Let the Point of Your Sermon Text Shape Your Church’s Corporate Prayers

Abstract: Sean Demars encourages pastors to allow the point of their sermon text to shape the church’s corporate prayers. Demars offers four ways this practice can be a blessing to the church, and then he gives some practical suggestions for how to get started. Prayers based on the sermon text reinforce the truths being preached and model for the church what it looks like to pray in accord with God’s Word.

Pastor, I’d like to invite you to consider something that has borne significant fruit in my local church: intentionally grounding corporate prayer in the point of the sermon text.

I don’t mean merely quoting from or mentioning the sermon text in the pastoral prayer. I mean letting the main thrust of your sermon passage shape your corporate prayers of praise, confession, lament, and petition.

Over time, I’ve seen what happens when the prayers of the church are tethered to the sermon text, and I want to commend this practice to you. Here are four specific ways this can be a blessing to your church.

1. It Reinforces Your Sermon

When the theme of the text appears not only in your sermon but also in the prayers of the service, the congregation hears the truth of the text multiple times, in multiple forms (i.e., praise, confession, lament, and petition), and from multiple voices. By the time the sermon is preached, the truths you’re proclaiming will have already been sprinkled into the hearts of your people several times. And your people don’t even have to be aware of all that’s happening for the repetition to do its good and quiet work. Even if your people can’t fully articulate why the service feels unified, this way of reinforcing the truth will still have a powerful effect on them.

2. It Models How to Pray Scripture

When leaders pray the themes of the text, they are teaching the congregation how to read and respond to the Bible with prayerful devotion. They’re modeling, in real time, how to take a passage of Scripture and pray the very words of God back to him. Members have told me repeatedly that our Sunday prayers teach them how to pray the Bible. That alone is reason enough to consider this practice.

But there’s another benefit I didn’t initially anticipate. Praying the point of the text means the congregation hears the passage not only through my voice as the preacher but also through the voices of other godly saints. More than once, someone leading a prayer has applied the text in a way I hadn’t seen in my many hours of sermon preparation. In fact, there have been occasions when something prayed during the service was so obviously helpful that it found its way into my sermon moments later.

3. It Guards Against Unhelpfully Generic Prayers

We’ve all heard (and prayed) orthodox, yet unhelpfully generic prayers.
“Just bless this time.”

“Forgive us where we fail you.”

“Be with those who are traveling.”

None of those requests are wrong, but neither are they particularly edifying. The Scriptures do not typically leave us with abstractions. They address husbands and wives, parents and children, elders and members, sufferers and sinners. Our prayers, in turn, should follow the grain of the text. Not “Grow me somehow,” but “Help me apply this truth to my soul.” Not “Forgive me generally,” but “Cleanse the sin that this text revealed in my soul.” Not “Bless me broadly,” but “Give what you command in this text.”

4. It Unifies the Entire Service

It’s helpful to think of corporate worship not as a collection of spiritual moments but as a cohesive experience shaped by the various facets of the gospel jewel that the Word of God reveals to us in the sermon text. The service then begins to feel integrated rather than segmented. The congregation senses that we are doing one thing: responding together to what God has said.

Putting This into Practice in Your Own Church 

If this sounds like something you’d like to implement in your own services, here are four practical suggestions to get you started.

First, encourage those who lead prayers in the service to study the sermon text ahead of time. Reading and meditating on its truths will be a blessing to them and to the congregation as the corporate prayers are increasingly shaped by God’s Word.

Second, if you’re able, finish your sermon manuscript early enough to share the main point and some potential applications with those who will be praying in the service. Even a rough draft can be helpful. Send what you have by Friday evening so that those who are working on prayers don’t feel rushed in their preparation.

Third, conduct service reviews. This is one way those who pray corporately can receive godly encouragement and correction. It helps pastors and all members pray edifying prayers when they receive feedback. These reviews can address everything from truths stated unclearly to things like unnecessary repetition, verbal tics, volume, tone, and the words that were used in the prayer.

Fourth, whether it’s you or another elder, model these kinds of prayers for a season to set an example for your people. When I got to my church almost nine years ago, I modeled praying the point of the text for about six months before I invited other members to do the same.

 
Conclusion 

Pastor, consider the value of letting your sermon text shape not only what you preach but also how your church prays. Over time, you may find (as our church has) that the Word begins to saturate your worship in ways you didn’t anticipate, producing fruit that blesses your people and brings greater glory to God.