Corporate Prayer

Last Wednesday I attended a church's prayer service, something new in the life of that particular church. The service opened with a hymn and a responsive reading of a Psalm. The first category of prayer was praise and thanksgiving, followed by another responsive Psalm reading and a time of intercession/ supplication. The service ended with the Lord's Prayer, Gloria Patri, and a Benediction.

Prayer is something that I think many Christians, especially Presbyterians and the like, struggle with. I think maybe prayer is like an onion. This is a terribly crude example, but prayer is one of those things that is deceptively simple. It is simple enough that a child can pray, but the more you pray, the older you get, the deeper you find the experience. I think there are layers of prayer, and many times we settle for only getting through the first few layers.
I found it interesting that the prayer service was just that, a service. Is it better to have a fairly highly structured time of prayer than not? Perhaps when a church is just beginning to pray together it's important to have some structure.

Also, is it a good idea to have 35 people all praying in one large group? Corporate prayer is a funny thing. When you leave time for people to pray openly, what kind of prayer etiquette do you observe?
--How do you know when someone has finished their prayer? When they pause?
--What if two people start praying at exactly the same moment? Usually in this case one person gets slightly embarrassed and drops out, waiting until the person before them has finished.
--What about the people who are nervous about interrupting others and can't get a word in edgewise because the prayers start coming so fast that it almost becomes necessary to interrupt?

Let me pause to say that while all this sounds critical, I do deeply appreciate the efforts of the church to come together for prayer. I think it is a vitally important part of church life; prayer opens doors, we're supposed to do it, and it's a great way to know what's on people's hearts.
Sometimes I just wonder if there are ways to pray corporately that could avoid some of the awkwardness, or maybe I need to work on being bolder in prayer. Perhaps we could meet somewhere in the middle (ex. breaking up into smaller groups). In the end, I think the heart attitude is probably the key to rich times of prayer, and corporate prayer can be a powerful thing.