Book Review – 9Marks Prayer – How Praying Together Shapes The Church By John Onwuchekwa

9Marks Prayer

9Marks Prayer – How Praying Together Shapes The Church By John Onwuchekwa

Synopsis:

Prayer is as necessary to the Christian as breathing is to the human body–but it often doesn’t come quite as naturally. In fact, prayer in the church often gets subtly pushed to the side in favor of pragmatic practices that promise tangible results. Rather than being a hallmark of churches, dependence on prayer is usually emphasized only in times of major crisis–if at all. The latest book in the 9Marks: Building Healthy Churches series focuses on the necessity of regular prayer as a central practice in the local church. Examining what Jesus taught about prayer, how the first Christians approached prayer in the early church, and what steps can be taken to prioritize prayer in churches, this book is intended to awaken readers to the need and blessing of prayer in their personal lives and in the life of their local church. (Taken from Goodreads page)

Review

Having read a few others of the 9Marks books before, I understand the direction of the book is writing it for the corporate work of the church. In this book, the focus isn’t on just prayer in general but on specific confines of corporate prayer. The books are designed to be primers and not extensive treatises on the subject so not everything can be covered. So with that, this book does a decent job of establishing that churches should pray corporately. It provides the Scripture and key concepts needed to show you the basics. The problem, however, is that it is a bit too general.

The book starts off by giving an overview of prayer and how to pray (using, of course, the Lord’s Prayer as the model). It uses it to break down the key points of what to pray for. It then goes into the fact that churches need to pray together. However, the structure of this part of the book meanders and it’s not until much later that you figure out if the author is talking about just about praying in something like Sunday meetings times or holding special prayer meetings. There’s also not a discussion of elder/deacon/church leadership prayer, small group prayer, or specific areas of other parts of the church (shut-ins, the sick, those under church discipline). Maybe that’s not the intention that the author wanted to convey. Yet, it seems like the first half is for a different book on prayer in general or it goes on too long on general prayer for this type of book.

There are also two times that the author points to specific examples of church prayer because of recent (2016) police-involved shootings. There are not many examples in this book, which can be another negative towards it, but these examples seem to come out of the blue and don’t fit in the overall structure of where they are located in the book or the book’s layout.

Overall, it’s a book to convince you that you and your church should pray. Probably not a hard sell. However, overall, it is too general to be that useful in my opinion. But if you’re starting at zero, it might be a book that’s worth it.

Final Grade