The following is an excerpt from “A Praying Church,” by Paul Miller, published by Modern Reformation. This excerpt is part 3 of a four-part series in which Miller addresses the importance of a praying church. Here, Miller writes about the history of a praying church.
Read Part 1: Understanding the Problem of Prayerlessness in Church Leadership
Read Part 2: Prayer and the Spirit
From the very beginning, prayer has been fundamental to the life of the church. The first mention of the people of God defines us as a praying people: “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26).
Solomon dedicated the temple as a “house of prayer,” not by preaching a sermon but by praying about prayer. Solomon describes seven different problems (war, famine, and so on) that might confront the people of God, and each time he asks God, “When they pray towards this house, hear in heaven.” Isaiah expands this invitation to the Gentiles, “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).
Solomon’s vision of the temple as a house of prayer permeates the Gospels. Multiple events happened in the temple (sacrifices, giving, teaching), but Jesus describes the Pharisee and the tax collector as going up to the temple to pray. Jesus clears out the temple with a whip because it had ceased to be “a house of prayer.”
This same praying spirit permeated the early church. Tertullian (AD 200) wrote: “We gather in an assembly … and, as if we had formed a military unit, we force our way up to God by prayer. This power is pleasing to God” (Apologeticus). Likewise, Augustine (AD 400) tells us that prayer was so fundamental to the church that Christians said “goodbye” by saying “remember me”—shorthand for “remember me in your prayers.”
“From the very beginning, prayer has been fundamental to the life of the church.”
This vision of a “house of prayer” is lost to us. At a recent gathering of pastors, I read the early church’s first job description for church leaders:
“Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:2-4; emphasis added)
The job description is divided evenly between praying and preaching. So 45 minutes into my talk I asked, “How much training do you have in ministry of the word?”
“Hundreds of hours,” they answered.
“How much training do you have in prayer?” I asked.
One pastor shouted from the back, “About forty-five minutes!”
In summary, prayer is not a ministry of the church—it is the heart of ministry through which the real, functional leadership of the economic union of the Spirit and Jesus, formed at the resurrection, operate. The pastor’s primary task is to be a praying pastor who facilitates a praying church.
