This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission from purchased products at no additional cost to you. See my full disclosure here.
Encourage spiritual growth with life-changing and impactful prayer stations for small church congregations. Prayer stations are perfect for almost any small church event and can be done with any size budget.
What Is A Prayer Station?
Prayer stations are designated spaces or areas set apart for contemplation or prayer. A Prayer station provides a moment to meet with God. The space is designed to offer a specific topic or direction for prayer. Prayers are usually simple, sometimes even five words, “Lord, help me with this.” Each station includes an activity, and elements such as lighting, action steps, candles, pictures, or other things can remind us of something to ponder and pray.
Prayer stations take us beyond the prayer over our food or the blessing our kids have repeated in Sunday school and into a deeper, living conversation with God.
For children and youth, a prayer station can provide an avenue to teach them about prayer in a personal way. In addition, it can help them develop a friendship relationship with the Lord as they learn new ways to pray and talk to God. Also, it can allow our youngsters and teens the opportunity to practice listening to what the Lord may be speaking to them.
Top Reason To Do Prayer Stations
The prayer station’s purpose is to help people draw closer to God. Prayer stations can make it personally relatable for people from different walks of life to individually take a step to draw closer to the Lord as the Lord helps each in his own way.
As people experience a prayer station, this can give an understanding that prayer doesn’t always require a 30-minute time commitment. Talking to the Lord and spending time with Him can easily happen in a short few minutes.
When Can Small Churches Offer Prayer Stations?
Worship Night or Praise Night
Worship or Praise services are perfect for prayer stations. Consider themes such as joy, praise, or even the names of God.
Lent services
Whether you have services throughout the Lenten season, only on Good Friday, or each day of Holy Week, prayer stations can be powerful at this time of year.
Good Friday
Good Friday is a perfect day for a series of worship stations. Consider having an open-house-style event for your congregants to come in two or three hours and experience what God has for them.
Advent Services
Try offering family prayer stations to help families or a small group of friends celebrate Advent together.
Blue Christmas Service
Set up a table and offer votive candles for an easy and quick prayer station for your Blue Christmas service. Ask attendees to light one or more candles to remember a loved one. Include a comforting scripture individuals may read and meditate on.
Prayer Events
Try offering prayer stations throughout your room with a different focus for your prayer events. For example, pin a map onto a bulletin board. Ask those who pray to put a push pin or thumb tack onto a country they pray for.
Children’s Events
Prayer stations tailored for youngsters at a children’s event can make a lasting impression on these young hearts that they don’t have to wait until they grow up to have a personal relationship with God. Prayer stations allow children to hear what the Lord has for them. In addition, these stations give them a chance to seek and worship the Lord on their level.
Youth Services
Prayer stations at a youth service or youth camp can significantly impact teenagers. Stations give your youth a moment of focused thought on what God may have for them and their future.
Men’s Worship Night
These are great tools for a men’s ministry. Use car parts, rearview mirrors, push pins and bulletin boards, knots in a rope, sporting equipment, or whiteboards and dry-erase markers in your prayer stations.
Women’s Retreat
Prayer stations to mirror your retreat theme, or take them in a different direction and use them as part of a breakout session.
Hispanic Vigilia Prayer & Praise Event
Use prayer stations to focus on who the Bible says God is or the names of God. These themes fit well with a late-night prayer and worship event.
New Year’s Eve
Small Churches can set up amazing prayer stations for a New Year’s Eve service. If God has already given you a corporate word or focus for the coming year, develop your prayer stations around that specific word or theme. Or, set up stations around a theme of Renewed Vision, God’s Promises, Hope, or Standing Strong.
In place of a worship team or choir rehearsal
Your small church music team can truly benefit from an evening of fellowship and prayer stations. Create stations that explore worship, praise, or joy in the Lord themes for deeper team connection.
Prayer Stations Are Powerful Tools
Prayer stations create a space for the individual to connect with God. It may be with a spoken prayer, or through silence, a drawing, an activity, a written word, or a movement. They are a powerful teaching tool to help individuals understand prayer is personal. Prayer isn’t exclusive to speaking eloquent words in the midst of a large group of people.
The beauty of prayer stations is they allow people to express their thoughts, concerns, hopes, dreams, and fears in their own space with God, reflective of their own personalities, intellects, strengths, and weaknesses.
This idea from 3 Small Church New Year’s Events is simple. It can easily be used at a prayer station with a focus on worship. “Provide index cards and pens. Ask congregants to take a few minutes to pray and ask the Lord for one act they can do this coming week to worship Him. They keep their cards as reminders.”
Prayer stations give clear instructions. This can help people learn to pray or discover a new way to pray. In addition, these stations can help people pray a scripture, examine their hearts, and take a step to draw closer to God.
Create One Or More At Your Church
Prayer Stations are versatile. Small churches can set up just one prayer station for a worship night or Sunday service. Or, a room can be filled with several stations for a whole experience event, such as Good Friday.
Using one prayer station is an easy tool to remind congregants prayerfulness or thankfulness can (and should) be built into our lives daily and weekly. These stations can assure us we can bring prayer, thankfulness, forgiveness, or your prayer station theme into the ordinary, common, and usual moments of our days.
When many stations are set up throughout a room or sanctuary, individuals move freely to a different area at their own pace. Give directions at the beginning of the service. If the service is open house” style, print out the instructions in a bulletin or flyer and pass them to participants as they arrive.
5 Easy Instructions To Start Your Event
- Welcome! We are glad you are here.
- This time is an opportunity for you to meet with God. So please let your conversation be with Him and not catching up with your neighbors.
- There are instructions at each station to guide you in the activity.
- Please do not move chairs from one station to another.
- Take your time going through the stations. They do not have to be done in order. The goal is to have meaningful experiences with God, not to rush through the stations and get them checked off your to-do list for the day.
Ideally, you want extra prayer stations so people aren’t crowded into every station simultaneously. If people come and go to stations but may have to wait before a seat is open, play soft worship music or instrumental music in the background. This encourages those waiting for a prayer station to continue in the solemn atmosphere of the room.
Three Parts To A Prayer Station
1. Scripture
Offering a scripture to consider, ponder, or meditate on can have a powerful effect. This scripture should be relevant to the topic, theme, and question you pose to the participant. It brings a Bible verse to the front of someone’s thoughts. Giving a scripture helps a person incorporate Bible scripture into their daily life.
2. Focus Point or Something To Consider
Prayer stations have a focus. Give one point or topic to explore within your thoughts, self, viewpoint, lifestyle, and walk with the Lord. Place written instructions at the table with an activity or prop to help a participant think, ponder, or focus on a specific point. Provide something for the participant to do at the station. For example, color a picture, draw in the sand, or take a stone home. Build, create, look, reflect, eat, taste, smell, touch, or listen.
3. Prayer or Action Step
Always incorporate this final step for your stations. For example, ask them to say a short prayer, talk to God about it, or write a short prayer. Taking an action step helps the participant act on or remember what the Lord may be speaking to their heart.
Easy Tips To Design Prayer Stations
Keep it simple. Great prayer stations don’t have elaborate decorations that distract the participant from the station’s message. Instead, use simple table coverings, lighting, and activities.
Prayer stations can be easy to set up and take down, should give simple and clear instructions, and have easy action steps. For instance, if the focus at a prayer station is forgiveness, ask the participant to think about one person they might need to forgive – not list everyone in their life who has done them wrong. Try the Gratitude Jar idea if you focus on being thankful or grateful at a prayer station.
Design your prayer station for the audience who visit it. A prayer station on taking delight in the Lord at a men’s event should look very different from a youth event, children’s station, or a women’s retreat. A prayer station focused on the love of God is designed differently for young adults than children.
Start your planning time and designing session with prayer. Ask the Lord what elements He wants you to incorporate into the stations. He knows your audience better than you. He can give you great ideas that can deliver a high impact for your participants.
Stations should always have seating. However, the seating capacity can vary from one station to the next. For example, one station may be at the front of the church, and the seating is the two steps going up to the sermon area. Another may be a table with six chairs around it, while another may just have one chair. For teens, consider a station with big pillows on the floor.
Prayer Stations Can Benefit Small Church Members
- Takes prayer “out of the box” and brings it into a personal realm
- Can help children, teens, and adults gain excitement for prayer
- Encourages children to pray and experience God on a personal level
- Embraces individual creativity and expression in prayer to the Lord
- Allows many people to be actively involved in a prayer service rather than a few
- Enhances and/or helps one develop their prayer life
- Gives time for those who aren’t quick to know how to pray for something
- Inspires thought-out and heartfelt prayer
- Removes, for some, the fear that “they don’t know how to pray the right way.”
Small Church Prayer Stations Can Be Reusable
Prayer stations can be an amazing tool for your small church to foster spiritual growth in your congregation. Prayer stations can impact the lives of children, teens, and adults. Stations can be inexpensive and easy to set up. They are even reusable for future events and services.
Keep your prayer stations together and safe for future use. Use a 3-ring binder with sheet protectors and create a Prayer Station Reference. Put the instructions in a sheet protector. With the instructions, include the list of needed materials, the scripture, and any notes you’ve made for improvement or what you’d like to do differently next time.
If you have abundant space, purchase clear plastic shoe boxes or totes to keep individual station supplies.
Weave Prayer Stations Into Your Church Culture
Incorporate prayer stations quarterly in your small church. If you are new to prayer stations, try just one at an upcoming all-church event or a ministry event. Prayer stations can work well for all ages and all stages of life.
Try a prayer station at your New Year’s event to help people consider what God may have for them in the coming year.
Offer a Good Friday walk-through event with prayer stations to think about the sacrifice Jesus made for each of us and explore the benefits we have in Christ because of what Jesus did.
Plan a summer prayer event and use prayer stations to focus your prayers on families, first responders, our government, and missionary efforts in other parts of the world.
Kick off the Advent season at your church with a different type of church service. Set up a large group of tables for families to create their own Advent Wreaths. Set up other prayer stations with themes of thankfulness, waiting, and joy. Have a short time of praise and worship, then suggest families visit one or all stations. Conclude the service with a soup, sandwich, and salad lunch.
Remember, prayer stations can have a powerful effect on the lives and spiritual growth of those participating. They don’t have to be complicated and should be simple and easy.
Share this post with a friend. Then enlist their help and start your plan to use prayer stations in your small church.
Read More:
Come Thou Fount: A Creative Worship Response
