150 days until the Lilburn, GA, USA Revival Conference
Why have so many church prayer meetings been given up? The world, the flesh, and the devil come in for a good share of the blame, of course. But very many prayer meetings have died from inside causes. They have been killed by well-intentioned “friends.” Both the leadership and the membership are to blame in many instances, for a prayer meeting is not foolproof.
Many prayer meetings die for want of good leadership. Not for lack of good men but good leaders. One could more easily find fifty men who can give a good talk on the subject of prayer than one man who possesses the skill to guide a body of believers in an hour of prayer. It is safe to say that there are churches whose memberships run into the thousands but do not include one skilled prayer leader. The churches train men for the ministry of preaching, the ministry of music, the ministry of education, etc., but who ever heard of a church training men for leadership in prayer?
When a prayer meeting has a leader who will open the meeting with a long prayer, then give a forty-minute “prayer meeting talk” or a Bible lecture, and then close with another long, aimless prayer by himself—only by the long-suffering of those faithful ones who attend can such a prayer meeting be kept going. It is enough that the people sit at the feet of a man on Sunday morning and evening, without having to sit at the feet of a man on Wednesday night.
Then there is the prayer meeting leader who will come into the meeting with no preparation of mind or heart for the most important business in the world. He will give a rambling talk and then he will say, “Now let us go to prayer.”
Many prayer meetings are killed by some of those who faithfully attend and who would not for the world have the prayer meetings cease. There are the ones who lag behind, and those who unwittingly run away with the meeting—especially if the leadership is weak. Those who are too slow in taking part act as a brake on the meeting. They grieve the Spirit and vex the leader. They claim to be retiring and shy.
If these are too slow, others are too fast. Instead of waiting a moment for the slow ones, they are always first to lead out in prayer. Some pray so glibly and extensively that the timid ones will not even try to pray. They make mention of everything under the sun and use every word in their vocabulary to do it. There is nothing left for the slow ones to pray about. -A.E. Reinschmidt
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