Friday Reflection: Leading in Prayer

The original post from 1st October 2007 is a part of a series a few of us bloggers were doing called 'Thumbs Up'.  It was an opportunity to break the stereotypical style of critical blogging and post something positive about someone we had encountered during the week.   My post was about a man from my church who led us in corporate prayer.  I was encouraged by the way he didn't simply pray himself, but mentioned each prayer point and then gave the congregation a chance to pray themselves in silence.  Individual prayer became corporate prayer as we sat there and prayed unitedly for the one thing.

Now I'm sure there were some cop outs who just had a snooze, but I think this was a more interactive time than simply having someone up the front praying aloud.  Here's a snippit of that blog post

Instead of just praying through the prayer requests, Ian mentions each one and gives time for everyone to pray individually. Though it's not spoken allowed I think this creates such a real situation of 'corporate' prayer, because instead of just listening along, suddenly the responsibility to pray is on the individual, and if the responsibility is taken up, then the entire church is corporatly praying for the issue.

How do you think corporate prayer works?  When I was in Africa everyone prayed aloud at the same time - very crazy and overbearing, but emotionally powerful.  I think Ian's method was better in a Western setting... what do you think?