An Invitation for Everyone to Participate
One of the reasons to have a prayer model is that the model invites everyone to participate in prayer ministry. The idea of the priesthood of all believers was strong in many of the movements that arose in the 17th and 18th century as a reaction to the strong hierarchal structure of state churches in that time. The Quakers, Moravians, Methodists, and Anabaptists were some of the movements that emphasized the priesthood of all believers.
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, John Wimber echoed this concern of the priesthood of all believers as a corrective to elitism that would often appear in different Pentecostal movements concerning prayer for the sick and the failure to embrace the practice of praying for healing in most Evangelical churches. Wimber had roots in the Friends (Quaker) church that probably influenced his sensitivity to this including everyone as an expression of corporate priesthood. He moved his church towards an egalitarian practice of prayer for the sick and used the statement “Everyone gets to play” to express the accessibility of healing prayer as practice for all believers.
There are several aspects of a model that invites everyone to participate in prayer ministry. First, it empowers believers by providing them with a pattern that is accessible and repeatable. Having a pattern demystifies how to pray for healing and allows it to be something that can be available to those who can follow the pattern. The structure allows for clarity around the issue of praying for others that gives direction for prayer ministry whether there is one person or one hundred people to pray for in the ministry time. The clarity of a model can facilitate learning because the pattern provides for feedback and there is a way to discern to what degree the prayer is being effective.
Feedback allows for growth within each prayer ministry encounter and over the life of prayer ministry engagement. There are personal feedback loops as well as cumulative learning that takes place that is hard to replicate without having a prayer model to discern what occurs during the prayer engagement. This learning builds confidence in those who practice prayer ministry as well as conveys confidence to those on the front end of the learning curve. This confidence and equipping removes some of the mental barriers people have concerning prayer ministry.
One of the last things to mention is that a prayer model provides a framework for healthy social engagement. It frames how to start, what to say, and how to gracious close your prayer ministry time. It moves prayer ministry from the realm of awkward or weird to being something that draws people together by building compassion and openness. These are all ways that a prayer model invites everyone to participate in prayer ministry and build a practical skill to equip believers. Practical equipping in prayer ministry is one way to move “the priesthood of all believers” from a theology to a practice in the life of the church.
