Prayer Meeting Problems

What established the "proper time of one hour" for prayer meeting?? That was my question. It doesn't matter to me who meets where. I was more curious as to why it took a congregational vote to change the length of a service. [/QUOTE]

That is the way this church works. Church council must first consider it. They then decide whether it goes to the congregation for a vote.
This is how it originally got reduced to 45 minutes to accomodate the choir.

As to what makes the one hour model the standard, of 100 churches polled, all except one used the one hour. That did not preclude it from going longer if the Spirit moved. In our case, it cannot go longer because the choir begins its practice at 7:15 p.m. in the same area prayer meeting is held. So, once its forty-five minutes are up, its up.

As I stated before, the choir gets first consideration in our church, prayer meeting gets second seat. Those in charge set it up this way. Those in charge want to keep it this way.

 

Well, the choir has 12 members. The practice room holds 20. Prayer meeting is to large for the practice room. We do have a large fellowship hall, however, where prayer meeting would go very nicely. There are a lot of older people in our church, though, who feel prayer meeting belongs in the sanctuary.

 

Hi Jason. I have a hard time understanding this as well. I am one of the ones trying to work this all out, but the problem is, I am not a deacon or on the church council where these decisions are made. I am here to get perspective from others so some of us "members" can go to the Council and get our views in on how best to resolve this problem between prayer meeting and choir.

This issue became an us versus them kind of thing when the choir wanted to begin practice early, but the prayer meeting, being one hour, prevented that. So, the church council's answer at that time was, reduce the prayer meeting to forty-five minutes. Which has caused a lot of trouble for prayer meeting. Over the years prayer meeting has lost a lot of participants on account of this change. When asked to make some change which allows the prayer meeting to have its hour, (Or more), no one in leadership is interested enough to do anything about it. In this case, it really has been choir versus prayer meeting. It is the first time in forty years I have ever seen anything like this.

Hopefully, soon, prayer meeting can get another room, another day, a longer time. Still, I always value the perspective of others and that is why I am here getting that perspective.

 

UPDATE! I started this thread to get feedback on my church's prayer meeting/choir conflict. Thought I would update everyone.

Prayer meeting got its full hour restored. Choir was told to move into and use their music room for practice. The choir refused, however, to change its time by fifteen minutes so it would not conflict with prayer meeting. Since choir overlaps prayer meeting, the choir still cannot attend prayer meetings.