Making Prayer “Work”?

It was nearly the end of our Sunday evening service when I heard a crash from the kitchen. As soon as the benediction was spoken, I was called out of the sanctuary to pray with the woman who had been preparing the post-service tea. The crash had been the falling urn of boiling water, which had spilled its load over her front. She was clearly in pain and shock, waiting for her husband to get the car to take her to the hospital. As we waited with her a group of us knelt and prayed for healing.

The initial results of this prayer seemed almost miraculous, and we began to wonder if perhaps our prayers had ‘worked’. Then, in the days that followed, we realised that she had been severely injured in the accident, that a series of skin grafts would be necessary, and that our prayers had not brought on the miracle for which we had hoped. For some of the people in the group, this was a significant crisis of faith, and they questioned why God had not ‘heard our prayers’.

Over the years I have grown more than a little uncomfortable with some of the language we use for prayer. We talk about prayer ‘working’ as if it’s an appliance we just need to turn on for a particular task. When what we ask for happens, we say that God has ‘heard our prayers,’ as if God sometimes turns a deaf ear and ignores our requests, causing them not to be ‘answered’. We tend to think of prayer as a way to get God to do things ‘for us’, or to do things ‘to’ other people and situations. John Wesley is even quoted as saying that “God does nothing except in answer to believing prayer”. Yet, this view of prayer has created more than a few problems for us as Christ-followers, and has brought about the end of faith for more than a few believers.

For the record, I believe in prayer with all my heart. I have seen some dramatic changes in people’s lives that can only be connected to times spent in prayer together. But, the problem is that we don’t know when prayer will help and when it won’t. We can’t explain why God seems to “intervene” dramatically to save and heal some people, and doesn’t seem to act at all for others. And this is where, I believe, our language breaks down. We have become so focussed on “results” in prayer, that I believe we may have lost the essence of prayer in the process. This may be why some of us struggle with prayer so much. It is also why I believe that the practice of intercession is such a crucial part of our worship.

When we place intercessory prayer in the context of an encounter with God, then we begin to speak and think about prayer differently. In the context of worship we recognise that God is always at work in every situation and every life – so we do not need to ‘manipulate’ or convince God to act. In the context of worship we recognise that prayer is not about changing God, but about changing us – shifting us out of our own limited perspectives on the world and its struggles, and into a divine orientation. In the context of worship we worry less about whether prayer ‘works’ and more about how we can work to respond to the situations and people for which we have been moved to pray.

I wonder how different our lives of prayer would be if we approached intercession in this way? I wonder how different our worship might be if we opened ourselves to be changed by what we pray so that we might live it out each day. As my friend Taylor Burton-Edwards (of the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church) says: “The question is not, ‘Do we pray well?’ The question is, ‘Do we live well what we pray?’”

Connected

When I was a student at university it was common to hear worship leaders say, “Just get in a cocoon with Jesus. Don’t worry about anyone else. It’s just you and Jesus – that’s all you need to worry about.” Over the years I have heard similar sentiments repeated many times from worship leaders and conference speakers, and I have become increasingly uncomfortable with this instruction. Nevertheless, the impact this way of approaching worship has had on the Church is reflected in the lyrics of most contemporary hymns. The use of the singular pronoun ‘I’ rather than the plural ‘we’ is overwhelming, and it reveals a deep and disturbing individualism in our worship and our faith.

Perhaps this is why prayer is such a difficult practice. In many ways our worship has been equated with music, and I have heard internationally respected worship leaders teach that it is the pastor’s job to pray, not the worship leader’s. Which may be why I seldom hear prayers of any depth or creativity in contemporary “non-liturgical” worship, if I hear prayers at all.

Nowhere is this truer than in the case of intercession. In many ways we have begun to treat worship as an escape from the world and its struggles, which means that intercession – which should draw our attention more clearly to the pain of our existence – has no place. The result is that we easily slip into a comfortable, self-indulgent worship practice which requires no connection with anyone else, and demands no awareness of the world or compassion for its suffering. But, an individualist, escapist, indulgent religion is not worship. It’s narcissism.

If we are to be healthy human beings, and true followers of Christ, the uncomfortable practice of intercession is an essential ingredient in our spirituality – not least because it reminds us that we are connected. Jesus knew this, which is why he taught that when two or three agree on anything they ask, it will be done for them (Matthew 18:19).

When we pray, we cannot help but be connected with those for whom we intercede – for the world in which we live, and its places of suffering and conflict and need. More than this, when we pray, we are connected with those with whom we intercede. It is impossible to pray for the world and its peoples effectively on our own. At the very least we need to be informed of what is going on through newspapers, blog posts or Twitter feeds – all of which requires us to be connected with others. In addition, if our prayers are to be effective, we need the different perspectives that can only be discovered in community. When I pray alone, I have only my ideas. But, when I join with others, I am forced to see things from a wider perspective – which can only make my prayer both more effective and more challenging. And, of course, if we are to pray well we must think of ourselves as potential answers to our own requests – and to do this, we need to be connected into a community that has resources and networks beyond our own little circles.

But, here’s the problem – and the glory, of all of this connectedness. It takes humility and courage to acknowledge our interdependence in this way. When I pray for others, I also implicitly acknowledge that I need them to pray for me. Which means that I have to acknowledge that I am not self-sufficient, but interdependent – that I need others, even as they need me. This can be frightening, but, if we are willing to risk it, we may just discover not just a new power in prayer, but a new engagement with life that changes us and invites us into a sense of belonging and a vibrancy of living that we had not imagined before.

The Question of Prayer

A few years ago the facilitator of a course I attended told a story about driving in the car with his son. He had just picked the boy up from school and was asking him about his day. As he peppered the child with questions, the answers came freely at first, but soon, a hesitation crept in. Finally, in a momentary pause between questions, he said to his father in a frustrated voice, “But that’s not the story I want to tell you!”

I don’t know who said it first, but the quality of our insights and learning - about anything - depends on the quality of our questions. This father unwittingly controlled his conversation with his son through the questions he was asking, and he almost missed the chance to learn something new and move into a deeper connection with his child. And I can’t help but feel that this is what we do, all too often, in prayer.

For many of us the very definition of prayer is asking. I can’t tell you how many times, as I facilitate worship gatherings, I have invited people to offers prayers of praise and thanksgiving, only to find that people are unable to do this. Given the opportunity to pray, many of us move immediately into “asking-mode”. And even when the prayers are meant to be about asking – in times of intercession (praying for others) or petition (praying for ourselves) – we easily find ourselves instructing God, or demanding “answers” in certain ways, rather than actually asking with an open heart and a questioning mind.

But the pray-ers of the Bible often saw prayer in different ways. When we read the accounts of people praying in the scriptures, we often find them questioning God with an openness and curiosity. Sometimes their questions are quite pointed, but there is always an ability to hold the mystery and unpredictability of God and God’s ways in tension with what is being sought. The story of Abraham bargaining with God over the city of Sodom is a wonderful example (Genesis 18:20-33). When he hears that God may destroy Sodom because of the wickedness of the people there, Abraham begins to plead for the city, but he does it by asking God if the righteous are to be destroyed along with the wicked, even if there are only fifty of them. God responds that he will not destroy the city if there are fifty righteous people in it. The conversation goes back and forth until Abraham gets an assurance from God that even as few as ten righteous people will be enough to save the city.

Here is a creative engagement with God in which Abraham takes a risk, asks things for which he doesn’t know the answer, and in which he learns more about God and God’s ways. I wish more of our prayer was like this. I find myself imagining what intercession would be like if we prayed more to seek the right questions than to discover clear and indisputable answers.

Perhaps this is why I like to pray in community. It can often be difficult to find agreement among a number of people over specific answers. But, it can be far easier to agree on what the questions should be, and I often find the questions of others inspiring, challenging and deeply insightful. Perhaps this what Jesus had in mind when he taught that when we agree on anything it will be done for us (Matthew 18:19 – note he says when you agree about anything you ask. Could Jesus be indicating that it’s the question we need to agree on, not necessarily the answer?).

When we allow prayer to lead us deeper into the questions of the Divine Mystery, we find ourselves deeply changed, and we begin to see the world and its needs in very different ways. Prayer that is less than this is, I believe, hardly worthy of the name. So, if you’re willing to face life’s great questions, why not join a community of faith in prayer sometime soon?

__________________
John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.

Resurrecting Preaching

Here’s a word that you may not like very much: “sermon”. We’ve grown pretty negative about this form of communication in the last few decades. It’s common to hear people say things like, “I don’t like to go to church to be told what to do or think,” or, more directly, “Don’t preach at me!”

Some churches, in response to these negative associations have begun to move away from sermons, perhaps even abandoning them altogether. One colleague that I worked with some years ago even went so far as to say that “sermons don’t change people.”

But, I’m not ready to give up on preaching just yet. I still believe in preaching. It was the primary way that Jesus communicated, and the disciples after him. The founders of the denomination I belong to, John and Charles Wesley, changed their nation, at least in part, through their preaching. I’ve seen people changed by a well-spoken word in a well-crafted sermon. But, I also believe in preaching because it still continues to impact people outside of the church in amazing and transforming ways. Some may call it “motivational speaking” or “training” or “coaching”, but every year thousands of people pay good money to listen to some communicator “preach” a message that they believe will change their lives. Let no one tell you that preaching is dead!

So, why are we so unsure of the sermon in the place where it most belongs – the Church? Perhaps it’s because we’ve made faith such an individualist endeavour that we are no longer open to hearing or receiving the wisdom of others. When it comes to spirituality, we want no voice other than our own. Or perhaps it’s because we have become so insecure in this ministry that we have lost the art, and our sermons have become shallow, boring and irrelevant. Whatever the reason, I want to make the outrageous suggestion that we recover the art of preaching – both as listeners and as preachers.

Preaching – and listening attentively to the sermon - is a profound spiritual discipline that challenges us at the place where our pride and stubbornness are most active. We don’t want to be challenged, confronted or instructed. We want to be autonomous, self-directed and self-absorbed. But, we will never be whole human beings if we allow our self-centredness and independence to control our lives. We need to have our blind spots revealed. We need to have our brokenness confronted and we need to be called to repentance if we are to discover the abundant life that Jesus promised. Good, prophetic preaching does all this and more – just read the story of Nathan confronting David’s adultery (2 Samuel 12:1-9).

So, for the sake of our own health and growth, we need to cultivate the practice of listening to sermons. It is healthy and transformational for us to learn to listen to voices other than our own, and to embrace the challenge that this brings. We need to allow someone else to set the agenda for the conversation from time to time, and we need to learn to value words that we may not want to hear. But, perhaps more than anything else, we need to develop the ability to listen well, to embrace silence and reflection and to discover the voice of God speaking through the voice of another.

But, we all also need to learn the art of preaching – for we are all preachers, whether it’s to our children, to our friends as we witness to Christ, or to a congregation as we stand in a pulpit. And preaching, like being preached to, begins with the discipline of listening – to God, to the Scriptures, to the people who are being addressed, to the community, to history and to the world. This is what makes our message relevant and compelling. When this is followed up with hard work and practice in the art of good communication – in the structuring of content, the telling of stories and the choice of engaging words – a sermon (formal or informal) can be a force for change and inspiration like no other.

So, why don’t we recover this art? Imagine if we began to see preaching, again, as a shared discipline in which preacher and listener are engaged in a transforming narrative, a creative conversation. Just think what might happen if we started to open ourselves to the preaching moment as a time of participation, not passivity. And how might the world be touched if we truly started to practice – in every moment and interaction – what we have so mindfully preached.

__________________
John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.