Community Prayer Practices Module Three

NATIONAL WORKING GROUP ON PRAYER

PrayingTogether Rhythms for Foster Care

MODULE FOUR

Praying as a Team for Foster Care Prayer is where we begin.

The needs of children and families are vast, and seeing these needs every day moves us to action. But our actions are utterly insufficient unless God multiplies them. Like the loaves and fish, we bring what little we have and trust Him to do what we cannot. Developed by the More Than Enough Community National Working Group on Prayer, this guide provides a simple framework to anchor our shared efforts in consistent, unified prayer. Adapt these practices to your local context, gather others, and ask God to do what only He can do.

Praying as a Team for Foster Care

FORMAT

PURPOSE Often, team meetings can center around activity-based updates and strategy discussions. As a result, prayer can find itself relegated to the obligatory opening or closing of these meetings. However, with a little intentionality, we can make prayer a central rhythm for our teams. This guide outlines two approaches: incorporating a dedicated foster care prayer time into your existing team meetings, or holding a weekly or monthly dedicated team prayer meeting.

This module includes two formats: 1.A dedicated prayer time incorporated into your existing team meeting 2.A weekly or monthly dedicated team prayer meeting

RECOMMENDED RHYTHM Weekly or Monthly

P R AY I N G T O G E T H E R : R H Y T H M S F O R F O S T E R C A R E

Praying as a Team for Foster Care 1. Dedicated Prayer Time Incorporated in Team Meeting The Foster Care Prayer Journal contains 30 different areas of prayer for foster care and can provide a helpful framework for guiding a 10-minute prayer segment as part of your normal team meeting rhythm.

Direct the team to the area of prayer you’ll be focusing on that day (i.e. #16 Kinship Caregivers) Ask the team for names or prayer requests related to the prayer area of the day (kinship caregivers in this case) that they might know (be sure to remind them not to share anything that should be held in strict confidence). You can also pray for organizations or programs in your community that are specifically working with that population.

Ask for volunteers to pray for the requests that have been shared

2. A Dedicated Team Prayer Meeting Regardless of whether you work on a remote or in-person team, a regular rhythm of prayer together can become foundational to how you connect with each other and seek the Lord's direction together in your work.

Things you’ll need: For remote teams: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meets or a similar video call platform For in-person teams: A dedicated quiet meeting space Prayer topics, scripture passages, and a way of collecting prayer requests. The Foster Care Prayer Journal by More Than Enough can serve as a framework for this.

How to get ready:

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Identify two leads The Host: Leads the rhythm of the calls The Coordinator: Sends guest invitations, manages participants, collects prayer requests and monitors the chat (if applicable)

3 Set up a recurring calendar event and video

Establish a regular meeting time.

If hosting a remote call, choose a time that works across all participants’ time zones.

4 Confirm guest prayer lead

conference link Setup the video tool so that participants are muted on entry Communicate the purpose and flow of the call on the calendar event.

Add the video conference link to the calendar event

Communicate the purpose, flow of the call, and prayer focus for the month with the guest prayer lead over email.

Send a calendar invite or add the guest prayer lead to the recurring calendar event.

P R AY I N G T O G E T H E R : R H Y T H M S F O R F O S T E R C A R E

Praying as a Team for Foster Care YOUR TIME TOGETHER Prioritize prayer. While we love connecting with one another and talking about prayer requests, we don’t want these things to crowd out our time approaching God together in prayer. So after a brief introduction to the topic, we suggest going directly into prayer. At the end of the call, we encourage you to intentionally leave time to connect for anyone who would like to.

Participate as you like. On the calls, we encourage participation in prayer, but don’t require it. Invite people to actively participate by praying out loud if they are comfortable doing so. However, this is not required. Want to pray along silently? God is good with that, and so are we.

Encourage attendees to leave cameras on. Because we are not always able to be in person, we want to do everything we can to connect with one another. You can comb your hair if you want, but it is not required.

HELPFUL TIPS 1.Host: Identify the person who will be closing or pronouncing a benediction.

2.After participants have prayed, announce when the next call will be held and how to share requests in the meantime.

3.Send prayer call invitations several days prior to the next call. Include the guiding scripture and a short statement about what we’ll be praying for, so that people can pray in unison even if they miss the call.

4.Consider building out a schedule ahead of time (monthly or yearly) where team members can pull the prompts and scriptures for the day.

Explore the Full Series This guide is part of the Praying Together: Rhythms for Foster Care series, designed to equip you to pray with others for foster care.

Praying every day, every week and every month for foster care MODULE ONE | Daily 3:20 Prayer Pause MODULE TWO | Weekly Foster Care 15 Community Prayer Calls MODULE THREE | Monthly Online National Foster Care Prayer Call

Other rhythms and tools for teams and communities MODULE FOUR | Praying as a Team for Foster Care (Current) MODULE FIVE | Communitywide Foster Care Prayer Vigil MODULE SIX | Foster Care Prayer Liturgy MODULE SEVEN | Key Prayer Resources and Creative Elements

The More Than Enough National Working Group on Prayer is a collaborative group of leaders and advocates from churches, organizations, and agencies across the country, working together to help every community pray for vulnerable children and families and for those who care for them.