Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church (9Marks Building Healthy Churches Series)
Overview
What is the role of corporate prayer in the church?
Prayer is as necessary to the Christian as breathing is to the human body—but it often doesn’t come quite as naturally. In fact, prayer in the church often gets subtly pushed to the side in favor of pragmatic practices that promise tangible results.
This book focuses on the necessity of regular prayer as a central practice in the local church—awakening us to the need and blessing of corporate prayer by examining what Jesus taught about prayer, how the first Christians approached prayer, and how to prioritize prayer in our congregations.
- Encourages churches to focus more on corporate prayer
- Covers the basics of prayer and its role in the church
- Addresses common obstacles to prayer
- Breathe Again: The Problem of Prayerlessness
- A Class Act: Teach Us to Pray
- The World Is Yours: A Family Led
- Soul Food: A Family Fed
- Roots: A Family Bred
- Glory: The Role of Prayer in Corporate Worship
- Lean on Me: The Role of Prayer in Corporate Care
- Doing the Right Thing: The Role of Prayer in Missions
- Conclusion: Fighting Temptations
Top Highlights
“‘To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing!’1” (Page 17)
“Here’s what he concludes: prayer is ‘calling on God to come through on his promise.’2” (Page 33)
“I’ve heard Mark Dever say that we should pray so much in our church gatherings that the nonbelievers get bored. We talk too much to a God they don’t believe in.” (Page 15)
“Do you see the danger in too little prayer? Where prayer is present, it’s saying something—it’s speaking, shouting. It teaches the church that we really need the Lord. Where prayer is absent, it reinforces the assumption that we’re okay without him. Infrequent prayer teaches a church that God is needed only in special situations—under certain circumstances but not all. It teaches a church that God’s help is intermittently necessary, not consistently so. It leads a church to believe that there are plenty of things we can do without God’s help, and we need to bother him only when we run into especially difficult situations.” (Page 19)
“Jesus approaches prayer differently. He doesn’t correct our process problem, like my wife and I did. He addresses our priorities problem. J. C. Ryle asserts, ‘Tell me what a man’s prayers are, and I will soon tell you the state of his soul.’1 As Jesus teaches us to pray, he doesn’t begin by teaching us how to ask. Instead, he teaches us what to ask for. He gives us our priorities before he gives us a process. So that’s where we’ll begin.” (Page 40)
I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book on prayer that left me feeling the entire range of human emotion—until reading John Onwuchekwa’s Prayer. Here is a human book—beautiful, poignant, funny, gritty, and pastoral. This book is better than a correction to our often languid prayer lives. There’s no guilt-based manipulation. Onwuchekwa writes like a fellow traveler, and as a fellow traveler knows what travelers need most: refreshment. Here’s a thirst-quenching encouragement to join together in seeking our great God. I pray every church reads Prayer together; it will change our congregations. Here’s a warm invitation to the entire church, beckoning the people of God to the wonders of prayer.
—Thabiti Anyabwile, Pastor, Anacostia River Church, Washington, DC; author, What Is a Healthy Church Member?
Prayer is an excellent book by my dear friend John Onwuchekwa. It is biblically and theologically rich. It is also real and honest. Want to get a corporate prayer meeting started in your church? This book is a very good start.
—Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Everyone remembers that auntie or uncle who hushed our fears with the words, ‘Baby, we just gon’ pray on that.’ John Onwuchekwa is that voice for today, calling the church back to one of the simplest and most powerful tools in her arsenal—the habit of communal prayer. He doesn’t merely want to reawaken our atrophied prayer muscles; he invites us into the much harder work of reorienting our priorities so that they’re more in line with God’s. Onwuchekwa’s call to return to such ‘first things’ is an excellent start to seeing Christian communities moving in the same kingdom direction.
—K. A. Ellis, Cannada Fellow for World Christianity, Reformed Theological Seminary
- Title: Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church
- Author: John Onwuchekwa
- Series: 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches
- Publisher: Crossway
- Print Publication Date: 2018
- Logos Release Date: 2019
- Pages: 144
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Prayer › Christianity
- ISBNs: 9781433559471, 9781433559501, 9781433559488, 9781433559495, 9781951474256, 9781955768658, 9781955768665, 1433559471, 1433559501, 143355948X, 1433559498, 1951474252, 195576865X, 1955768668
- Resource ID: LLS:PRYRHWSHPSCHRCH
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-19T04:01:49Z
Reviews
1 rating
Patrick
6/4/2022
Having read a few others of the 9Marks books before, I understand the direction of the book is writing it for the corporate work of the church. In this book, the focus isn't on just prayer in general but on specific confines of corporate worship. The books are designed to be primers and not extensive treatises on the subject so not everything can be covered. So with that, this book does a decent job of establishing that churches should pray corporately. It provides the Scripture and key concepts needed to show you the basics. The problem, however, is that it is a bit too general. The book starts off by giving an overview of prayer and how to pray (using, of course, the Lord's Prayer as the model). It uses it to break down the key points of what to pray for. It then goes into the fact that churches need to pray together. However, the structure of this part of the book meanders and it's not until much later that you figure out if the author is talking about just about praying in something like Sunday meetings times or holding special prayer meetings. There's also not a discussion of elder/deacon/church leadership prayer, small group prayer, or specific areas of other parts of the church (shut-ins, the sick, those under church discipline). Maybe that's not the intention that the author wanted to convey. Yet, it seems like the first half is for a different book on prayer in general or it goes on too long on general prayer for this type of book. There are also two times that the author points to specific examples of church prayer because of recent (2016) police-involved shootings. There's not many examples in this book, which can be another negative towards it, but these examples seem to come out of the blue and don't fit in the overall structure of where they are located in the book or the book's layout. Overall, it's a book to convince you that you and your church should pray. Probably not a hard sell. However, overall, it is too general to be that useful in my opinion. But if you're starting at zero, it might be a book that's worth it. Final Grade - C