From the editors:

Those who were at Senior Camp Reunion or who have listened to the talks will already have heard these first two:

According to a survey taken at a conference on prayer, Christians pray on average for just 5 minutes each day.

The same survey revealed that ministers and church leaders pray on average for 7 minutes each day.

If those astonish you, here’s two more:

Only 64 people are currently registered to receive the monthly CY Prayer Points email from www.rpc.org.

For March 2010 – as in a number of other months in the past year or two – ZERO prayer points were contributed to the prayer letter.

If you’ve heard Warren’s talks, you will recall the example of Daniel:

* He prayed no matter what:

“When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.” (Dan 6:10)

* He prayed strenuously:

“In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.” (Dan 10:2-3)

The talks were also a reminder and a rebuke about the significance of prayer in the spiritual battle.

In case you’re not sure what the CY Prayer Points are … it is a very simple and straightforward system to enable the young people of the church to pray for each other. Each CY can add prayer requests (about their CY, congregation, Presbytery or wider denomination – and not forgetting thanksgiving as well as requests!) that can be viewed by anyone registered on the RP site. On the first day of each month the prayer requests are automatically emailed to everyone who is signed up to receive them. The idea is that one person from each CY adds prayer requests once a month, and then each CY uses all the prayer requests in their prayer times at their CY meetings.

So what!

So what …. can I do about it?!

STEP 1 – Sign up

Old timer

Sign up to receive the prayer letter. We can all agree that 64 is a really pathetic number of people to be receiving the prayer letter when there are so many young people in the church. In fact the number is probably far worse than that since it is likely that 64 includes ‘old-timers’ (e.g. people born in the 80s or earlier!) who would have signed up when the prayer letter was first started but maybe aren’t that actively involved in their CYs anymore.

STEP 2 – Use it

Print the prayer letter when it is emailed to you. Use it in your own prayer time. Ask whoever is in charge of your CY if you can use them as a CY in your prayer times. If they aren’t already being used, volunteer to be the person who will print enough copies for the whole CY each month!

STEP 3 – Contribute to it

Once you are in the routine of using the prayer points in your personal and CY prayer times, you’ll hopefully want to start to add some prayer points of your own. Each CY should put someone in charge of doing this. Again, if there isn’t anyone presently doing this, why not volunteer? Don’t worry if you think you might forget! That is easily done! But the website can send you an email around the 20th of each month to remind you to add prayer points before the 27th.

Here are the technical details of how to sign-up and also how to add prayer requests:

How to get an account (needed both to receive and add prayer points):
1. Go to www.rpc.org
2. Click on ‘Register’ at the top right of the page
3. Fill in the form and request an account

How to sign up to receive prayer points:
1. Login to your account by going to rpc.org and clicking ‘Login’ at the top right of the page.
2. Click on ‘Members’ to the right of the blue bar and click ‘Email lists’
3. To the right of ‘CY Prayer Letter’ click edit and ‘Join list’
4. And then, as they say in Airdrie, Robert’s your mother’s brother. You will receive you first prayer points email on thie first of the next month. Or you can look at current requests by clicking on ‘Members’ and ‘Prayer Requests’.

How to add prayer points option 1: (usually the job of a designated person in each CY):
1. Login to the rp site (following the instructions above) and click on ‘Members’ and ‘Prayer Requests’.
2. Click on ‘Add/Edit requests’ (if you don’t see this option you need to be enabled to add requests – to do this email www-admin at rpc dot org)
3. Click ‘Add Request’. Type your request, choose a start and end month, and click ‘Add Request’ at the bottom.

How to add prayer points option 2:
1. Email them to stutefc at gmail dot com.

What an opportunity we are wasting to pray for each other and encourage each other!

“Pray for each other” (James 5:16)