Building a Culture of Prayer

If God has given you a vision for what he wants to do through your church, prayer has to be at the center. You need a culture of prayer, where the people of your church instinctively ask God to do miracles in their midst. 

Prayer isn’t an add-on to your church’s ministry. It’s the core of what you do. 

Your church will have the power of the New Testament church when you have the prayer life of the New Testament church. You must, as those early believers did, bathe everything you do in prayer. 

So how do you build that kind of prayer culture in your church? Start with these three principles.

1. Encourage your church to make prayer the first response, not the last resort. Some people think of prayer as a fire extinguisher. They only use it in times of emergency. When everything falls apart, that’s when they pray.

But God wants us to do the opposite. Prayer needs to be a first response. Before you make a big purchase, you pray. Before you eat that food, you pray. Before you make that choice, you pray. 

Teach your people to talk to God first when anything happens in their lives. Don’t turn to a self-help book. Don’t flip on the television. Don’t phone a friend. Talk to God first. Your church needs to know that’s what you do in all areas of your own life (more on that later). And they need to see your church family turn to prayer as their first response corporately.  

2. Teach your congregation to make prayer a habit. Your congregation can’t make prayer a priority without commitment and discipline. Building a culture of prayer is about more than just praying when you feel like it; it has to become a regular part of our lives.

Just as physical fitness doesn’t happen on its own, a life-sustaining habit of prayer requires intentional actions—choosing the right “spiritual diet” and practicing consistent “spiritual exercise.” 

You teach your church to do this by giving them baby steps. Don’t teach on prayer and then ask your congregants to pray an hour daily for missionaries. They’ll do that for about three days and quit. Instead, encourage your people to pray for two minutes for the next seven days. That’s doable. Then they can build on that habit from there.

In CLASS 201, our “Introduction to Spiritual Maturity” course at Saddleback, we explained to members that forming a new habit typically takes six weeks. With this in mind, we invited them to commit to three key practices: a daily quiet time with God (which included prayer), regular tithing, and participation in a small group. We emphasized that making time daily to connect with God was foundational to how they would grow spiritually.

3. Model bold prayers for your congregation. You set the tone for your congregation. Your church will be no more prayerful than what you model for them. Prayerful churches require prayerful pastors.

One of my favorite biblical examples of this comes in 2 Kings 20, when Hezekiah was ill and about to die. Hezekiah had been a righteous king, one of the most faithful in Israel’s history. When he learned he was dying, he passionately and publicly prayed: “Remember, O Lord, how I have always been faithful to you and have served you single-mindedly, always doing what pleases you” (2 Kings 20:3 NLT). Then, in the same verse, the Bible tells us that “he broke down and wept bitterly.”

Hezekiah didn’t offer a weak prayer. He went before God boldly and publicly with a prayer that brought him to tears. And God healed him. Just as Hezekiah’s prayer was a model for Israel, we need to regularly show our congregation that nothing is too big for us to pray about.

Your church may do incredible work in your community. But your most important work will be through prayer. D. L. Moody once said, “Every great movement of God can be traced to a single praying, kneeling figure.”  

Create a church where prayer is the first response, where it becomes a regular habit, and where it’s modeled consistently—and you’ll see God do amazing things through your ministry. Churches that prioritize prayer witness miracles.

What miracle does your church need to see?

Become a church of prayer and watch God do what you can’t even imagine right now.