Fixing prayer

If churches want to have better prayer meetings and better pray-ers:

• Teach/model prayer. Most people are not natural pray-ers, they have to learn how to pray and develop a passion for prayer.
• Keep prayer at the forefront in church. Make it more important than the announcements.
• Pray at prayer meetings. Music, testimonies, prayer requests, and devotionals are all good things, but they're not prayer.
• A variety of people should pray, not just leaders or pastors.
• Pray with enthusiasm. Too many people pray like they're depressed or tired.
• Don’t dominate prayer meetings with long prayers. Instead, don’t be afraid to pray just one or two sentences. There are others who need the opportunity to pray. 
• Pray with purpose. Avoid random disconnected statements.
• Pray, don't instruct or exhort. We sometimes forget that we are praying, and the prayer morphs into a lecture or prophecy.
• Silence is good. We listen as well as speak.
• Real silence is good. Consider eliminating background music.
• If you have the gift of tongues, don’t go on and on while someone else is praying. Rather, express agreement with short affirmations, thus respecting them when they are praying.
• If you have a testimony, encouragement, prophecy, or word of knowledge, you may wish to wait until the end rather than divert the prayer meeting.
• Do not focus on binding the enemy or making decrees and declarations. Our prayers are directed to God, not powers or principalities.