The Necessity of Corporate Prayer

Jonathan Edwards call to united, extraordinary prayer.

There would be many different reasons that account for our prayerlessness these days. From the ease of modern day self-reliance, to the suburban lifestyle which isolates families and individuals, to Netflix, to unbelief. It is too easy not to pray in 2023. And it is even easier to not pray corporately with the rest of your local church.

I don’t think it would take long to prove that corporate prayer has hit an all time low in Australia. I am quite content to make a bold, un-nuanced statement that we do not pray enough as churches. But why? Is it simply because of some of those reasons I listed above? Surely though if pastors were aware of these things then they would be seeking to still diligently call their people to regular prayer meetings and strive to make them easily accessible and engaging and worthwhile. Is that the case though? I’m not so sure. This is not to accuse pastors of not caring enough about corporate prayer. I have no doubt that to only have the same faithful few to each prayer meeting is a discouragement to them. But there is often a great disparity between what we desire and what we know is right, and we actually do.

Have we become complacent with the irregular, poorly attended, dry and somewhat lifeless prayer meeting? It seems that we have.

Jonathan Edwards had something to say about this. He was a man that by no means compromised on deep, theologically rich and difficult preaching, but was also unwilling to be content with prayerlessness. For he was convinced that if we were to truly see revival, a great awakening, a multitude of people from every tribe, nation and tongue coming to the Lord, then we must be engaged in what he called “united, extraordinary prayer.” He wrote a short treatise on this subject in the 18th century, and he pleaded with ministers both in Scotland and in America that they must draw their people together in prayer, to earnestly and urgently seek the Lord, so that he would bring on the advancement of Christ’s church and kingdom.

He draws particularly from Zechariah 8:20-23, first arguing that the prophecy in verse 23 could not have come to pass just yet, before moving on to argue that prayer is indeed the means by which God will bring this about. While I could probably disagree with him on the not-yetness of the prophecy, I would still agree with him that for us to continue to see this prophecy fulfilled, we must be a people who are eagerly looking “to go at once to entreat the favour of the LORD and to seek the LORD of hosts” (8:21). That Hebrew word translated in the ESV as “entreat” is the same as in Exodus 32:11 where Moses “implored” the LORD to not destroy Israel for their idolatry.

Interestingly, this verb is of the same root which means “to grow weak or tired.” So to “entreat the favour of the LORD” or dare I say it “to cause the LORD’s favour to grow weary” (praise God he never does get weary!) as we call on him in prayer, could not be more fundamentally necessary if we are to see more and more come to the Lord Jesus in faith and repentance. For all the difficulty of understanding the mystery between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, we surely cannot downplay the necessity of prayer in God’s salvation of his people. While I don’t mean to imply a prescription from a description, what is it that the apostles were doing before God poured out his Spirit at Pentecost and saved three thousand souls in one day?

Now I don’t think I’ve said much to disagree with up to this point. But let me go back to where I started, why do we not regularly gather corporately to earnestly seek the Lord so that he would save many more? If we know that God will only work amongst us as we earnestly seek him in prayer, why don’t we do it more?

One reason I have heard is that regular corporate, church-wide prayer meetings aren’t as necessary because there is enough prayer in small groups, prayer chains, one on ones, in ministry teams etc. There is no doubt, I don’t think it reason enough to claim a church doesn’t pray when there is all of this prayer taking place in other spaces. But there is something powerful about gathering together, a church represented by many coming before God in prayer to plead with him that he would move amongst us. Edwards described this as a “visible union.”

This united devotion we see every week on as we gather on Sunday’s as we hear God’s Word preached and partake in the Lord’s Supper. But there is one more thing that ought to be included which Acts 2:42 does include: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” There we have, preaching, fellowship, communion, but what about prayer? Could we say that we are a church that is devoted to praying together? Yes, pastoral prayers are a healthy way to do it. The gathering leader should open and close in prayer. But when we read what prayer looks like in the book of Acts, it is something far greater, far richer, far more corporate than the church simply being led in prayer. It is something they are deeply engaged in, together.

And so I want to put it before us, we need to have more prayer meetings. Not for the sake of ticking a box, but as an earnest expression of our desire that God would move amongst us in powerful ways. What might it look like if your church had a monthly prayer meeting? Or even what about weekly? Or even several prayer meetings scattered throughout the week for different people to be able to come at different times? What might God possibly do amongst your people in 3 months, or 6 months, or in 5 years time because of the things we were gathering together to ask him to do? I dare say, it would be far more abundantly than all than we could ask or think (Eph. 3:20).