Once you’ve invited someone to take the next step, you might think it’s time to go home and part ways. But if you haven’t prayed, you’re almost certainly wrong. Many times, prayer will have been part of the initial conversation, but not always. Don’t part ways until you’ve offered to pray out loud with the person.
My favorite part of evangelizing is when I get to pray with others. The reason is because prayer brings about the presence of God, and the presence of God is what the human heart longs to encounter, to discover the reality of God, His love, His peace, His power in their lives.
Prayer is the life of our souls, the soul of evangelization. Prayer is the single most powerful tool in evangelization. Prayer takes the conversation beyond the human experience and engages divine realities. Prayer brings heaven to earth, and, with these truths in mind, it’s vital that we learn to pray with others regularly as we evangelize.
So how do we pray? First of all, make an invitation to pray. This invitation can happen at any point in the conversation, but it’s particularly appropriate when you’ve identified something the person could use prayer for. Catholics are often used to telling people that they’ll pray for them, but the evangelist asks the next question: “Can I pray for you right now?” If the person doesn’t prayer for something in particular, you can still ask to pray for them in general, that God would bless their life and bring them closer to Him.
Before I begin to pray, I usually ask permission to place my hand on the person’s shoulder or back. There’s something powerful about human touch, something that God has anointed. Jesus said that the sick would be healed when those who believe in Him would lay hands on the sick. We should always go into prayer listening to the Holy Spirit, and be open to what He wants to do in the moment. And then, when we pray, we can be confident and bold.
We’ll often already have a clear idea how to pray if we’ve been an active listener throughout the conversation. Usually, we’ll be praying for the person’s needs, and the needs of those close to them. We should also praise and thank the Lord for what He’s doing in their life. Sometimes, God wants to manifest Himself to the person through your prayer in a very powerful way: a physical healing, an emotional healing, a deep sense of peace or joy. The goal is to minister to the person, to love them, to build them up in Jesus Christ.
Although we’ll usually pray in our own words, from the heart, an Our Father, Hail Mary, or Glory Be may sometimes be just the thing the person needs to put them at ease as you part ways with them. The so-called “ACTS method” — Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Supplication — is also a helpful, go-to approach for prayer.
The key in deciding how to pray is to remember that, in prayer, it’s not our work that matters. It’s the work of God. Evangelists sometimes find themselves praying in unexpected ways. Sometimes, before or during prayer, an evangelist will receive a vivid image, a word, a Bible verse, to share with the other person. It may not even make immediate sense to the evangelist, but it might be very meaningful to the person. Sometimes, as an evangelist prays from the heart, they become aware that their words are likely from the Holy Spirit. Sometimes that awareness comes later, when the prayer is answered.
Here’s a real life example. A street evangelist prayed with someone named John. John is Catholic and had just shared that he was deeply sad. His wife, he said, did not practice the faith, and would not go to Mass with him. The evangelist began by making an invitation to prayer. He said, “John, I’m so sorry to hear that your wife won’t come to Mass with you. I understand how much you love her, and you want her to have a relationship with jesus. Can I say a prayer for you right now about that?” Then, the evangelist used the ACTS method to pray:
Jesus, we adore you, we love you, we give you praise, for you are the Messiah. You came to save us from our sins. We’re so sorry for the ways we’ve turned against you and failed you. Please forgive us. And we thank you now, at this time, for John and his wife. We thank you for your blessing, Jesus, upon their family and their marriage. Please strengthen their marriage, and pave the way for John’s wife to start going to Mass. Open her heart to more of you, Lord; your life, your love. Bless her. Give her wisdom. Bless John and give him wisdom in bearing witness to her of the Christian life. Amen.
After John went home, that very night, his wife told him that for some reason she had an overwhelming desire to go to Mass with him. And from that point, she started attending Church and became a disciple of Jesus. John contacted the evangelist and let him know what had happened. Praise the Lord!
Like the evangelist in this story, you ought to keep your prayer short and thoughtful. Sometimes, when we pray with someone for a longer period of time, we end up trying their patience a little bit. And sometimes lengthy prayers can reveal a lack of faith in God’s desire and power to answer our prayers, as if we have to somehow convince Him by an excess of words.
If you are afraid of praying spontaneously from the heart, it might help to pray spontaneously during your own personal prayer time. For just a few minutes, bring God your own needs, ask Him for His fatherly blessing in your life. You also might practice praying aloud with people that you know and are comfortable with. And when it’s time to pray out loud for someone else, you can always ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and the right words. If you make a mistake, don’t worry about it! God’s in charge. Mistakes are only opportunities to grow. They help you learn what not to do, or what to do, the next time.