Every church should have a chain of prayer, I thought, a fellowship of people who are mobilized to join in prayer when there is a need in the congregation or community. Our large church, in existence before this country was a country, hasn't had a prayer chain. Why not start one! Good idea!
So I called the right person on the right committee who was delighted someone would volunteer to do the work of organizing a prayer group and could I please do a recruitment flyer for our church newsletter and talk to her committee about my motivational modalities and bottom-line prospects and, wait, all I wanted to do was to get a little group of people together who will pray when praying is needed, and we'll see God move mountains and heal and do signs and wonders and--would I be willing to do a presentation in front of the congregation?
So I wrote up a job description for our chain gang and put an ad in the bulletin and managed to sidestep the idea of standing up in front of the church--two services. And suddenly forty people had signed up.
I set up a spreadsheet. I mailed everyone a copy of a preliminary list, a poem about prayer, even a homemade refrigerator magnet with a space so they could record who they were to call on the chain when a request came in. Forty wonderful people had committed to pray in the name of Jesus for deeply-needed requests and to look for miracles. Forty members of my church, many of whom I didn't know at all, were going to stand together, with God in our midst, to uphold people in need.
Finally, I started praying. Good thing.
The original spreadsheet, the long version which just listed everyone alphabetically (each called the person below them) started playing out like the kids' telephone game: I would phone the top person to say that Sam Jablonski needed prayer for surgery on Tuesday, and the last person on the list would be calling me back days later to ask why we were praying for Dan Zabinski to commit perjury on Monday. One person discovered the person she was to call had "call block" against her number and her calls couldn't get through, and they had to reverse who called whom. Several called to say that they only talked to answering machines and weren't sure their messages were being received. Someone suggested an e-mail link in the chain. I prayed more.
Even though I did much of my enthusiastic planning of a prayer chain inside out (I believe the steps to a successful anything in the church should be to pray first and plan later), God is bringing our links into a beautiful chain who have prayed many people through many trials and illnesses--and joys that we share. Someone who is better skilled on spreadsheet programs than I created a series of smaller, 5-person chains all connected at the top by central callers; now there is less of a chance of one long chain being broken. We have a separate e-mail chain, some of whom also are phoned so they know when they have an e-mail! And the pastor suggested a weekly update sheet which is kept in a folder for prayer chain members (not for general viewing--we've found we need to keep some confidentiality) so he and the assistant pastor will be updated on needs of the congregation as we are.
We had a face-to-face meeting of our prayer chain people between services a few months after we had started. What a great and diverse bunch we are! We all introduced ourselves along with who-we-call and who-calls-us, and people were happy to attach faces with names and voices. We discussed some details and problems and how to improve communication. Finally we prayed together for our prayer requests, for our church and mission and pastors and committees and for each other, and there was a sense of "God in our midst." He was the initiator of our prayer chain, not me!
Judith Hugg writes from Morristown NJ.