Shane Heilman encourages the use of prayer during your planning:

I began incorporating prayer of different kinds into my worship planning in a variety of ways. Here are just some of the ideas I began to implement:

– Hearing from God during the week and composing a Biblical, timely prayer (like a modified, personalized version of Ephesians 3, for example) that would minister to, reassure, and challenge the congregation and the individuals within it, and reciting or reading that prayer during a strategic point in the worship set. These prayers really “opened things up” in the worship gathering. It created freedom in the room for people to engage God more personally. The personal, individualized nature of the words made the gathering feel more “real,” more organic, more vulnerable.

– Asking congregants to pray for each other. Often people need a little direction, such as what to pray for, but getting people outside their comfort zone to pray and minister to the people right next to them is what the church is all about!

Continue reading.