Leadership Journal

About two years ago I joined a local pastors' group started by a member of Dee Duke's prayer team and began praying an hour a day. Then I heard about the two-hour prayer group Dee leads and asked to be a part of it. Those groups have been life-changing. God has changed me. He has shown me how much he can change people's hearts if I will pray.

He's also shown me how much He will carry me if I will trust Him in prayer. I would not have made it through the personal and ministry challenges I've faced without the prayer and being held accountable for it.

The group works like this: we have goals that we are mutually accountable to each other for. Each week we send out e-mail reports to the others, reporting how well we did the previous week. We encourage, chastise, chide, and prod each other, because we know that these prayer goals will help us grow closer to Jesus and to be more effective in our ministries and personal lives.

Then, about every six weeks, we meet at Dee's church for an afternoon and share how we're doing personally, areas of struggle and areas of victory. Then Dee passes along to us what he has learned in areas of ministry, leadership, prayer, outreach, and accountability. It is a great time!

Our goals:

• Pray a minimum of two hours every day.
• Read the Word devotionally (not for study or sermon prep) half an hour every day.
• Spend fifteen minutes every day on Scripture memory.
• Pray with our wives at least three days a week.
• Pray for everyone in our ministries by name every week.
• Read our personal goals twice a week.
• Exercise 30 minutes three times a week.
• Read 20 pages in ministry-related books each week.
• E-mail each other with our progress on the goals each week.
• Pray for each other each week.
• Promote prayer weekly in our churches.
• No smoke blowing (no excuses or sugar-coating, trying to make ourselves look better than we are).

Generally speaking, the toughest goals to reach are the time commitment to prayer, praying with our wives, and Scripture memory.

Dee doesn't teach a lot of specifics about the how-to's of prayer. Mostly he talks about keeping his lists with him at all times and looking for opportunities to pray. He also believes strongly in corporate prayer, and usually participates in two prayer meetings in his church daily. He also says that those times when you wake up in the middle of the night are great times for prayer. But mostly, it doesn't matter what system you use, so long as you pray.

Dee likes to say, "No prayer, no power. Little prayer, little power. Some prayer, some power. Much prayer, much power."That is very true when it comes to my preaching and our church's worship services. I'm preaching with much more power than before.

Our congregation is seeing the results of prayer as we emphasize it more and more. I now lead two similar accountability groups in our church. Our church is beginning to mature spiritually, and God is moving among us.

Before our annual Harvest Fest last year, we held a ten-day prayer event. We saw people on our ...