Such a great book on prayer! Not just personal prayer but why and how we should pray together as a church body.

This newest addition to the 9 Marks series on the church continues the in the same vein its predecessors established: it is unapologetically biblical while being relevant. Onwuchekwa is committed to seeing corporate prayer in the local church take on a needed dose of intentionality, and this book provides a way forward for those who share his vision.

First sentence from the introduction: If you were to walk into most churches next Sunday, what would you find? You would hear music and singing. It might be loud or sparse, the songs new or old. But you know what you probably wouldn’t see a lot of? Or participate in? Prayer.

First sentence from chapter one: Well, here you are reading another book on prayer. Maybe the last one didn’t make you feel guilty enough, and you’re a glutton for punishment. What good is a book on prayer without an initial quote that surfaces your shortcomings as a pray-er? Without further ado, here it goes: “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing!”

When was the last time you read a book on corporate prayer? I think this was my first. The Bible speaks many, many times of the importance of praying together as the people of God.

Onwuchkwa isn't saying that most churches are prayerless, lacking in prayers altogether. He is saying that churches could be--should be--doing a better job at praying together in church services and prayer meetings. We should, he writes, be praying bigger and better prayers that reflect how BIG our God is. Our tiny prayers reflect our puny God.
"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."
What is prayer? What does biblical prayer look like? What should prayer in our churches look like? How do churches learn to pray better together?

This book does focus mainly on corporate prayer, on prayer in our churches and for our churches. But individuals can benefit from reading it as well. The book is practical and thought-provoking.

This is a good book to encourage and challenge churches in the importance of prayer.
I received this book free from the publisher for the purpose of an honest review.

As a pastor, I am always looking for resources to help encourage my church to pray. What I appreciated about this book was that the focus was on corporate prayer. So many books on the topic focus on personal prayer, but this made the case for prayer as a church. I highly recommend it.

John Onwuchekwa's book on prayer is a very helpful resource meant to get churches, pastors and members thinking about the subject of corporate prayer and how to apply it effectively. While many books have been written about prayer, most of them focus on the individual aspects of prayer. While we certainly should pray personally, prayer in the Bible is seen countless times as a corporate activity. Onwuchekwa encourages churches to prioritize prayer and to think about how it shapes our worship and our community. Some helpful advice includes what to focus on in making requests (God's kingdom purposes), how and why to have regular church prayer meetings, and using the ACTS acronym (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication) in corporate prayer. I will certainly reread this book, and I can recommend it to any Christian who wishes to see his or her church shaped by corporate prayer. I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher and was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I express in this review are entirely my own.

With so many books on prayer available, it's hard to know where to start or which one to read. If you've read one, have you read them all? Why should I read another book on prayer? Those thoughts are the reason that Prayer by John Onwuchekwa sets itself apart. John doesn't just focus on personal prayer, but also shows the "why" and the "how" of corporate, congregational prayer.  John says in his own words, "that's the goal of this book: learning how to pray better and more as churches. Just as our private prayer lives can be improved by God's grace, so too can our corporate prayer lives."

John takes the beginning of the book to define prayer and look at biblical examples. This is extremely helpful because many people have many definitions for prayer. When we look at how people prayed in the Bible, especially Jesus, we learn a right model for our prayers. 

After defining prayer and even looking briefly at what personal prayer looks like for the believer, John moves on to corporate church prayer. He first shows the importance of being a praying people when we are gathered as the body and then he talks about two things related to corporate prayer that I found to be the most helpful parts of the book: the Sunday morning service and the prayer meeting.

On Sunday mornings, our corporate prayers teach our people to pray. John highlights how we can use the ACTS model to direct our prayers. He also helpfully points out that it is ok to prepare our prayers before we pray them. We prepare for music and sermons beforehand, why not also be intentional with our prayers? This is a suggestion that had a great impact on me.

He then talks about the "need for" and the "how to" of prayer meetings. I think this is some of the most useful information in the book. We live in a day where prayer meetings are becoming a thing of the past, but John convinced me that corporate prayer is necessary for the church. I would not have been one to jump on this train before hearing his arguments. The other extremely useful part is he gives advice on how to do this for it to be most beneficial. The reader is gifted with the wisdom John has gained from his own trial and error in leading prayer meetings and his tips are highly valuable.

Pastor, elder, deacon, or congregation member would benefit from reading John Onwuchekwa's short book on prayer. It's very accessible in the way he writes and the commitment to read it is not a large one as it is a short, but useful book. Prayer is filled with great quotes, but I will leave you with a few of my favorites:

"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."
"Praying with plural pronouns as Jesus taught is one of the best ways to love our neighbors because, even when they're out of sight, they should never be out of mind."
"Gethsemane means 'the olive press.' Pressed olives produced the oil that was used for centuries to anoint kings and priests. Now Jesus stepped into a time of intense pressure for his anointing."
"Prayer is mentioned no less than twenty one times in Acts. Furthermore, these prayers are inherently corporate. Whenever prayer is mentioned, it overwhelmingly involves others."

You can get your copy of Prayer by John Onwuchekwa here. It's available on August 31, 2018.

Onwuchekwa, John. Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2018.

There are only two types of churches: those that pray together and those that don’t. John Onwuchekwa’s wonderful, little Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church, offers us a way forward, a way to bridge the gap between churches that pray and churches that don’t. His goal is to help us learn how to pray better and more as churches. This is a book about prayer that is intentionally about the corporate prayer life of local churches.

I’ve read plenty of books on individual prayer. There are some great books out there (Paul Miller’s Praying Life, being one of the best). Yet most, if not all, only address the corporate nature of prayer to a degree. If memory serves me, this is the first and only book on corporate prayer that I have ever read. This book is needed!

Our prayer should be as valuable and essential to us as breathing. Without it we die. Onwuchekwa argues that a complete lack of prayer isn’t the problem of our churches but a problem of too little prayer. He writes, “When prayer is sparse and sporadic, when it’s done just enough to ease the conscience and not much more, we’ve got a problem” (18). Our corporate prayer-less-ness not only says something about our church, but also continues to teach and reinforce bad theology. But our prayerfulness helps teach rightly about God: “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” (19).

Onwuchekwa, borrowing from Gary Millar’s Calling on the Name of the Lord, defines prayer as “calling on God to come through on his promise” (33). Prayer ties us to the promises of God. Our prayers call upon God to keep his promises. And they also have a deeply corporate nature. “If prayer clings to the hope we share in Christ, then prayer should reflect our togetherness in Christ. If prayer has a gospel shape, then by implication it must have a church shape” (37).

We call on the name of the Lord together. “Prayer was never meant to be a merely personal exercise with personal benefits, but a discipline that reminds us how we’re personally responsible for others. This means every time we pray, we should actively reject an individualistic mindset” (41). In other words, “prayer is a collective exercise” (41).

In Chapters 3 and 4, Onwuchekwa walks through the Lord’s prayer focusing on its communal nature. We must begin focused on God. He begins by looking at the address and first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Prayer is focused on God’s presence before his provision. He writes, “The most important things about prayer is not what God gives us by way of his possessions, but what God gives by way of his presence” (46). In the fourth chapter he looks at the remaining petitions in how prayer seeks the Lord’s provision (daily bread), pardon (forgive our debts), and protection (deliver us from evil). Throughout, he focuses on how the Lord taught his disciples (and us) to pray with plural pronouns. We prayer for one another together.

In chapter 5, Onwuchekwa focuses on Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane as an example of how we should pray. This is where Jesus’ teaching on prayer gains traction as his disciples witness his practice of prayer. In Gethsemane, and ultimately three days after Calvary, we see that God does the impossible. “We won’t consistently pray if we’re not sure of God’s ability. So much of our failure to pray comes from subtly believing that within God exists the possibility of failure. Because of this, we never ask God to do the impossible” (71).

Personally, I found chapter 6: “Glory: The Role of Prayer in Corporate Worship” the most helpful in the book. Corporate worship, including corporate prayer, is not meant to be a spectator sport. “Corporate prayer is a way we teach our church how to engage with God” (78). He walks through A.C.T.S. (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication) with an intentional corporate focus. I’ve been familiar with A.C.T.S. for countless year, but I have never really thought about it through the lens of corporate prayer. I found this very helpful.

Chapter 7, “Lean on Me: The Role of Prayer in Corporate Care” was arguably the second best chapter. The focus was on how a church that prays together becomes a church that actively cares for one another. Dependence upon God isn’t learned by propositional learning, but by active leaning. Onwuchekwa writes, “A church that practices prayer is more than a church that learns; it’s also a church that leans. It’s more than a church that knows; it’s also a church that feels. We learn dependence by leaning on God together” (92). And he helpfully asks, “Where do people actually learn to lean on God in your church? Is there a space for them to learn dependence?” (93). He ends this chapter with offering some helpful suggestions on how to carry out a prayer meeting (more on that below).

The final full chapter, chapter 8 focuses on the relationship of prayer to evangelism and missions. “Making prayers for conversion a staple of our time together will go a long way in creating a culture of evangelism” (116).

Onwuchekwa ends with addressing five temptations. First, the temptation to cancel a prayer meeting. In short, don’t. Second, the temptation to form your theology of prayer around how God answered your most recent prayer. He answers this by arguing for the importance of keeping track of our prayer requests and revisiting that list often. Third, is the temptation to individualize what God meant to be corporate. A simple practical example: use plural nouns when you pray. Fourth, don’t be tempted to assume that people know what prayer is and how they should do it. In other words, prayer must be taught and prayer is best learned through practice. Fifth, don’t be tempted to measure the effectiveness of your prayer meeting by the amount of people who attend. Regardless, of the attendance, corporate prayer is worth fighting for.

Some books get you thinking. Other books get you moving. This book got me thinking which then got me moving. And for that I am most thankful.

The most significant contribution this book has made to my ministry is the compelling case for the prayer meeting. I confess that I have been one of those pastors who seeks to run the church with a simplified view of corporate church practice. I still believe this is the best recourse as opposed to piling ministry after ministry upon the already busy and burdened people. But prayer isn’t so much a ministry (it is) but the foundation and backbone of ministry. Prayer is ministry, but it is also the fuel for the fire of ministry.

To that end I am thinking through how we may best incorporate a specific day, time, and place once a month dedicated to corporate prayer. I don’t know why but for some reason I have been reticent to initiate a prayer meeting because it’s hard enough getting people to come out on Sunday, let alone another day of the week. But I shouldn’t be thinking this way. Nonetheless, I do appreciate that Onwuchekwa warns: “prepare to be disappointed. The prayer gathering will likely have poor attendance, at least initially. But keep fighting” (125).

I see now that corporate prayer is worth fighting for.