If You Build It, They Will Come

1. Recon

Check out the space you have available. Measure if you need to. Take note of:

  • electrical outlets
  • hooks or secure place you can tie string to.
  • windows / natural lighting

2. Build / Create

Be creative. There's no wrong way to build it. Be flexible, if it doesn't turn out perfectly, change it up.

Pray for Vision

Pray for God to give you an overall theme or vision for the room. Sometimes walking through a prayer room is like a journey designed to bring you closer and closer to God.
ex) Walking through the garden of eden. You walk around the room guided by walls that swirl you towards the center. Along the path there are prayer stations for repentance, reflection, praying for the lost, and in the very middle of the room is a private space to spend time with God resting under a big tree.
ex) At the entrance, you are standing in a cardboat boat. You must step over the edge and walk in water to get into the room. There's a fish net in one corner and a rotating lighthouse on an island in the other corner with clouds casting shadows all over the roof.

How do I build a prayer room?

How long will it be open for?

Obviously , the longer a prayer room is open for, the more time/money you want to invest into building it. If it's only opened for a short time, you'll want to minimize the effort.

This is especially true if the building time cuts into the room use time. At our summer church camps, we have a room for about one week. We try to get the room completely build in a half day so the campers can use the room for 4.5 days. If we spend 2 days building the rooms, the campers would only get 3 days of use. Efficiency, having a general plan and having more helpers is key. Try to prep as much as you can in advance so you can just put it up quickly.

Create a floor plan

Having a floor plan is key to keeping organized and helping your volunteers to be useful. It helps you visualize where everything goes and you can even dump your building supplies into the relevant areas so things don't get lost. Try to make the plan as to scale as possible. If the room is rectangular, don't draw it as a square. If one section is larger than the other, draw it that way. That's the way your volunteers will build it.

Volunteers

Give them creative freedom. Give them guideline. Check in on them. Assign another person to help them if they are struggling.

Stations / Sections / Areas

Everyone connects with God in different ways. Some people like to paint. Some like to sing. Some like to Dance. Some like to read. Have a wide variety of stations to meet every need. Obviously, the number of stations will also be restricted by the amount of space you have or the natural layout of the space. The next few sections listed in the left menu (submenu next to title for mobile) describe how to section of a large room, build stations and such.

Did I do it Right?

When you are done building, ask yourself if you'd like to pray there. What's missing? This is the best indication of if the room is lacking or complete.

3. Pray over it

Pray over the plan, pray before you start building, and pray after you're done building! Pray that people would meet with God deeply and intensely. That His presence would dwell in the room. That each person who enters the room would have an encounter with the Him.