I once heard Jack Hayford say “how can we expect people to pray at home if we don’t expect them to pray at church?” This is a really good question that makes a really good point. If people don’t see and experience heartfelt, genuine, authentic prayer on a Sunday morning, then the odds of them feeling comfortable praying at home, or with their family, are very low.
You may not realize this, but whenever you (or anyone else) pray into a microphone on a Sunday morning, all of the “normal people” in the room are taking notes. Probably not actual notes on a piece of paper, but mental notes. And they don’t even realize they’re doing it. They’re studying how you pray, what you pray most often, how your voice sounds, if you sound like you’re faking it, if you sound like you’re comfortable, etc.
Feel nervous yet? If you don’t, you should. It’s a big responsibility to pray publicly, simply because you are shaping how the people in the pews are going to pray privately.
If I could make one suggestion to worship leaders (myself included) and pastors about praying publicly, it would be this: pray like a normal person.
Yes, make sure you keep in mind which person of the Trinity you’re addressing. Yes, make sure you don’t meander and wander and say “um” or the infamous “Father God” five thousand times. Yes, make sure your prayer makes sense. Pray carefully. But don’t pray robotically.
The normal people in your congregation can tell when, for some reason, you raise your pitch when you pray as if you’re talking to a baby. Or if you get really breathy as if you’re in a library and don’t want to get dirty looks. They can tell when you’re using words you don’t normally use. And all of this not-normalness contributes to them not feeling like they can try it at home.
Step one: use your normal voice. Step two: use your normal vocabulary. Step three: don’t think too hard. Just pray, even if it’s a bit messy, just pray from your heart. Step four: keep it short and sweet and to the point. Step five: do not, under any circumstance, assume a faux-British accent.
Model careful, heartfelt, authentic, normal prayer to your congregation. They’re taking notes.
Worthily Magnify 
When I met my wife, she went to a pretty charismatic church and they prayed FAST – lots of words and very frantic. It always sounded like they were either trying to convince God or bark orders at Him. Creepy.
>> do not, under any circumstance, assume a faux-British accent.
Presumably, this does not apply if you normally speak with a British accent!
Sometimes, we have formal prayers, or prayers with parallel structures, or prayers that call for responses from the congregation (eg the intercessor says, ‘in your mercy’, the congregation responds, ‘hear our prayer’). Would you not say that there is room for a more ‘composed’ prayer rather than a spontaneous style prayer? When I was first asked to do intercessions, I wrote out the prayer ahead of time!
So I don’t have to pray to God in the King James?!?!?! Wow. I was always told that God only listened when I used the “thees” and “thous”. Is it true that God especially listens to Scottish men more for their accents?? Wow. Thank you Jamie. I am freed to pray in the ESV!!!
That’s a good question – what do you do Jamie, do you script or have notes for your prayers? I find when I ad-lib at home there’s only a few people to hear me say something distracting or wrong, but in front of the entire church my ad-libbed prayers often suffer in terms of quality….
William, I had to write mine out for a while, or at least notes, to make me more comfortable. After a while, you get comfortable doing it, and you can shoot from the hip.