Why Use a Prayer Model for Ministry?

Why use a prayer model? It seems like everyone should be able to use prayer however they want to exercise prayer ministry. There are several good reasons to use a model for prayer and the idea of using a model is not new to the five step prayer model. In fact, as long as people have been praying, there have been shared models and patterns of prayer exercised with faith communities. The Jewish people have prayer practices that are 4,000 years old and ways of praying were codified as the history of the people deepen and the temple was established.

The early church echoed this practice of prayer models. The Lord’s Prayer quickly was adopted as a prayer practice in the early church and the New Testament hints that there were other accepted models that had been adopted as well.

The Celtic church established prayers for a myriad of situations that have been accepted and practiced for 1500 years. In addition, the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches all have histories of established models of prayer and the idea has firmly established roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

One reason questions arise occasionally about the five-step prayer model is that it was introduced into the low church. These churches do not normally have a tradition of prayer models and were often established partly in resistance to high-church and state churches. This means that there can be a suspicion of practices that create regimented or patterned prayer. This sense of suspicion can be inherent in the culture and underlie the teaching even when not plainly stated.

There are other sound reasons beyond a history of prayer models in the church and Jewish tradition to practice the five-step prayer model and over the next several weeks, we will explore these reasons together.