Prayer, Corporate

Prayer is one of the most self-revealing acts of a human being. It is simply communion with God. Perhaps that is one reason why almost all books on prayer and spiritual disciplines focus mainly on individual prayer. How can we share what is most intimate except with God alone? Even congregational liturgical prayers, as valuable as they are in congregational worship, may serve to protect individuals from sharing their inmost selves through a form recited in unison. These can all too easily become a collection of standardized requests and confessions rather than praying together as one people with each contributing to the whole.

Our reluctance to pray corporately is incorrectly strengthened by the apparent preference of Jesus for prayer “in the closet.” Jesus condemned the hypocrites for their love of praying publicly in the synagogue and on street corners “to be seen of men” (Matthew 6:5). “When you pray,” exhorts Jesus, “go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father . . . who sees what is done in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Is there a place for corporate prayer? What is the theology and spirituality of such prayer? When is it appropriate? How is it hindered?

Corporate Prayer in the Bible

The story of salvation starts with the people’s desperate cry for help. Deuteronomy says it was because of that corporate prayer that God delivered the people “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (Deut. 26:7-8). Eventually God directed that a temple should be built for corporate prayer, “a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7). At its dedication God promised: “If my people . . . will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). The epitome of corporate prayer under the old covenant was the gathering of the people in the temple for sacrifices, festivals, sabbath worship and times of national crisis.

In the New Testament, the people as a whole become the house of prayer for all nations. The laity is the temple of the Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16). Individual and corporate prayer takes place all week long wherever the people are—gathered to break bread, read Scripture, worship and edify one another, and dispersed for their priesthood in the world. As Elton Trueblood said so aptly, you cannot “go” to church; you “are” the church wherever you go. So the people (see Laity) are a portable sanctuary of communion with God. When believers are dispersed, they are praying priests in the world. When they are together, they are a fellowship of prayer. In the New Testament we see this fellowship of prayer in the upper room (Acts 2:1), from home to home (Acts 2:42), in Mary’s house (Acts 12:12) and in numerous house churches (see Church in the Home) throughout the Roman world—and as believing Jews in the temple together (Acts 2:46).

The last book of the Bible envisions our permanent sanctuary—the new heaven and new earth. Our ultimate future in Christ is continuous corporate prayer as elders, living creatures, angels, martyrs and all peoples join in worship of the Lamb. Heaven is silent for a half-hour to hear the prayers of the saints and then responds with thunder (Rev. 8:1-5). Something happens when God’s people pray. Pascal once said that through prayer God gives humankind the dignity of limited causality. Even in heaven God hears the cries of his people and responds.

Patterns of Corporate Prayer

One of the most remarkable corporate prayers is found in Acts 4:23-31, where, upon the release of Peter and John from custody, “they raised their voices together in prayer to God.” What follows is a prayer rich in scriptural allusion and apparently offered together. We do not know exactly how this happened; probably the text contains the essence of various prayers wonderfully harmonized by the Spirit. While we cannot definitely answer this question, we can identify various ways in which people can pray together today.

Some corporate prayers are a collection of multiple individual prayers, as when people gather silently in a church building to pray, gaining mutual visible support from others in their personal prayers. Liturgical prayers, such as those found in prayer books, and prayers led by a worship leader go a step further by inviting people to offer the same prayer, though there is no guarantee that they are together. The so-called Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), really the disciples’ prayer, is an especially good model of this, though Jesus said, “This is how you should pray,” not “This is what you should pray.” Often such praying is collectivized individual prayers—creating uniformity rather than expounding the rich unity of the body of Christ that is enhanced by a variety of giftedness.

Some churches practice group prayer in a way that invites everyone to pray individually out loud, possibly using a prayer language if so gifted. At its worst this is merely a collection of people “doing their own things” in a public cacophony; at its best there is often a Spirit-led harmony in such utterances that is wonderfully edifying. In prayer meetings, especially in a small group or house church, spontaneous prayers offered out loud by various individuals can become a symphony of prayer, each prayer building on, and adding to, the previous to make a harmonious whole. Sometimes this is called conversational prayer. But the term is misleading. It suggests that the conversation is strictly on the horizontal level, whereas symphonic prayer is a conversation with God in which each person, like an instrument in an orchestra, contributes a distinctive sound to the whole. The point of corporate prayer is not uniformity but unity in communion with God.

Threats to Corporate Prayer

Obviously, this unity is threatened by showy prayers delivered to impress others. This, and not corporateness, was the concern of Jesus in Matthew 6:1-4. It is also threatened by unspiritual feelings of inferiority which quench the contribution of new or struggling believers. Just as each and every spiritual gift, including those we think “less honorable” (1 Cor. 12:23), is needed to build the body of Christ in unity, so every heart cry makes an authentic contribution to people prayer. There are no bad prayers if they are prayers to God (rather than addresses to people). It is spiritual tyranny to insist, as some church leaders do, that people must pray in a certain way. And it is spiritual pride and abuse to judge the quality of another prayer.

Paul deals with a further threat in 1 Tim. 2. Corporate prayer is a reflection of our relational life. If we are competitive or have broken relationships, it will be contaminated, if offered at all. Paul says he wants men “to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger and disputing” (1 Tim. 2:8) and women to pray dressed “modestly, with decency and propriety” (1 Tim. 2:9). There is reason to think that the women in Ephesus were dominating the men (1 Tim. 2:12), just as in other places and times (more commonly, in fact) men have dominated women in the church. Politics and power plays prohibit corporate prayer and “attaining” the unity of the Son of God (Ephes. 4:13). Some churches insist on men praying only with men and women with women, short-changing the rich unity and mutual contributions of male and female together in Christ.

Why Pray Together?

Here are several reasons we pray together:

God hears and responds to the cries of people when they come together for that purpose. Corporate wrestling with God in prayer is valued by him. We can think of the many instances of personal prayers—Paul pleading to have his thorn removed, Abraham haggling over Sodom, Jacob wrestling with the angel and Jesus struggling in the garden. And now under the new covenant, we are to be a people passionately seeking God in prayer together. “Cast yourself into his arms” is an exhortation to those who pray both individually and corporately, “not to be caressed but to wrestle with Him. He loves that holy war” (Forsyth, p. 92).

When we pray together, we join Jesus in his prayer for the people of God. We build on the communion and communication that is already taking place within the triune God. P. T. Forsyth says this brilliantly: “The real power of prayer in history is not a fusillade of praying units of whom Christ is the chief, but it is the corporate action of a Saviour-Intercessor and his community, a volume and energy of prayer organized in a Holy Spirit and in the Church the Spirit creates” (quoted in Peterson, p. 87).

Prayer is the most direct way to know God. Forsyth says that “prayer is to the religious life what original research is to science—by it we get direct contact with reality” (p. 78). Knowing God is not merely an individual quest; first and foremost it is a people desire (Ephes. 1:15-23). And corporate prayer is fundamental to both our individual and communal growing into the knowledge of the Son of God. It is only “together with all the saints” (Ephes. 3:18) that we can know the height and depth and can dwell in the trinitarian love of God.

When we pray together we help one another to pray better. Often the voice of another gives expression to a hidden longing or heartache. In the same way we become a symphony of praise and gratitude in corporate prayer, rather than an orchestra composed of only one instrument. Synergy is the dynamic impact of two chemicals taken as medicines together and having a multiple effect. In the same way corporate prayer contributes to a growing unity like that found in Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Ephes. 4:3-6).

Corporate prayer is a way of ministering to one another. It is a part of the mutual priesthood of all believers. If Spirit-filling is essentially a corporate experience (Ephes. 5:18), if spiritual growth takes place mainly in the company of believers, if God can only be known together, then corporate prayer is one way we can love and serve one another.

Nonetheless, corporate prayer is a “useless” activity. Basically we pray together not to get better results from our prayer—a kind of unionized bargaining process—but simply to delight in God together. Too often we allow a utilitarian dimension to creep into prayer, praying for what we get out of it. What God did for Job can happen to us in our prayers. God did not “answer” his prayers or heal his sickness but did something better. God revealed himself and lifted Job into contemplation (Job 38-41). Faith, and the prayer that is expressed through it, is not “for” anything (Job 1:9), as the devil would have it. South American theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez has said, “Prayer is an experience of gratuity. This `pointless’ act, this `squandered’ time, reminds us that the Lord is beyond being categorized as useful or useless” (p. 206). In the end, the point of corporate prayer, whether in a small group or a cathedral, is simply to be able to say with Job, not “Now I see it all” but “Now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5).

» See also: Fellowship

» See also: Spiritual Disciplines

» See also: Spiritual Growth

References and Resources

P. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, 3rd ed. (London: Independent, 1954); R. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978); G. Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. M. J. O’Connell (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987); R. P. Martin, Worship in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974); E. Peterson, “The Last Word on Prayer,” in Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).

—R. Paul Stevens