Question about Prayer Meeting

Yesterday (or I guess two days ago), the ACF coordinator asked me a question. "Why do you think prayer meetings tend to have the lowest attendance?"

I am not 100% sure. From my past experience, prayer meetings were never the most popular fellowship event, but had more attendance than men's group (I'm sure people at CMU would be astonished by that fact). I also saw that prayer meetings from other CMU fellowships tend to be the leadership/servant team meeting version 2.0 where they come to pray for the fellowship and logistics and people's hearts.

If I were to guess why, I would give two reasons.

The first reason is because it is redundant. People in the fellowship already share their stories, burdens, sins, and worries during cell group, so why do it again in a multi-gender environment with less close brothers and sisters? You clearly can't go as deep, and won't get the same kind of empathy for gender-based prayer requests (especially ones regarding romantic relationships and emotions). On top of that, people already pray for themselves at home and at church, so why spend more time praying with others? As a whole we pretty much value prayer the least of all Christ-like behaviors. Community and Biblical knowledge seems to be the important pillars to focus on (and I wonder why I fit into the fellowship so well). It is ironic because Christ probably prayed the most among His faith-based activities, because He really wanted to talk to His Father.

The second is selfishness. Of all the fellowship events to go to, prayer meeting gives you the least bang for your buck, aka you spend the least amount of time focusing on yourself (or your own spiritual growth). You go to church on Sunday because you feel you have to, because missing church feels shameful (let us be honest). At church you get pastoral teaching and you get to hang with your friends in the pews and on the bus. In cell/small groups you get fed even more, hopefully in the right manner. You get to share your problems and you get to make closer friends and develop relationships further. But in prayer meeting, you spend only 10-15 minutes about yourself and then have to try to focus the rest of the time praying for others. So you spend the least amount of time thinking about yourself, focusing on growing yourself, gathering (necessary) resources for yourself, and being aware of yourself. So when student responsibilities call, the first thing to cull out of the busy schedule will be prayer meetings. There is a lie though, and it lies in the fact that we believe we don't learn a lot from prayer meetings. But it is through excessive time in prayer do we get to know who God is the best. We also get to know how prideful and sinful our hearts are when we confess, or through the confessions of others. Through this revelation of the need to be humbled, we get to see the sweetness of the never ending forgiveness of sins. We get to practice how to love others more when we hear their prayer requests, even if we don't know them as well.

All in all, I can't really blame people for missing prayer meeting. I've only managed to make it to one cell group meeting and one GCF small group meeting, and it will only get harder from now on. Excuses are excuses, but God's hand is still firm in leading and the Holy Spirit is still guiding. As I have to really focus on more prayer in my life, and cultivating my heart behind the prayers, I find joy in learning more about God and God's love through my daily talks with Him, and I definitely enjoy listening to the hearts of my brothers and sisters at prayer meeting and feel the power of intimacy and God's grace upon all of us.