A Praying Church: Intercession as the First Work

Nothing in the New Testament church happened outside of prayer, and this is not incidental to the story, it is the engine of the story. Before Pentecost there was the upper room; before the apostles confronted the Sanhedrin with boldness they 'prayed, and the place was shaken where they were assembled together' (Acts 4:31); before Peter was miraculously released from Herod's prison, 'prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him' (Acts 12:5). We tend to read these episodes as background detail on the way to the real action, but Luke presents prayer as the real action, the hidden lever that moves every visible outcome that follows. Revangelism asks congregations to recover this sequence deliberately: not prayer as a devotional formality that opens a meeting, but prayer as the actual first work of the church, the place where battles are won before they are ever fought in public.

Consider Moses standing in the gap for a rebellious Israel, pleading, 'Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book' (Exodus 32:32). This is intercession at its most costly: a leader willing to be identified with the very people who have failed, refusing to let God's justice have the last word without first pleading His mercy. Ezekiel later laments that God sought for a man to stand in the gap for the land, 'that I should not destroy it: but I found none' (Ezekiel 22:30). The tragedy of Ezekiel's day, and the tragedy of many congregations today, is not a shortage of doctrine or resources but a shortage of intercessors, people willing to stand between a broken community and the judgment it is drifting toward, pleading on its behalf until mercy is released.

The cross itself is the supreme act of intercession, and every human intercessor only ever echoes what Christ has already done once for all. Isaiah prophesied of the Servant who 'made intercession for the transgressors' (Isaiah 53:12), and the writer of Hebrews assures us that Christ 'ever liveth to make intercession' for those who come to God by Him (Hebrews 7:25). When a congregation prays for its community, it is not generating spiritual leverage on its own; it is joining a work Christ is already doing at the right hand of the Father, adding its voice to His unceasing plea for the very people it longs to reach. This should free us from the anxious sense that revival depends on our eloquence or fervour. We are not persuading a reluctant God; we are participating, by grace, in the intercession of the Lamb who was slain.

Why, then, do so many churches struggle to sustain corporate prayer? Honesty requires naming the obstacles plainly. Busyness crowds prayer meetings to the margins of the calendar, treated as optional compared to programs with visible outcomes. Embarrassment silences many who fear praying aloud will expose inadequate words. Unbelief quietly assumes prayer changes little, so effort flows instead into strategies we can control. And perhaps most subtly, many congregations have reduced prayer to a formality, a brief invocation before the 'real' business of a meeting, rather than treating intercession itself as the meeting's true agenda. Revangelism confronts each of these directly: busyness must be reordered around what matters most, embarrassment must be met with gentle, simple patterns anyone can follow, unbelief must be challenged by Scripture's own testimony, and formality must give way to expectant, specific pleading before God.

Specificity is the antidote to shallow, generic prayer. It is easy to pray 'bless our church' in vague terms and feel we have prayed; it is much harder, and far more fruitful, to pray by name for the elder who is discouraged, the teenager drifting from the faith, the neighbour two doors down who has never heard the gospel plainly, and the pastor who carries burdens no one else sees. James commends the prayer of a righteous man that 'availeth much' (James 5:16), and Scripture consistently shows intercessors naming names: Abraham pleading for Sodom person by person in principle (Genesis 18:23-32), Paul naming individuals by name in his prayers for the churches (Colossians 1:3-4). A congregation that begins keeping a written prayer list, updated and prayed over weekly, will find its corporate life transformed simply because vague hopes have become concrete petitions carried faithfully before God.

Prayer for the community surrounding the church building deserves special attention in this phase, because it is where personal preparation begins to turn outward. Jeremiah instructed the exiles to 'seek the peace of the city' where God had placed them, 'and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace' (Jeremiah 29:7). Long before a congregation launches any evangelistic activity, it can begin praying by street, by school, by workplace, for the actual people who live within its reach. Some churches have found it powerful to prayer-walk their neighbourhood, asking God to show them what He already sees there. This is not merely strategic reconnaissance dressed up as spirituality; it is genuine love expressed through intercession, and it consistently produces the by-product of a congregation that begins to notice, and care for, the community it has often overlooked.

Sustaining intercession requires structure, because good intentions alone rarely survive contact with ordinary life. Revangelism recommends a rhythm rather than a burst: a brief, realistic daily commitment kept faithfully is worth more than an ambitious weekly vigil abandoned after a month. A simple pattern many congregations adopt is praying for one name from the church list, one name from the neighbourhood, and one specific need of the pastor or leadership, every day, in whatever few minutes are available. Corporately, a monthly gathering devoted entirely to intercession, with no announcements and no agenda but prayer, communicates powerfully that the church believes prayer is not preliminary to ministry but is itself ministry. Over months this rhythm quietly reshapes a congregation's spiritual metabolism, so that dependence on God becomes instinctive rather than occasional.

As this session closes, the invitation is deeply personal before it becomes corporate. No congregation prays together that is not first made up of individuals who have learned to pray alone. Jesus Himself, though sinless and never in need of revival, modelled this rhythm constantly, rising 'a great while before day' to pray in a solitary place (Mark 1:35) before ever addressing the crowds that pressed upon Him. If the Son of God required unhurried time alone with the Father before public ministry, His church requires nothing less. Consider committing, beginning today, to a daily covenant of intercession, however brief, for your church, your community, and your own heart's readiness. This is not a preliminary exercise before the real work of Revangelism begins. This is the real work, and everything that follows in this course will only be as fruitful as the praying that undergirds it.