Whatever Happened to the Prayer Meeting?

​“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly.”
Acts 4:31

For centuries the prayer meeting was a central part of church life, an indispensable part of the weekly programme. Yet today few Western churches have a prayer meeting.

What was once a major emphasis of church activities has either been relegated to the sidelines and ignored by most members, or it has been dispensed with altogether. Furthermore many prayer meetings today involve little prayer. Even in meetings set aside for prayer, other activities typically crowd in and leave little time for adoration, confession, intercession and thanksgiving to the Lord. We need to ask ourselves: Why is that?

When I was converted, more than 30 years ago, my local church had a dynamic men’s meeting, prayer meeting and outreach evening each week. However, television had been introduced into South Africa the previous year and was beginning to encroach upon the church’s activities. The men’s meeting was “temporarily suspended” because it clashed with “Rich Man, Poor Man”, a popular weekly TV programme. (Actually the men’s meeting never reconvened).

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