“Lord, teach us to pray”
Luke 11:1
When I volunteered to write on this topic, my mind went immediately to public and not personal prayer, so I apologise in advance if it is not as devotional as you might have hoped.
My varied experience of prayer in public worship over many decades has informed my own approach to prayer in public ministry. Growing up I was familiar with the extempore prayer of my evangelical Presbyterian home church and of my grandmother`s Elim Pentecostal Church. Neither left me entirely satisfied. A former minister in my home church used what was known as The Long Prayer (which on occasions could last 15 minutes) to harangue the congregation. It was what my mother incisively described as “a sermon with your eyes shut”! Evangelicals, I discovered, were happy to criticise the pharisees but often emulated them in their lengthy and often repetitive prayers, unwittingly echoing Jesus scathing observation, “they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.” Matthew 6:7.
It wasn’t until I joined a large and more liberal Presbyterian Church when I was at university in Belfast, that I realised that public prayer could have beauty and order. The ministers prepared their prayers; they were not extempore. As a result they were well crafted and deeply meaningful. They might even use other sources, not their own!
And it wasn`t until I began training for the ministry at Luther King House Manchester, that I discovered that what was known on the mainland as Nonconformist or Free Churches, were not only open to the use of written and published prayers but even responsive prayers. It blew my mind that congregants could participate in public prayer in this way. Growing up we didn`t even say the Lord`s Prayer aloud in church, as to do so was regarded as “popish”!
So, for all of my ministry I have been deeply grateful to many Churches and writers for their inspired prayer material, including the Church of Scotland, the United Reformed Church and particularly Nick Fawcett, a Baptist minister.
I am one with St Paul when in advising the Church in Corinth on its worship he appealed to them, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” 1 Corinthians 14:40.
I am aware of a particular type of evangelical/charismatic worship where in the compulsion to create a “bless-up,” confession is virtually non-existent and on the other extreme, I know of forms of liberal Christian worship where intercessory prayer is shunned lest it encourage the irrational idea of an interventionist deity.
Maybe we need to rediscover the truth of an old Sunday School lesson which I remember; “Prayer,” it said has four essential elements, “A-C-T-S, adoration confession, thanksgiving and supplication.” Although the context was personal prayer, I firmly believe that this should apply to public prayer as well.
Just because prayer is offered “decently and in order” doesn`t mean that the Spirit cannot speak in and though it.
Lord, teach us to pray. Amen.
Alan Kennedy
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