The Methodology Of Prayer...

"We both have access to the Father through Christ by one Spirit" (Eph. 2:18, CEV). 
"But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matt. 6:6, HCSB). 
"... 'I assure you: Anything you ask the Father in My name, He will give you'" (John 16:25, HCSB).  
"When ye pray, say, our Father" (Luke 11:2, KJV).  

In the spirit of the Reformation:  "I dissent, I disagree, I protest!"  We are not captive to church dogma and each of us has a right to interpret Scripture.  

NB:   We all should pray as if it all depends on God, but work like it depends on us!  Both Arminian and Calvinist would concur.  

Christians have the prerogative to pray in Christ's name, using His authority, to access the throne room of the Father (cf. Heb. 4:16), and boldly in the Spirit at that!  Most Christians are timid in their prayers and don't pray like sons but like servants!  Jesus told us to pray like this when praying corporately as His body:  "Our Father in heaven..."  Jesus had the audacity to claim God as His unique Father, even though Jews had considered themselves children of God, this was a bold assertion to claim.  It seemed He was making Himself equal to God, calling God His Father.

"And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a son and if a son, then an heir through God" (Gal. 4:6, HCSB).  We need to lay hold of our divine privilege as a child of God and enjoy the right to access God's dimension in the third heaven.  "The argument from silence in that the Bible doesn't forbid praying to Jesus is flimsy and flakey at best and almost anything could be proved with such dialectic.  It should be plain that we ought to pay due respects to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, giving Him due honor to whom honor is due as we engage the potential of the full Godhead.

The only biblical template for prayer is the Lord's prayer despite its over-familiarity, it is not meant to be a recitation nor a to make prayer look like a cakewalk.  By and large, there are no hard-and-fast rules for prayer procedure except that it be done in the divine formula of access to God, whether assumed and conscious or not.  Jesus seemed to espouse certain conditions for prayer or protocol and never deferred to the tradition of the elders.  There is no correct or set way or pattern to pray in that God does hear all believers' prayer, but the power is in the equipping of the saints in knowing to whom we are praying and availing ourselves of the rights of sons and daughters of God.  However, there exists proper etiquette with God or S.O.P. for all things are to be done in an orderly fashion per 1 Cor. 14:40.  "For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father" (Eph. 2:18, HCSB).  This means that all three persons of the Godhead or Deity are involved in our prayers! Thus, efficacious prayer avails with the concerted work of the tri-personality (the three personas of the Godhead).

Just like in creation being done cooperatively all three members of the Trinity co-equally involved; i.e., from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.  The Trinity accomplished our salvation:  the Father authored, purposed, and planned it; the Son executed, accomplishes, and fulfilled it, and the Spirit applies and makes it known all in concert!  Basically speaking, the Father originates or initiates; the Son reveals and makes manifest, and the Holy Spirit executes, fulfills, and applies.  Likewise, the whole Trinity is cooperating in our prayer life:  we pray addressed to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit!  We are exhorted to always pray "in the Spirit."  Jesus' involvement means more than attaching His name to the end with the formula "in Jesus' name" for good measure as if it's a magic formula or hokum.

Prayer can be summed up:  we pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, in the power of the Spirit.  We look to Scriptural warrant and precedent for examples to echo in prayer.  Paul showed powerful prayers to the Father.  He went to the  TOP!   In the Old Testament, and we are not living in the Old Testament, they prayed to the LORD God of Israel, for instance, but we have a more revealing person to address a prayer to now that we know Jesus.  Jesus set the example in praying to the Father and the Lord's prayer is likewise.

However, we must not forget that it is in Him that we have such access to the Father and He has given us a license to pray in His authority.  As Eph. 3:12, HCSB, says, "In Him we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him."  Just like knowing a person intimately gives us power in communication and fellowship, even giving us boldness in requests, so knowing the Father and availing our rights as a child of God gives us power in prayer, so it is like putting God in a box to see Him as only one person of the Godhead and not as a triune Being working in synergy.  Sometimes it is appropriate to address Jesus directly in prayer, but He is seated at the right hand of the Father in glory and we have the right to go to the top as it were and use His authority as a passkey to heaven's very throne room of grace.

Famous quotable lines worth noting:    "When you can't stand life, kneel!:  "Crises have kept me on my knees!"  "Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you!":  "Better heart without words than words without heart!"  "I have often gone to my knees, simply because there was no place else to go!"  "When it is hardest to pray, pray the hardest!"  "Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees!"

NB:  The Oneness Pentecostals or Apostolic Pentecostals deny the Trinity and have done away with the Father and have reverted to old heresy of modalism and are pejoratively referred to as the "Jesus only" movement.  This is a red flag that those who value sound doctrine are leary of.  Praying without biblical precedence opens Pandora's box and is highly problematic.  

 A word to the wise is sufficient:  tradition must bow to conviction and we do not interpret Scripture in light of experience or feeling, but experience and feeling in light of Scripture.  One of the battle cries of the Reformation was sola Scriptura or Scripture alone (as our authority); we must appeal to Holy Writ to settle all doctrinal matters and not tradition; the Catholic faith exalts tradition as equal status to the Bible, and this is one thing that distinguishes Protestants.  Tradition must be concordant with Scripture!  

One need not fear they're out of their league or that their prayers are anemic, because God sees the heart and the Spirit translates our prayers!  

NB:  Paul the apostle was always careful to give the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ his due and reverent attention in addressing the Godhead in prayer.  Indeed, the historical orthodox doctrine has been to address the Father in all prayer in Jesus' name in the power of the Spirit.  Paul exhorts us in 1 Cor. 4:6 HCSB, emphasis mine:  "...' nothing beyond what is written.'"  

NB:  People act out their faith for four reasons:  reason--it sounds logical; emotion--it feels good; culture--everyone does it; tradition--we've always done it.  But Christianity is countercultural and challenges us to throw down the gauntlet and cross the Rubicon of the truth based solely on the Word of God.  

CAVEAT:  IGNORING SCRIPTURAL PRECEDENTS FOR THE SAKE OF TRADITION OR CUSTOM IS THE GATEWAY TO HERESY AND EXALTING TRADITION ABOVE OR EQUAL TO SCRIPTURE AS ROMANISM ESPOUSES.   

Jesus Himself taught us how to pray corporately or as a church:  "Our Father who is in heaven...."   And I take His Word at face value.  God is more than a projection or throwback to our need for.a father figure but is our all in all through the Trinity.  It is true that some have rejected God on this account for they had no father figure or thought God was just a throwback to our need for one.  Our heavenly Father knows our hearts and we need to have that more than a doctrine of prayer by all means.  However, we ought to be obedient to the plain teaching of Scripture and realize this is to our advantage to see prayer the way God does.  (The principle for Bible interpretation is that we interpret the obscure in light of the plain and what may be implied in light of what is obvious--the implicit in light of the explicit.)

We all should inquire and do some soul searching as to whether we know the Father and can say that we are His children.  If we pray only to one member of the Godhead without regard to others, we are unduly discriminating and should wonder whether it's warranted or Scriptural and if we know the Father; e.g., imaging the pastor praying thus:  "O God..." Wouldn't this be sufficient to conclude he isn't familiar with the Father or even the Lord and seems estranged or alienated from a distant God--perhaps to a foreign God or unknown God?  God invites us to call Him Father even in the Old Testament:  see Jeremiah 3:19, ESV, which says,  "... And I thought you would call me, My Father...."

"Now to Him who has power to strengthen you ...  according to the command of the eternal God ... to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ--to Him be the glory forever!  Amen." (Rom. 16:25-27,  HCSB, italics and boldface mine).   

There are conditions for effective prayer:  Praying according to God's will; entering His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; abiding in Christ's Word; being thankful, confessing known sin, and having faith that He will answer!  Prayer is successful when it changes you not God, who doesn't need change and cannot change.   Soli Deo Gloria!