opposition—a place where the Kingdom needed to move forward—and then they appealed to the promises of God in Scripture to intervene.
If you find yourself before your congregation but are unsure of what to pray about, or perhaps you find yourself running out of things to pray, take heart. You have the accumulated prayers of generations of believers recorded in the Bible to emulate. Use them. Go through Scripture and make a list of the things for which God’s people have previously prayed. You’ll find plenty to pray about. I keep a list of the prayers I come across in Scripture, and I often use it to help lead prayer services. My list includes things such as
political leaders
church leaders
laborers for the harvest
boldness to proclaim the Gospel
signs, wonders, and miracles
an outpouring of the Holy Spirit
protection from evil and those who oppose us
healing for those who are sick
What matters is that you begin accumulating your own scriptural prayer focuses. As you use these topics to lead your congregation into prayer, you may struggle to know how to pray for them. If you have that problem, you can again use Scripture. Find the places in Scripture where God offers corresponding promises to these needs. Lead your people in praying these promises. There is power when we agree with one another, but that power takes on supernatural power when we agree together with God’s promises. He then adds His agreement to ours. In the Bible, you have everything you need to pray and lead in prayer.
There are plenty of things to pray for, but really what you need most is a place to do it and the discipline to do it together. You need an intentional place of praying as a community. You need an old school prayer meeting, a place to tarry, a place to cry out to God, and a place to join together and pray forward the Kingdom of God. Remember, Jesus Himself said there are things that can’t be done without a regular place of prayer.
If you are a pastor, creating that place of community prayer is a part of your spiritual responsibility. Without it, your church and city are vulnerable. If you will not do it, you limit what God can do in your people. You must call them to prayer. You must lead them into prayer. And you must make it a regular part of your life together as a church.
Teach your people why prayer matters. Teach them why it matters to pray together. Help them learn to recognize that prayer is the most important thing a church does, that by prayer all other things become possible. Dedicate at least one service a week to praying together. Ask for commitments. We ask people to commit to tithing and volunteering; a commitment to prayer should be at the top of that list.
It will take intentional effort to begin this place of prayer, but in my experience, once established it will become the center of your church and the most important time your church spends together. It will lead you into new boldness and into the miraculous presence of God. As it does, your people will begin to experience the power of prayer for themselves. Their commitment will grow. Their faith will grow. Their prayer lives will grow.
It all begins with your responsibility to build the altar. Create a place where your people can regularly come and learn to pray together and experience the power of God, the house shaken, and the empowerment of His presence. When we pray together, no darkness can stand against us.
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am with them” (Matthew 18:20).
Participate in or begin a regular prayer service. For all of the activities that the church generates or participates in, I find that fewer churches regularly meet to pray together. If your church already has a prayer service, make sure you are faithful to attend. If your church does not meet regularly for prayer, perhaps you could start a prayer gathering. You can start with your prayer partners, and then invite the congregation to join you. Your church needs a regular place and time to come together to pray.
Search the Bible for things to pray about. One thing that can keep you from praying is not knowing what to pray for. I recommend you keep a list of prayers that you find in the Bible. The Bible is full of the prayers of God’s people. Pay attention to what they were praying for. What does the Bible specifically encourage us to pray about? You can use this list of prayers as prompts for leading your prayer service.
Practice praying out loud. Many people feel intimidated to pray. But like many new things, by practice we become more comfortable. Hearing a church pray out loud builds our faith. It encourages us to lift our own voices to God. As we fill the room with the sounds of prayer, our faith grows. I love the sound of God’s people praying, and I believe it is a mark of a healthy church.
Be open to the Spirit. One of the Spirit’s many gifts is leading our prayers. God will guide us and instruct us on how to pray. The Spirit will lead us to prayers we might not have recognized on our own. Come prepared with a list of prayer prompts, but always be sensitive to where the Spirit is leading. As I pray, I often sense the Spirit leading me in new directions. It is true in private prayer, and it is true when we pray together.