Prayers of the People

I've always struggled with the prayers of the people during worship. How do I write a prayer that helps everyone to pray? We need to know that all of us can pray, not just the pastor or Sunday school teacher.

I was reading the pastor's material from the Unbinding the Gospel series (EXCELLENT small group and church-wide series on doing evangelism in a way we Presbyterians can be comfortable with). The suggestion for the prayers of the people during the six week sermon series was to allow about three minutes of silence for people to pray individually. During the silence, every minute or so, the pastor would tell people the category to pray for: pray for the world, pray for the church, pray for those whom God is drawing to this church.

Our church has been getting used to silence. We've had three minutes of silence in worship. We pray in silence during our session meetings. I even preached a sermon on "Drawing Closer to God through Silence." This is like the ancient form of the "bidding prayer" only we respond in silence. We're going to try it this week. Instead of tuning out during the long pastoral prayer, maybe this will help us all draw closer to God and to pray for the world.