This format of group prayer came out of our youth night one week.
After devotion, we commonly share our prayer requests, I write them down, and we dish them out with volunteers offering to pray each request. Spontaneous, out loud group prayer is something that’s not really comfy for a lot of our kids, and so it can be a real challenge for them.
On the night in question, we had spent so long talking about the prayer requests that we were running out of time to actually pray them. Somehow, we decided that one youth would open the prayer simply, “Dear God, hear our prayers…” and then we would all pray out loud at the same time. When it got quiet, we had another youth ready to close with “In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
It worked really well. We talked about it afterward, and heard comments like, “I didn’t feel as awkward praying out loud like this” and “I didn’t have to worry about making it sound right, because only God was listening and He always understands”. Another comment was, “That was cool, because maybe that’s how prayer sounds to God.” It’s definitely something we will be doing again.
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