The Importance of Praying for Other Churches

Many Christians pray for their church and its leaders, however, very few pray for other churches in their city. Granted they have no problem in praying for churches in other cities but ones in the same city is a different story.

I remember visiting a church in our city that prayed during the worship service for other churches in Wichita Falls. They did not go do a list of names but prayed that all churches in the city would magnify the name of Jesus. When I was at Emmanuel, we would pray for churches that did not have a pastor. Studies have shown that churches who do not have a pastor tend to dwindle and often not grow until a new one is called.

Why should we pray for other churches? Eric Bancroft recently wrote on five reasons that we should be praying for other churches:

1.It encourages congregational humility. You need to be reminded that there are other faithful Christians praying and laboring to the same end you are—to magnify Christ by seeing sinners forgiven and transformed.

2.It will stimulate relationships between church leadership. “I don’t know what to pray for”—well, in addition to praying for their church based on what you read about churches in the Bible, leaders of faithful churches can spend time together in order to know each other better and learn what to pray about. They can learn what challenges they are facing, what they are encouraged by, and what they would love to see God do with their assembly.

3.It helps build networks of known faithful churches. Perhaps members of your church should attend a good church closer to where they live that would better connect in locale to their personal evangelism and increase their chance of hospitality with Christians from their church.

4.It can help provide protection against the prince of this world, Satan. Prayer is a powerful weapon that calls in cover fire to protect churches from attack. Satan loves to distract, divide, and destroy churches’ witness for Christ. May you fulfill your duty to be alert and demonstrate your concern shown in your prayer for other churches.

5.It strengthens our evangelistic witness. We know that our love and unity has evangelistic potential (John 13:35; 17:21) and this is largely worked out within our local churches. But it is not limited to that arena. When our neighbors learn how we love and appreciate our partners in the gospel across the city, it leads them to understand how the gospel unites and motivates people.


Let me be frank, we are not in competition with other churches. Although we may differ on certain issues and doctrine, we are all on the same team. We all want to reach people with the gospel. Granted there will be some churches in your city that do not preach the gospel but a different gospel, you should pray for those churches. Jesus builds His church. The church is to be an embassy for the Kingdom of God here on Earth. We are to pray for other fellow brothers and sisters in Christ which includes the corporate body they belong to.