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Prayer Mobilization

How We Started a Prayer Group of 400 People in 6 Months

How We Started a Prayer Group of 400 People in 6 Months Jerry and Lorraine McAtee

Preparing list of Prospects:

1. First, we made a list of all the Christians that we knew.
2. Then, we sorted the list into 3 basic categories: Persons we were confident would want to be involved, Persons who were very strong candidates, Persons we thought would be borderline in interest.

3. We made a list of other people we did not know personally but with whom we

wanted to meet and discuss the idea.

1. There were those people to whom we were referred by our contacts,
2. There were those individuals who heard about our prayer network and came to us.
3. We worked through the State and local Church Councils of our organization and attended their meetings sharing our goals and approach for the prayer network.

Basic characteristics of the Christian people we desired to be involved:

1. Individuals who believed in and practiced prayer as a life style.

2. People who loved missions and had a great heart for sharing the Gospel with the lost

3. People who could keep confidential and sensitive information and abide by any needed security requirements related to the work.

4. Desired, but not required, at least one person in the prayer cell who had email.

Strategy:

I basic desire was to have faithful prayer partners. We were looking for quality rather than quantity.

We would talk with pastors privately about the above characteristics and describe the nature of our work and what we hoped to accomplish with the prayer network. Nearly every time, the pastor would start with a long list of candidates in their minds and then shorten it drastically after we shared the detail characteristics of the type people we desired.

The pastor would write each prospective member a well-done letter or talk in person describing what he or she was asked to consider. So, those who came to our meetings had already basically decided they wanted to be involved. We met in homes, church conference rooms, and hotel lobbies in private.

Prepared Materials:

We felt it was important that each person left the meeting with something nice in his or her hands. We presented them with a list of specific prayer items to prayer for on a daily basis. Thus, they could start immediately after leaving the meeting to pray for our work.

Nice folders were purchased and given to each person. They contained a description of the work among our people group, security information, information about the two of us, a prayer list, our email address and other items.

Suggested Group Size:

The group sizes ranged from 3 to 15 with the average being 9. There were just under 400 people in about 39 groups from various Christian denominations. One church had 3 groups with each group composed of 10 people. We purposely suggested they be 10 or less so communication would be easy for them. How and when they met and how they

organized was their decision; we just shared with them our vision of reaching the People Group with prayer as the foundation.

Presentation

We presented a positive story about our work and the People Group and the approach of missions organization. The groups caught the vision and excitement of how we are doing missions and wanted to be involved.

Several people asked for permission to start other prayer cells for us. We traveled in our personal car over 20,000 miles in 6 months doing this. People get excited about this!

Rewards:

Although the process was hard and tiring, it was a pure blessing to us and well worth

The effort. Life long friends were made and we met the sweetest Christians. Many of them were key leaders and opinion shapers in their churches. All wanted to be involved

in some way and many wanted to give money as well as send volunteers. There were church adoptions of the People Group to whom we were working.

Communication with Prayer Network:

We communicated with them on a regular basis via email. The prayer network is an excellent missions education tool when effective information is shared on a regular basis with the prayer group.

We could go on and on about this, but this will give you a flavor of what we did and how we went about setting up a prayer network. Hope this helps.

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