Home Prayer Companions

It’s Monday night in Manuel and Emma Ayala’s Los Angeles home. A few minutes after 7 p.m., Emma shuts the television off and begins transforming the living room into a neighborhood sanctuary.

She takes a pile of Bibles out of the closet, placing them within easy reach along her green futon and around her dining room table. Her husband takes bottles of soda and plastic cups from the kitchen and sets the beverages up in the middle of the room.

Soon, 10 friends drift into the home for an intimate meeting. They talk, they laugh, they name their needs, they share their pain and they pray. No boring sermons or guilt trips, no heavy theology. For one hour, inside this little house off Vermont Avenue, it is just 12 people meeting at the crossroads of faith and life, sharing their personal struggles with each other and God.

“In big churches, it’s hard for people to get to know each other,” said Juver Ramirez, who leads the weekly prayer group with his wife, Christina. “In these small groups, people come closer together.”

The gathering at the Ayala home is one of 18 weekly prayer meetings, or cell groups, composed of members of the First Church of the Nazarene in Los Angeles. Cell groups, says the Rev. David Iglesias, pastor of the Protestant church’s Latino congregation, are “like the cells of your body. These are living cells that form an integral part of the church body, the body of Christ.”

Though formal church-centered Sunday worship services still dominate religious life, cell groups or small faith communities are quietly emerging as primary areas where people gather for spiritual growth. Within the past five years, hundreds of Protestant and Catholic churches across the country have either begun home prayer groups or expanded existing programs to satisfy the yearning for a more comfortable time and place to talk about faith.

Sister Pauline MacDonald of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles office of religious education has been working with about 15 parishes in the San Gabriel Valley for three years to establish home prayer groups. With small groups, people no longer feel anonymous or lost in the crowd at church, she said. Groups have multiplied across Southern California, but especially in churches with large Latino and Asian immigrant congregations. That population feels isolated, MacDonald said, and needs more support in learning what the Scriptures have to do with everyday life.

“People are saying they want something more out of faith. We’re a number at the bank. We’re a number at the supermarket. We don’t want to be a number at church,” she said.

Growing Movement

In mega-churches with attendance as high as 10,000, cell groups have long been used to foster friendships and increase membership, said Iglesias, who has been with First Nazarene since 1989.

At First Church of the Nazarene, the Latino congregation includes more than 300 members from Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Iglesias said he began the cell groups with the goal of bringing his congregation closer together and attracting new members from different neighborhoods. Results have begun to pay off, he said. Although church attendance usually drops in the summer, the Spanish-language service at First Nazarene has increased in the past three weeks from 277 to 318 people.

“But, it’s not just about numbers,” he stressed. “If we can get a person to establish a personal relationship with God, that’s what counts. We’re evangelizing.”

In 1995, the U.S. Bishops Committee on Hispanic Affairs emphasized the role of prayer groups in the Latino Catholic community in a statement that called the groups “a source of great hope for the whole church.”

“Among Hispanics, small church communities are becoming an important and useful vehicle for the new evangelization to which the church is being called,” the statement said.

Perhaps the largest and most dynamic Catholic home prayer groups are at St. John the Baptist Church in Baldwin Park. The program began last year as part of an approach to family catechism for children preparing for their First Communion. Groups of children and their parents would meet at a designated house. Adults would gather in one room of the house and children in another. All would come together at the end of the session to share what they had learned.

Skeptics Are Won Over

Although many were skeptical initially, the groups quickly became a hit. Over the summer, the church registered more than 600 families interested in participating in the program, which begins next month.

Lucy Boutte, the archdiocese’s coordinator of Hispanic affairs for the San Gabriel Valley, said part of the goal was to retain attendance among families after First Communion. Often, Boutte said, few families returned to church the Sunday after First Communion.

“There’s a need, especially among immigrants, to be connected, to be in a relationship,” she said. “Here they belong to something. They know who they are.”

Various models exist for establishing prayer groups, depending on a congregation’s interests and needs. Iglesias selected a model being used by a Nazarene church in Miami. In January, he selected 15 members of his congregation as group leaders and traveled to Florida for training. A few months ago, the cell groups began.

At about 7:30 p.m. on a recent Monday, the Ayala group began the evening with a hymn a cappella. One by one, the members spoke about why they had come to pray. Manuel Ayala prayed for his family. Rogelio Diaz offered a prayer for the people of Cuba. Alicia Barrientos, who recently recovered from a spate of medical problems, prayed for her continued good health.

“There are times when you feel like all your problems are overwhelming you. It’s nice to take a little time out and reflect with others. I can sometimes feel Christ is here in the room with us.”

Diaz is not a member of First Nazarene but said he decided to join the group on Monday nights because he lived in the neighborhood.

“This is a better opportunity to talk about things with my friends,” he said. “You feel more comfortable asking questions and it helps you understand the Gospel better.”

“I think there are a lot of people scared or embarrassed to come to church,” Diaz added. “These groups could help reach them.”

Not all pastors welcome the idea of cell groups. Some pastors feel threatened about placing too much power in the hands of lay leaders, Iglesias said. Others feel so overwhelmed by their parish workloads that they are reluctant to take on another activity.

“I don’t have a problem with those things,” said Iglesias. “I empower each of my leaders to be a pastor. I could use the help.”

MacDonald said some Catholic priests have voiced the same concerns. But in the long run, she said, vesting more responsibility in laity lightens the load.

“After priests have begun these groups, many have said that people come to them with fewer questions. For little things, they go to their group leaders. That makes life easier for everyone.”