Not all churches have a missionary prayer meeting, some have no real missionary interest at all. But we should develop an interest in what is happening in other parts of the world for there needs and blessings.

All to often the church is way to parochial. And while I am all for the local church being focused on the job and area that they as a local church have been called to fulfil, We should know that God is moving in great ways in many parts of the world and that believers are suffering terribly in others areas.

You may not want to have a missionary prayer meeting every week. It could be that one weekly prayer meeting every month could have a strong missionary perspective, or the first 15 minuets every week. Even one a quarter would be better than nothing.

While all missionaries everywhere need your prayers, you can not realistically or meaningfully pray for all missionaries everywhere. Some ideas to help your church to develop meaningful prayer for missions.

1. Prayerfully seek one, two or three areas that your church will pray for.

   These could be:

   1. A missionary

      May be it will be someone that your church has sent out

   2. A mission society

   3. A country (a country may be too big and a smaller area might be better)

2. Once you know who your are going to be praying for, you need to build interest in the church for these missions. You can build interest by

   1. Getting prayer letters sent

   2. Getting church members to write and ask for specific news.

      This can now be phone, e-mail, twitter, bloging etc.

   3. Arrange visits from mission representatives, the missionaries themselves etc.

   4. Arrange visits from church members to the area you are praying for

   5. Raising funding for a specific project or for on going running cost

3. Provide tools to help you members know what to pray for and to remind them to pray.

   1. Copy any information into missions prayer notice sheets

   2. Sell culturally relevant items from these areas in the church shop.

      1. Pots, bags, coffee, or whatever that has been made in or by the people you are going to be praying for. Each time these things are used they can remind the need for prayer.

   3. Reminder

      1. Bookmarks

      2. Pens

      3. Posters

      4. E-mail newsletter

   4. Prayers each Sunday service for these people

Involvement and inventiveness are key. People need to feel involved, the smaller the more personal your churches involvement can be the more people will feel that their prayers are worthwhile. And the more inventive you can be to keep missions on the minds of your congregation the better.