Purpose
Prayer meetings provide social support to those who attend. The prayers during the prayer meeting sometimes ask their deity for a positive outcome in times of uncertainty.
Some prayer meetings are targeted at repentance, either of those attending or of another person or organization which is not in attendence. The latter type of prayer meetings are also a form of protest against the sinful behavior of the targeted person or organization.
In the years before widespread news media, prayer meetings were also a primary source of news and information (including firsthand accounts) about the events leading to the meeting being called. At the same time as the news was received, the prayer meeting offered ways to deal with changing circumstances. This still continues in modern times. However, the impact of such a prayer meeting is now much stronger among the worshipers than among the general public.
Read more about this topic: Prayer Meeting
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, “I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!””
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock as not going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch’s greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Thus one can observe that those who proclaim piety as their goal and purpose usually turn into hypocrites.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)