Why Should I Use a Prayer Map?

A Disciple-Making Lifeline for the Long Haul

Jun 05, 2025

"I don't feel comfortable putting names on a piece of paper,
It makes me feel like they're just a project."

-Amanda

She said it with such purity of heart and deep love for her friends and family. I respected that. But I leaned in, gave her a gentle smile, and said, “Amanda, this process is actually one of the most loving and kind things you can do for the people you care about most. Let’s talk about this.”

What Is a Prayer Map?

One of the first tools we introduce to new disciples is the “Prayer Map.” It’s incredibly simple, yet powerfully effective for achieving long-term, generational impact. The earlier a disciple gets this in their hands, the sooner they begin seeing their relationships, where they live, work, and play, as their mission field. And just like that, they start to live as missionaries.

Why It Matters.

Disciple-making is often intangible. During the first ten to fifteen years of this journey of decentralized disciple-making, I would lie in bed at night and anguish that I couldn’t see, hear, feel, touch, or taste the fruit of my labor. I was working harder than I’d ever worked in church planting or as a traditional pastor. I was pouring out my heart to new believers and seasoned church attenders who were embracing new values and practices as they learned to live like missionaries among their friends and coworkers. We were launching simple churches, discipling communities, and investing deeply in the leaders.

👓BUT! I COULD NOT SEE IT! And it drove me bonkers.

In a Sunday-centric church, you have people in the building at least once per week! Heck, as far as that goes, you have a building! Even if it’s an elementary gym or a movie theater where your feet stick to the floor from last night's spilled Sprite 🥤. You can see it, smell it, and hear your feet peel off the sticky sugar when you walk across the floor. BUT, in a decentralized network, it’s all you can do to get your 12 simple church leaders together in one room.

It’s super discouraging!

And not just for the catalyst who is overseeing the whole thing, it’s also hard for the simple church leaders to see and experience the work of the Spirit as it 1“blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going.”

The enemy leverages the intangibility of the growth of the movement by whispering in your ear late at night, “You’re not seeing any fruit. You’ve been laboring for three years now, and look around. NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.” You know it’s a lie designed to suck the missional fuel out of your tank, but as you think about it, you begin to believe it and lose heart and think maybe it’s time to throw in the towel.

This doesn’t only happen in network circles, it happens in our everyday disciple-making lives. We miss the work of the Holy Spirit. The enemy blinds us because we have failed to create a representation to celebrate the fruit that our work in the field has produced.

🧭 Enter Prayer Maps.

Some call them oikos maps or disciple-making maps. They start as humble, simple expressions of a person’s transformation from a casual Sunday church attender to an intentional, strategic disciple-maker. For those who embrace a long-term disciple-making lifestyle, it becomes their prayer list, their accountability tool, and even their proverbial church building.

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Your Map as a Prayer List

Back in the day, I used to keep a literal notebook that served as a reminder to pray for specific needs that came across my path. You may still use a bullet point version of a prayer list, whether it’s on paper or a digital platform.

It worked great.

I’d have a single prayer on each page with notes on how the need was progressing and a space to add a date when the prayer was answered. I still occasionally use lists like that for specific requests, such as health issues, financial needs, and non-disciple-making issues. But anything related to multiplying disciples goes on my “official” prayer map.

The advantage of this method is that it reminds me of God's activity in each disciple-maker and their downline. So, if I pull out my prayer map and see Jonathan’s name attached to his seeker friend, Sam, I recognize that I haven’t touched base with Jonathan to see how his discipling relationship with Sam is going. And before I pick up the phone to call Jonathan, I stop and pray that he’ll have the words, ideas, and time to be an effective discipler to Sam.

I also have each of those people color-coded: green bubbles represent those who have made at least one disciple, yellow bubbles represent believers who have not yet adopted a disciple-making lifestyle, and red bubbles represent those who have not yet been born again. This allows me to pray appropriate prayers for each person on the list, including praying that God would give me the right words and tools to coach their disciple-maker. There is a ton of information and accountability present on my disciple-making prayer map. We’ll talk about that later.

Your Prayer Map as an Accountability Tool

You’ve probably experienced this before. You find someone named Mary who is disciple-able and ready to grow in their walk with Jesus, and you start to invest in her over coffee. She gets fired up and engages for three meetings, and then she doesn’t show up for the fourth meeting because she has a dentist appointment. She comes next week and then misses two. Before you know it, six months later, you haven’t even thought of Mary (or prayed for her) since she cancelled on you four weeks ago. And guess what!? You won't think about her again until you see a Facebook post or run into them at XYZ coffee. You won’t, I promise (unless the Holy Spirit chooses to confront our disciple-making malpractice and bring her to mind despite us).

The good news - your prayer map is your unpaid personal assistant in this case!

I visit my prayer map at least once a month to update it and pray over it. I take the time to pray for every individual or disciple-making group listed (your monthly half-day of prayer is a good rhythm for this). And then I run across, guess who, Mary! It serves as a reminder to touch base with her and check in on how things are going.

Now, is that a man-made system or the work of the Holy Spirit? YES! The Holy Spirit did the work of confronting Mary with the Gospel, and I did the work of being a good disciple-making steward.

Your Prayer Map as Your Proverbial Church Building

Church buildings cost A LOT of money! The mortgage, upkeep, staff to keep the doors open, security, lights, air conditioning, water, etc. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s worth every penny for the Body of Christ to gather face-to-face and experience body life together.

But, it doesn’t generally work like that in disciple-making networks. You don’t get together in large buildings; you get together in living rooms, coffee shops, and break rooms. And you don’t have your entire family gathering weekly, that is reserved for special events like All-Gatherings.

The Deal with Decentralized Networks

👍The Upside: personal touch, easily scalable, inexpensive, and everybody gets to participate.

👎The Downside: less group synergy, lack of financial support, no gathered critical mass, and INTANGIBILITY!

Intangibility is what can lead to that feeling I mentioned, late at night, when you question whether you’ve seen any spiritual fruit in the past year. The work of the Spirit often hides in the bushes in a decentralized network. You know it’s happening because you hear the stories when you sub-coach your DM leaders. But you don’t see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, feel it.

As a matter of fact, beyond the 2nd generation of fruit, you may not even know the names of those who are being radically transformed by the work that the Lord started through you five years ago. It can be outright life sucking!

The Prayer map in the ONE tool provides you with a birds-eye view of the work of God in your disciple-making network! During that sleepless late night when the enemy is whispering in your ear that God is not up to anything and he is holding out on you, you can hit the flashlight button on your iphone, sneak out of bed so your wife isn’t disturbed, tiptoe down the stairs to try to avoid waking up the kids, slide open your desk drawer or fire up your computer, and bask in the glory of the actity of the Holy Spirit on your prayer map.

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Who Goes on the Prayer Map?

Great Question!

Your prayer map should be a visual representation of the people God has called you to disciple, whether that means praying for opportunities to share the Gospel, hoping a cultural Christian becomes a true follower of Jesus, or casting a vision for them to become a community leader.

You run across hundreds of people each week - at the grocery store, at work, on the ball field, etc. Most of those people cross your path by accident, but there are those few who you know are in your life on purpose. Paul says in 2Acts that God chooses for each person the time and place where they live, so that we will all reach out and search for Him.

Who in your everyday life has God placed close to you ON PURPOSE?

You know who they are and that’s who goes on your prayer map!

What to Track on Your Prayer Map

Your prayer map is… well… it’s yours! It is designed to serve you, not your network or your leaders. So, make it yours. I mentioned at the beginning of this article that Amanda felt that building her prayer map was impersonal. I was happily surprised when I got her first map back and she had “customized” it to make it feel more personal to her! 💕❤️💕

Your prayer map is a living document!

It is forever changing and never static. Every month, I remove people who are no longer with us and add new disciples who are embracing the culture. If I am not evolving my prayer map, then something is wrong with our network! That’s why it’s crucial to track different types of data on your prayer map using color codes or symbols.

What I Track on My Prayer Map

I can’t say this enough: your prayer map is yours!

There are no rules to prayer mapping. You track what is helpful for you to track and do it in a way that makes sense to you!

My Individual Tracking

First and Last Name
Color Coded Based on Disciple-Making Journey
- 🔴 Red = unbeliever
- 🟡 Yellow = believer not making disciples
- 🟢 Green = Disciple-Maker
Connecting lines to a disciple-maker or a disciple-making community
Connecting line to next-gen disciples

My Group Tracking

☁️ Cloud denotes a disciple-making community
⭐️ Star denotes a faith-based non-profit with a disciple-making culture
🔺Triangle denotes a disciple-making missional business
Different Colored Clouds Represent Different Group Types
- X-Group: 3-5 same-sex sex highly accountable, regularly meeting
- Community: 5-25 co-ed sharing in a common mission
- Simple Church: any number practicing the 9 behaviors of church life, plus self-identifying as a church