What is a reason many people neglect prayer meetings? How do church leaders cultivate a renewed prayer life?

Dennis Gunderson explains in this video that prayer meetings have often deteriorated into gatherings of just a handful of people. One reason that so few people show up is because of the way they are led during the meeting. They are led by men who are not men who pray often.  

Another reason is few people show is because the men who lead the prayer times bring no leadership to the meeting whatsoever. They simply ask those gathered what they want to do.  It is vital that leaders of the church show up to a prayer meeting already prepared and encourage those gathered to pray for different areas -- to pray for the persecuted church or to pray that the Kingdom of God will continue to spread.

1 Timothy 2:8 (NKJV) – “I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.”

Why are prayer meetings so neglected and how can church leaders cultivate a renewed corporate prayer life in the church. Well I think precisely that is the key is how leaders do this. I think in many cases prayer meetings that have deteriorated into a handful of people and we all know it's not at all uncommon for a church that has 200 people on Sunday morning and 75 people on Sunday night to have you know the faithful six or eight who come out on a Wednesday night to pray. Why does this happen? There possibly are a multiplicity of causes, but having been a serious advocate of prayer meetings for about three decades now in the churches that I've led, I have recognized that much of the reason prayer meetings deteriorate into slim attendance is the way in which they are led.

For one, they're led by men who are not intensely men of prayer themselves, and the congregation recognizes that. They can hear it in their prayers, they can sense it in their own walk with God. And they don't feel like they're being helped to come to the throne of grace by someone who knows what it is to pray. The other step that's a real failure is, you know, I've said how many pastors would show up Sunday morning and say, well what do we feel like doing today? Would you like to sing something?

Would you like me to preach? What would you like me to talk about? No one shows up on a Sunday that way, but the average prayer meeting, after a song, the pastor will say, what are we gonna pray about? Anybody got any requests? And he brings no leadership to the meeting whatsoever.

The result is a series of people who are ill-prepared for that and often will bring up nothing but the first few things that come to their mind and frequently that's earthly concerns. Most of the prayer lists that will emerge after the lack of leadership that that demonstrates will be about sick people. That's almost invariably the case and nothing more. I found it's vital to show up for a prayer meeting as a leader with prayer requests of biblical consequence and importance, to pray about the advance of the kingdom of God in various nations, to show that this is something crucial, to talk about the persecuted church and to pray for our brothers and sisters in those circumstances as we're told to in Hebrews 13 to remember those in prison, to pray that the kingdom of God will conquer the nations and to bring up specific countries and where missions work is going on, to bring up the witness of individuals in our congregation and that takes the pastor being in contact with those persons to say well if I know that these individuals are working with someone who is unconverted to bring those names up and to burden the church for the mission that we really are all about.

I have found this kind of effective leadership tends to promote heavy attendance at prayer meetings as it has done in our church.