PROFILE: Assess Your Prayer Culture ~ 11 Practices of Praying Churches
What problem does this lab address?
This lab addresses the gap between a church that includes prayer in its activities and a church whose culture is truly saturated with prayer. The article argues that prayer should permeate families, ministries, leadership, and community engagement, not remain occasional or peripheral.
What is the driving question?
The driving question is whether a congregation is genuinely a praying church. More specifically: has prayer become part of the church’s culture, leadership, ministries, and mission, or is it still mostly something the church “does” at selected moments?
Why does this matter now?
This matters because the article insists that “every church prays, but not every church is truly a praying church,” and that lasting culture change will not happen without pastoral leadership in corporate prayer. It also presses churches to move beyond routine prayer toward Spirit-led, outward-focused prayer for people, places, issues, neighborhoods, and nations.
Who is this lab designed for?
This lab is designed for pastors, church leaders, prayer champions, ministry leaders, class teachers, group directors, and congregational teams. The page itself frames it as workshop, training, reframing, discipleship discussion, and group study, which makes it useful in multiple church settings.
What perspective or lens shapes this lab?
The shaping lens is corporate prayer culture. The article approaches prayer as a church-wide way of life that must be led, taught, modeled, organized, communicated, and sustained, rather than treated merely as a private devotional practice or a brief moment in services.
What does this lab challenge us to unlearn?
This lab challenges leaders to unlearn the assumption that a church becomes a praying church simply because prayers are said in meetings or worship services. It also challenges passive prayer leadership, unchanged prayer lists, and fixed prayer locations that keep prayer narrow, routine, and disconnected from the church’s broader mission.
What does this lab invite us to rethink, recover, or re-practice?
This lab invites leaders to rethink how prayer is led, taught, and woven into congregational life. It calls churches to recover the role of a Prayer Champion, add a Prayer Catalyst, form a Praying Core, turn groups and committees into Prayer Clusters, pray corporately and courageously, focus prayer on the community, strengthen prayer communication, and build an established prayer rhythm.
What are the modules designed to do?
The article’s sequence is designed to move leaders through eleven practices of praying churches: establishing a prayer culture, developing prayer-led pastoral leadership, teaching biblical foundations for prayer, making three key prayer changes in leader, list, and location, adding a Prayer Catalyst, recruiting a Praying Core, reshaping groups into Prayer Clusters, teaching new ways to pray together, strengthening prayer communication, building a prayer calendar, and receiving ongoing help from a Prayer Coach.
How can this lab be used most effectively?
This lab can be used most effectively as a workshop, training session, reframing exercise, discipleship discussion, or group study. It also works well for pastors, staff teams, prayer leaders, or ministry teams who want to assess and strengthen the prayer culture of their congregation.
What resources or tools are included?
The page links directly to five companion resources: Mini-Course: Assess Your Prayer Culture, Workshop: Becoming a Prayer Driven Church, Diagnostic Tool: Assess The Prayer Life of Our Congregation, Video Interview: Keys To Lead Your Church Into Prayer, and Prayer Guide: Becoming A House of Prayer-Filled People.
What outcomes can participants expect?
Participants can expect greater clarity about whether prayer is central or incidental in their church, along with practical direction for building a stronger prayer culture. The intended outcome is not simply more prayer activity, but a congregation whose leadership, ministries, communication, rhythms, and mission are shaped by prayer.
What first step does this lab call for?
The first step is honest assessment. Leaders are called to examine whether their church truly has a prayer culture and then begin building it intentionally through leadership, training, structural change, and the companion tools linked on the page.
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Assess Your Prayer Culture ~ 11 Practices of Praying Churches
Praying Churches…
Have established a Prayer Culture…
Every church prays, but not every church is truly a praying church. Praying churches have a culture saturated with prayer; prayer has permeated every family, integrated into every ministry, and has been penetrating into the community.
- Developong A Prayer Culture >>>
…That is driven by a Prayer Champion…
Unless and until the pastor of the church, in congregations small or large, has begun to learn personally how to lead and facilitate prayer corporately, that congregation will remain a church that says prayers. It cannot have a complete culture change with out the leadership or the pastor.
- Coacing Interview wIth National Prayer Champion >>>
…Who has taught & trained biblical Prayer Commands…
The Prayer Champion models a praying life but must also provide the biblical content as a foundation for prayer. Church members young and old, new to the faith and veterans of spiritual wars, must understand the Bible’s teachings on the who, what, where, when, why and how of praying.
- Becoming A Prayer Driven Church >>>
…And has made three difficult Prayer Changes,…
Change #1 – the leader must change.
Change #2 – the list must change.
Change #3 – the location must change.
Praying churches are led by the Holy Spirit – to pray for people, places and things; neighborhoods and nations – from their already-seated-in-heaven position in Christ.
- Reimagine Your Prayer List >>>
…Assisted by a Prayer Catalyst…
Someone with a passion for prayer with a gift for leadership or administration should be appointed to serve alongside of the Prayer Champion.
- Interview with Author of "Prayer Coach" >>>
…Who helps recruit a Praying Core…
To help the pastor identify, train and lead those who respond to the challenge to live a life of prayer. These are usually intercessors who recognize a call upon their life to pray without ceasing. They must be given affirmation and opportunities to pray and to share spiritual insights from their time in their prayer closets.
- Content & Resources for Sphere #1: Your Praying Core >>>
…toward transforming classes/groups/committees into Prayer Clusters
A key objective is to train each ministry leader, class teacher, and group director in how to integrate prayer into their ongoing ministry or activity. Prayer that invites participation from those in the group or on the committee. Prayer that permeates the Bible study, agenda discussion or planning session.
- Mobilizing an "ALL Pray" Strategy for Your Congregaiton >>>
…That know how to pray differently when they pray,…
Pray Corporately – the protocol for two or three, or twenty or thirty, or two or three hundred is different than private or around-the-circle-down the list praying
Pray Courageously – daring to pray in the Spirit with faith, hope and love
Pray Focused on the Community – asking God for his heart for the people, place and things (issues) that influence and impact the community and culture
- Ignight The 6 Spheres of Praying >>>
…Re-casting vision and resourcing through Prayer Communication,…
I should be able to search for the word "pray" or "prayer" and find it on you church’s website, in every Sunday bulletin and monthly newsletter, on bulletin boards and display/book tables, as a sermon title …
- Rethink Communication >>>
…Making leadership accountable to a Prayer Calendar,…
A praying church has an established rhythm of praying – daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually
- Developng a Prayer Rhythm for Your Church >>>
…And discern God’s ongoing direction and correction through the partnership of a Prayer Coach.
Much can be gained from a person who knows how to teach and train but also how to coach the congregation’s leaders into a deeper and an outward focused life of prayer.
Phil Miglioratti posts/publishes resoruces and content on Reimagine.Nwetwork: Pray.Network, Discipleship.Network, National Pastors' Prayer Network
He writes and curates from his experiences as a pastor, coach, seminar speakinger, preacher, network coordinator, factilitator and teacher in the areas of corporate prayer.
√Mini-Course: Assess Your Prayer Culture
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11 Practices of Praying Churches
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√Workshop: Becoming a Prayer Driven Church
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√Diagnostic Tool: Assess The Prayer Life of Our Congregation
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√Video Interview: Keys To Lead Your Church Into Prayer
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BONUS Content >>>SCROLL for RELATED COMMENTARY by GUEST-POSTERS + FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS
BONUS
A Prayer Strategy for a Network of Congregatons and Ministries