Prayer Rooms

After serving Methodist Churches for twenty eight years, Terry Teykl heard a call from God to involve himself in equipping churches to pray.  He wrote several prayer manuals and traveled all over the country.  As I have been thinking about various prayer ministries of churches I served, he came to the forefront of my memory.  He led prayer workshops in some of the churches I served and always left with my folks inspired and motivated to pray.  One of his emphasis was to establish Prayer Rooms in local churches.   

As he noted back then, a lot of churches have space dedicated for worship, fellowship meals, Bible teaching, youth and children's activities, but not many have space that is set aside for prayer.  Not only do most churches not have Prayer Rooms, but very little money is spent on prayer ministries.  When we look at the energy and resources committed to this particular ministry, it causes one to believe that church leadership talks a lot about prayer, but talk does not translate into an intentional ministry.  

When Terry Teykl left the Perry Church a small group of people created a Prayer Room and designed it so that it could be used safely twenty four hours a day.  Volunteers even signed up to be in the Prayer Room on a schedule to answer the phone which was a tool for the ministry.  I do not know if the ministry is still serving the church and community, but it is an example of what can happen when a few folks heed God's call to make prayer important in the life of the church.  We could use more Prayer Rooms in our churches and certainly we could use more people who do not just talk and read about prayer, but pray.