By Cyndee Ownbey
How Important Is Prayer in Your Women’s Ministry?
Beyond praying for God’s blessing over your events and activities, do you spend much time praying for the women in your care? Do you know their specific prayer requests? If you do, do you have a process in place to pray over those requests?
To be honest, most leaders will answer those last two questions with an embarrassed, “No.” We often struggle to collect specific prayer requests from our women. Once we have gathered them, they may be prayed over once and placed back in a box.
How Can We Do a Better Job of Praying for the Women in Our Care?
How do we prioritize prayer for our women? How do we know what to pray for our women? I’ve got some ideas I think will help!
How can we ensure our team regularly prays for our women? We plan and prioritize!
- Add a Prayer Coordinator to your Women’s Ministry Team. She could lead a short time of prayer during your women’s ministry team meetings. She could be tasked with praying over the prayer requests submitted at your events and Bible studies. She could also train a team of prayer counselors.
- Set aside time during your women’s ministry team meetings to pray for the women in your church. You might want to designate a week or more to pray specific prayers.
- If your church is small, divide up the names of the women in your church and ask each team member to commit to praying for the names on the list once per week.
- Provide prayer journals for your women’s ministry team members. Prayer journals are great for recording prayer requests and for writing out prayers. Leaders love these leader-focused prayer journals! Be sure to check them out!
How Do We Know What to Pray for Our Women? Ask!
- Invite women to submit their prayer requests at every women’s ministry event or Bible study. You may find it helpful to place index cards on each table and a prayer request box near the exit of the room. If you’re drawing names for a door prize or conducting a survey, add the option to share prayer requests.
- If you have a private Facebook group, ask women to share their prayer requests. You might want to make it a weekly or monthly post.
- Train prayer counselors and make them available at events and retreats. Placing a set of prayer hands on their name tags will enable your women to find a prayer counselor when a need arises.
In Conclusion
When your women know prayer is an important part of your women’s ministry, many of them will seek out prayer when they need it. Prayer shows that we care.
We are reminded in Ephesians 6:18 (NLT), “Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.”
Let us be intentional in seeking out our women’s prayer requests and praying for them.
What an honor and privilege it is to approach the throne of God on behalf of the women in our care.
For those times when prayer doesn’t seem like enough, check out this article: 6 Ways to Respond When “I’m Praying for You” Doesn’t Seem like Enough.
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