This is the second post in this series on planning purposeful events for your women’s ministry.

Click here to view the first post about the purpose, content, and benefits of large events, conferences, and retreats.

As a reminder, the goal of this series is to help you (and other women’s ministry leaders) create memorable experiences that help women embrace and grow their faith by interacting with God, His Word, and each other.

We want women to walk out the door encouraged, inspired, and better equipped to walk confidently as followers of Christ in this world.

Today’s focus in building prayer into every step of your women’s ministry event.

I’ll share ideas for praying before your event and praying at your event.

I’ve noticed a big difference when our events have been blanketed in prayer.

We’re hosting our church’s women’s ministry retreat in mid-September and every year our team prayers for the attendees by name. Some years we’ve divided the list and you may have 8-10 names to pray for, other times we’ve shared the entire list for the team to pray over.

We want to be sure we pray before and over the event and pray during the event.

I know I’ve been guilty of making plans and asking for the Lord’s blessing of those plans. Let’s not forget to seek the Lord’s direction for our plans first. Pray and ask the Lord to give you discernment and wisdom to know if the event is something you should do. Just because you’ve had a two-day event every fall for the last ten years doesn’t mean you have to have it this year. Ask the Lord to give you wisdom to know what tweaks need to be made to the schedule.

Here are 5 ideas for praying before your event:

1. Recruit a Prayer Coordinator and a Prayer Team – This team could be responsible for praying for the details of your event. They could also serve as prayer support at the event.
2. Prayer walk your location (if you can) – If you’re able prayer walking the place where your event will be can be a really sweet activity for you, your team, and even your women if you want to invite them to join you. I’d suggest sharing a list of prayer requests for prayer walk participants. Some women will appreciate the guidance.
3. Pray for each attendee by name. As I mentioned, praying for each participant by name is a great way to invite God to be at work in the heart of each woman. You can pray for protection of their health, spiritual growth, godly conversations, for encouragement, and so on. Decide whether you want to divide up the names or share the whole list with your women’s ministry team and/or prayer team.
4. Create and distribute an Event Prayer Calendar (weekly or daily)  – You may want to pray for specific components of the event: the speaker, (or speakers), attendees, tech, worship, teaching, etc. I’ve created a free retreat prayer guide you can use to pray specifically for 30 days leading up to your retreat. Click here for access to my free 30 Days of Praying for Your Retreat guide.
5. Pray at your planning meetings. We can often get so focused on the to-do list, that we forget to set aside time to pray – not just a quick prayer for God’s blessing on the work we are doing – but a concentrated time to pray for the women who will be coming and for the details of the event. You could even hold a separate prayer meeting for your event.

Here are 6 ideas for praying at your event:

1. Pray with your speaker and team before the doors open. Logistically, it’s tough to get the team to circle up and prayer when everyone’s working on last-minute details before ladies walk through the door, but I’ve found it calms and anchors our team when we do. Keep it brief, but don’t forget to ask for God’s favor on your event. He wants to draw your women to Himself through the worship, teaching, and conversations that are about to happen.
2. Open and close your event with prayer. I used to get so excited, I’d forget to pause and pray. I learned to write “pray” in all caps at the top of my agenda, which I placed on a podium or clipboard. Prayer at the beginning and end reminds our women of who God is and our place in this world He has created. As you pray before you send them back out into the world, try to include a point from the teaching in your prayer. Something like, “Lord, help us to remember the lesson we learned from the book of Hebrews tonight. Help us to be faithful in every season.”
3. You may wish to set aside time for women to share prayer requests and pray in small groups. This could be as simple as asking women to write 1-2 prayer requests on a note card and passing it to the woman on her right to take home and pray over for the next week. You might want to ask your discussion group leaders to set aside 5 minutes at the end of their discussion time for women to pray. We give our discussion group leaders the space to decide what works best for their group. They may wish to lead the group in prayer or they may provide space for those who want to pray out loud to pray. The key is making sure we meet the comfort level of every woman in the group. If you’ve never been prayed for or prayed with a group, it can be very intimidating and uncomfortable.
4. Consider providing prayer counselors, especially if the topic of your event is heavy. Prayer counselors should be selected and vetted by your team and church staff. They should be spiritually mature prayer warriors. Be sure to spend some time training them and discussing their roles. They are not biblical counselors and should have resources on hand for women who need them. I’m not a fan of having counselors stand at the front of the room while a song plays. Some women do not want the attention, and some women sadly do. It can quickly become awkward when the worship leader is trying to stretch the song until the last person receiving prayer returns to her seat. Some of you know exactly what I mean. Stationing prayer counselors at the back of the room or in another room removes some of the embarrassment, prevents possible distractions, and allows your team to honor the schedule. You may find it’s best to announce the availability of your prayer counselors. For example, we’ll have prayer counselors available for 30 minutes this evening after the session ends.
5. Consider setting up a prayer room for your women to use. We’ve found a separate space works best, but a quiet corner can work too. You may want to have: tables and chairs for sitting, Bibles, instrumental hymns playing in the background, a prayer request box with paper and pens, tracts of booklets that share the gospel, and cushions for sitting on the floor and for kneeling on. If you can, dim the lights to create a more intimidate space, but not so much women can’t journal or write on a prayer card. You might want your decorations team to add some minimal décor to enhance the mood. In the past, our Prayer Team committed to meeting several times during the weekend to pray over the prayer requests that had been put in the box. We were humbled by the requests in the box. We made it known to our ladies that we’d be praying and there were always new requests in the box. Don’t commit to it unless your team is able.
6. Consider setting up prayer stations. We had the sweetest time of prayer one Saturday evening during a retreat in the mountains. We were studying the 23rd Psalm. Each prayer station covered a verse or verse that we were not going have time to cover during our teaching sessions.

Tips for Prayer Stations

Each prayer station had:

1. A focus verse(s)
2. An activity
3. A prayer prompt

Dimming the lights in the room and playing soft instrumental workship music in the background can help set the mood.For our group of about 30 women, we had 4 prayer stations. We allowed our women to choose where they wanted to go and for how long. We set aside a total of 45 minutes for our women to complete the stations and asked them to sit quietly at their tables when they were finished. For larger groups, you may want to increase your number of stations or have duplicates. It was a very sweet and solemn time. Our women took the task very seriously. It was obvious that God was doing a work in many hearts that evening.

Today’s Toolbox Tasks:

1. Discuss and decide as a team how you want to pray before your event.
2. Discuss and decide as a team how you want to pray at your event.

Philippians 4:6 ESV, reminds us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

God loves to hear and answer our prayers in accordance with His will.

You may also want to check out (affiliate links may follow):
Women’s Ministry Essentials: Cultivating a Culture of Prayer
Collecting and Sharing Prayer Requests in Your Discipleship, Bible Study, or Small Group
21 Prayers for Women in Your Church or Small Group
Women’s Ministry Prayer Resources
30 Prayers for Your Retreat – Free Prayer Calendar
Rethinking Fellowship: A Handbook for Hosting Meaningful Women’s Ministry Events
Women’s Ministry Essentials: How to Build and Sustain a Thriving Christian Community