In yesterday’s post, we looked at an article arguing that Bible study was an integral part of any healthy Christian church. Hopefully your church already incorporates Bible study into its worship and congregational life—in sermons, in Sunday school, in Bible study groups, etc. But there’s another practice that is both a means by which your church can become more effective, and a basic reason for a church’s existence in the first place: communal prayer.

The Bible Prayer Fellowship is a ministry centered around (you guessed it) prayer, and one thing they’re especially passionate about is getting congregations to come together and pray as a community of Christ-followers.

So… what’s the big deal about community prayer? Why not just have everybody pray individually, on their own, in their own homes? That’s the big question tackled in Oliver Price’s article Who Needs Prayer Meetings?

“I never cease to be amazed at the church’s neglect of true, heartfelt, corporate prayer.” says George Verwer, director of Operation Mobilization. After visiting thousands of churches around the world, Verwer concludes that most churches essentially have no prayer meeting. Some have canceled midweek services for lack of interest. Others have shifted to Bible study or activities, allowing only a brief five or ten minutes for prayer.

Yet a few are attempting to overcome the general neglect of corporate prayer with encouraging results. They see signs that the praying associated with the early church may be revived. What can we do to help?

First, we need a fresh understanding of the purpose of corporate prayer, its priority in the church, and the moral and spiritual power it provides. Prayer meeting can be one of the most satisfying and attractive meetings in the church.

Price goes on to explain why prayer and prayer meetings are absolutely critical to the health of any church community—community prayer brings a congregation together, it’s tied to evangelism, and it inspires a bold spirit. Once you’ve read through that introduction, take a look at these follow-up articles that explore the how’s and why’s of church prayer meetings:

• Why Pray Together?—a thorough survey of Bible verses that tell us how and why a church should be praying together.
• A Church Praying for Revival—the story of one church and its experience praying together for revival.
• When Jesus Comes Into Your Prayer Group—a short reflection by Oliver Price about the presence of Christ in our prayer meetings.

Not convinced yet? There are a lot more articles about the power and importance of prayer at the Bible Prayer Fellowship website. Read through some of these and ask yourself if your church is practicing Biblical, community prayer.

What causes a church to grow? And if your church or ministry is considering “planting” a new church, what will cause it to take root and flourish?

Those are big questions, and the answer certainly involves a lot of prayer, strategic planning, and wise leadership. But on a more fundamental level, there is a critical relationship between church growth and the Bible. An article at the Lausanne World Pulse argues that whether you’re a church worker or a missionary, it’s important to understand that there is a strong relationship between church growth and the Bible:

To plant or grow a congregation, two basic things must repeatedly occur: people must come to know Jesus and they must become members of his body. The first step can happen in an evangelistic instant. It is the miracle of faith born during a gospel presentation. What follows is most effectively accomplished through an intentional program of Bible study. House churches, cell groups and small groups are used to incorporate new believers. At the center of each one is a time of Bible study.

The article goes on to list seven specific ways that a program of Bible study strengthens a church and helps it expand. Certainly something to keep in mind—the questions of logistics, money, and leadership are all of obvious importance in growing or planting a church, but at the heart of your church’s success lies the Bible, and the willingness of your church to delve into it.

This week at Gospel.com, we’re asking an important question: what does it mean to be part of the church, the body of Christ?

The Bible makes it clear that interaction with other believers is an important part of the life of a Christ-follower. While you could certainly follow Christ in isolation from other believers, our effectiveness as Christians increases when we work with one another. “Let us not give up meeting together,” we read in Hebrews; and elsewhere the community of Christ-followers is described as a body composed of many individual parts: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.”

So what exactly is a church, and what is it meant to accomplish? That’s a question we’ll be exploring at more length as the week goes on. But two articles by Richard Krejcir provide a good place to start the discussion. First up is What Your Church Can Look Like, which asks: what would an ideal, healthy, Biblical church look like, and what would it do?

What would your church look like if you took away the pastor(s), the music and worship, the buildings, the favored programs, the sacraments and ceremonies, as well as the events and Sunday School? What would you have left? The answer of what is left is what impacts and what resounds in your church, and is where your church’s health lies. Because doing church is not about the pastor, the observances, or the programs. It is about how we come to know and grow in Christ, connect with one another, and serve Him, both inside and outside of the church walls.

A church, then, is about helping its members worship God, grow in the faith, and serve Christ in their homes and communities. Is your church doing a good job of that, when you strip away all of its outward trappings? Krejcir goes into much more detail in a longer followup article, The Twelve Characteristics of the Healthy Church—it’s a lot to take in at first glance, but it’s well worth your time to walk through each of the twelve characteristics Krejcir lays out and ask how your church does (or doesn’t) embody them. And tune in later this week as we point to more articles about the church!