Guided prayer are a way of praying where you hear or read a prayer prompt provided for you that helps you form your own prayers on the subject introduced by the prompt.

Guided prayer can either be done in a group or on your own.

How to do guided prayer in a group

To do guided prayer in groups, a minister or group leader leads a prayer where they bring up a series of subjects one by one. As an example, the leader might guide the group by saying, “Let us pray for the sick.” The leader pauses while the congregation or group silently prays in their own way for the sick, whether it be for a specific person they know who is sick or in general for those suffering. Then the leader goes on to the next verbal prayer prompt.

Here’s an example of a guided group prayer Guided Prayer for the National Day of Prayer – Prayer Ideas

Choose a subject or subjects.

To do guided prayer in a group, the leader makes preparations beforehand by writing or outlining subjects for the group to cover, where to pause for group prayer, and the length of time for the pause.

Decide whether group members will pray silently or out loud all together

In guided prayer, groups can either pray silently during the pause for prayer or they can voice their prayers out loud all at the same time.

Silent Prayer

Most guided prayers in liturgical churches or group settings use silent personal prayers in response to guided prayer prompts.

All together out loud prayer

Some guided prayer groups use what is called all-together prayer where everyone prays out loud at the same time on the same subject. All-together prayer goes by several names. In the US it often is called a prayer concert because of the sound of everyone’s voice blending together like a choir.

It is most widely practiced in Korea where it is called Tongsung Kido or “all together prayer.” It is also known as Korean Prayer. In all-together prayer, the leader allows a natural hush to settle on the group before giving the next prayer prompt.

Whispered prayers

Some groups do something in between silent and all-together prayer. In this instance, group members quietly whisper their prayers all at the same time in response to the leader’s prayer prompt.

Set the length of the pauses.

Before the prayer time, the leader decides on how to time the pauses. This could be a specific number of seconds or minutes, which is most often done in more formal prayer times in church services. Other times the leader may engage in their own prayers on the subject and use this as a gauge as to how long the pause should last. And still others might rely on a sense from the group or the Holy Spirit when it’s time to move on.

If you don’t time the pauses in some way, you’ll have a tendency to rush on to the next subject without giving group members adequate time to pray.

Instruct the group how to participate in the guided prayer.

As the guided prayer time begins, the group leader gives instructions on how to listen to the leader’s introduction of the subject for prayer and how to offer their own personal prayers during the pauses.

Here’s a suggested instruction I used leading a guided prayer on the National Day of Prayer.

We’d like to join our hearts and minds together now in guided prayer. There are more concerns and hopes for our nation than any one of us could possibly cover today. During the next few moments I’ll offer a sentence prayer about different needs facing our nation and our world and then pause so that the Holy Spirit might lead each of us to pray silently about these concerns.

First, let us pray silently together for our elected leaders______________(pause for silent prayer)

The benefits of guided group prayer

Guided group prayer is effective for the following reasons:

It’s interactive.

Participants don’t simply listen to someone else praying, they connect one on one with God.

It covers many different aspects of one subject.

Not everyone will be praying the same thing. Back to our earlier example of praying for the sick, a larger number of persons will be covered in a shorter length of time than it would take for a leader to pray out loud one by one for specific sick people, their diagnosis and their current needs.

Types of groups where guided prayers are often used

Here are some of the types of services and groups where guided prayer is used:

National Day of Prayer Guided Prayer for the National Day of Prayer – Prayer Ideas

prayer breakfasts Prayer Breakfast Ideas – Prayer Ideas

beginner prayer groups where people aren’t used to praying extemporaneous prayers out loud

church services

memorial services

retreats

Special occasions like Father’s day Father’s Day Prayer – Prayer Ideas

How to do guided prayer on your own

Guided prayer can also be done in personal prayer times by using a pre-written prayer or one you write yourself. Personal guided prayers are designed with blanks to fill in. They begin with a sentence or two of a prayer and then leave a place to pause and personalize the prayer by saying something to God on the subject.

Using a guided prayer written by someone else

An example of a pre-written guided prayer you can do on your own is found here. Work Stress Prayer – Prayer Ideas

You’ll discover on the prayerideas.org website that many of the prayers are written as guided prayers. That’s because even when you are praying about a common situation that others have been through such as work stress, your situation is totally unique.

In the example of Work Stress Prayer, the prayer starts with a prayerful examination on how work stress is affecting you and your family with the following blanks to fill in:

Here is how work stress is making me feel ___________________________________

Here is how work stress is affecting my family and my personal life_______________

It then goes on a fairly long list of things that can cause stress at work for you to prayerfully consider and describe to God. It then invites you to back to your list and find the ones that seem the most important.

These types of guided prayers are process-oriented prayers meant to enable self-examination and give God the time to help you better understand his view of your situation and his guidance in a good direction.

Creating your own guided prayer

If you’d like to create your own guided prayer, here’s a process I often use.

First, I define the problem and write the questions I want to gain clarity on through prayer. I review my own experiences for similar situations. I think of Bible verses that come to mind on the subject. Finally, I look online to see what experts say about how people feel and react when facing the problem and what kind of advice they usually give.

I then write a prayer based on my research. After the outlines is written, I can take half an hour and go through the whole prayer at once, or I can take a few minutes and do one or two things at a time.

My Experiences with Guided Prayer

I’m currently in a guided prayer group that meets at noon on Tuesdays. This is a minister or staff lead prayer time that lasts half an hour. The minister brings a notebook with an outline of prayer prompts.

The group meets in the church sanctuary and the participants do whispered prayers in response to the prompts, so everyone spreads out all over the pews so they won’t be distracted.

Most typically the prompts will begin with thanking God. It could be a general invitation to thank God for who he is. Sometimes it could be a call to thank God for 5 things that have happened within the past 24 hours. Other times the prompt might be to praise God for a succession of his attributes one by one, such as his being almighty or everlasting.

This particular group focuses on prayers for our church and its missions. There are always prayer prompts for specific events coming up, such as women’s retreat or new sermon series. In other cases, there may be a list of specific names offered one by one by the leader of people who need to come to know Jesus personally.