Why Your Church Should Be Praying for Business Owners (And How to Start)

As pastors, we often pray for the spiritual growth, families, and personal needs of our congregation members. Yet there's a significant part of their lives we frequently overlook in our ministries: praying for business owners in our congregation. The entrepreneurs and business owners in your church spend the majority of their waking hours navigating complex decisions, carrying financial responsibilities, and often feeling spiritually isolated in their professional lives. In my conversation with Amy Lykosh of Workplace Prayer, we uncovered a significant ministry opportunity hiding in plain sight. Business owners need focused prayer support, and churches are uniquely positioned to provide it. But how do we bridge this gap? In this episode, Amy shares powerful insights on why business prayer matters and practical steps your church can take to better support the business leaders in your congregation. Resources: Prayer Shield by C. Peter Wagner (Book focusing on the importance of intercessory prayer for pastors and ministry leaders.) Workplace Prayer: Professional prayer coverage for businesses. Make Prayer Beautiful Podcast: Amy's podcast featuring short 5-10 minute episodes on prayer. Transcript: Introduction Joy Hunt: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Pastors & Money Podcast. I'm Joy Suzanne Hunt, pastor and financial coach, bringing you conversations about personal finance, church finance and how we disciple our churches in the areas of finance and stewardship. You can find the episode show notes, and more at pastorsandmoney.com. And here's the show. Amy Lykosh brings a unique perspective to prayer and in business and finance through her work with Workplace Prayer. After nearly two decades reviewing books for Sonlight Curriculum, and experiencing her own transformative journey with prayer, Amy now leads a team dedicated to providing prayer support for businesses and training people to pray more effectively. Joy Hunt: Her mission is to change the narrative around prayer and business, [00:01:00] showing how God cares about business and how prayer can transform workplace culture and advance his kingdom. Amy, welcome to the podcast. Amy, to get started, can you share a bit about your journey with prayer and how you came to, to focus specifically on prayer in the workplace? Amy's Journey to Praying for Business Owners Amy Lykosh: Yeah. So my parents actually, because they started a business after my dad had been on staff with a missions organization, they always had morning prayer during the staff meeting and they thought, well, if we're starting a business, prayer should probably be part of that culture as well. And so it was a pretty natural progression in my mind. Like if this is part of your value system, then you should pray. And so, they invited their staff to pray for the business. They did that, and continue to do that to this day. So at this point, it's about 34 years of prayer coverage for a business that has been paid. For most of those years, just paid to the employees. But at this point they also have hired Workplace Prayer as, another [00:02:00] source of prayer coverage. Joy Hunt: So what led you then to start Workplace Prayer Yourself? Amy Lykosh: So I, loved what I saw in my parents company, but about 30 years in, I felt like there are some things that are just large and they're not shifting fast enough. So I felt a little bit like I was trying to water a football field with a garden hose. Like, you could get there in the end, but it would be a lot nicer if you either had maybe like a fire hose or a sprinkler system or rain from heaven. And so I was like, any of these would be a fine option. So I went looking for people who were maybe trained a little bit more in how to pray effectively, because I think most of us don't really view prayer as something that you can maybe get more, skilled in doing. I think we kind of feel like, well, as long as you're talking to God,