IDEAS THAT WORK
Randy Wilson
January 1, 1988
REDISCOVERING THE PRAYER VIGIL
by Ralph F. Wilson
A 75-year-old man beamed at me and said, "At home I have trouble praying for five minutes. Here, an hour seems too short." As we left the church at dusk, having prayed for an hour, our replacements knelt to begin another hour of prayer.
It wasn't always like this. In our church, intercessory prayer had been meager, enthusiasm for prayer virtually nonexistent. For years I had struggled to lead members into a richer prayer life. Then, two years ago, we discovered a time-tested method to challenge and stretch people in prayer: the prayer vigil.
The idea is centuries old. Vigil indicates a time of vigilance or wakefulness, a watch. People used to keep vigils the night before a religious feast.
We schedule a prayer vigil two or three times a year. Good Friday naturally lends itself to prayer. We've also tried early September, before the program year gets underway, and the beginning of the Advent season.
The nice thing about a prayer vigil is simplicity of organization. We circulate a sign-up sheet with hour-long blocks of time, provide prayer resources, open the sanctuary at the beginning of the vigil, and see that the last person locks up.
For instance, last year we set aside noon to midnight on Good Friday for our people to pray an hour at a time in the church sanctuary. The previous Sunday we circulated the sign-up sheet in the shape of a twelve-hour clock. I later asked specific people if they would shift from crowded hours to the one or two vacant hours.
Prayer resources
Some people hesitate to commit themselves for an hour. "That was hard for me," John confessed, "because I didn't know what I was going to pray about for a whole hour." People often feel inadequate at prayer; they ...
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