Are our prayer meetings fit for purpose?

I recently conducted a brief and very unscientific poll on Twitter about church prayer meetings. It’s not going to pass any test for being representative or statis-tically reliable, but nonetheless the anec-dotal results tell a clear story. I asked how many church members attended the weekly church prayer meeting.

34% of respondents said that less than 25% of their church members came. The next two categories (25-50% and 51%+) scored 27% and 13% respectively. The last category ‘we don’t have a weekly prayer meeting’ scored 26%.

There are, of course, a myriad of circumstances and situations behind these statistics and I am wary of using them to berate anybody or cause any sense of inadequacy. For the most part, I don’t believe Christians have stopped believing in prayer. Instead, it’s an opportunity to ask whether our prayer meetings are fit for purpose.