Series on Prayer: Settings for Prayer

Prayer Course, Session VII

I. Where May One Pray?
As we have talked about prayer over the last two months, we have usually considered prayer in two settings, personal prayers and Sunday morning worship. These may be the two most common settings for prayer, but there are other settings, and today I want to look at a variety of settings where prayer is an essential part of the event. What are some settings for prayer that you can think of?
I will begin with congregational prayer in worship and then go on to several other settings, including individual prayer. After that I will look briefly at some special circumstances for prayer.
Congregations go about their prayers as a congregation in a number of ways. Liturgical churches, such as the Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox, have numerous written prayers throughout their services. What one might call traditional churches, such as Fairlawn, will have a few prayers in their services, including one by the pastor that deals with the needs of the congregation. I have to admit that I have not been to too many “contemporary” services, but from what I can see, they are a period of singing, followed by a period of teaching, with prayer in the middle or at the end.
The danger for prayer in the liturgical setting is that the celebrant and congregation may simply read the prayers and not pray them. The danger in the contemporary service is that focus may be more on the music and the personality of the worship leader and the experience of it all, and not on prayer. The danger for prayer in the traditional setting is that the largest element of prayer depends on the pastor and on his ability, or lack of it, to give voice to the concerns of the congregation.
The strength of liturgical worship is that its elements have been proven useful over centuries of worship. If the celebrant and congregation have a living faith, and if they have learned the prayers not just as memorization but as an expression of faith, the prayers can give powerful voice to their hearts as they offer them to the Lord. The strength of a contemporary worship service is that it is flexible and the prayers can express elements of adoration, thanks, and intercession with pinpoint accuracy, if the prayers are not overshadowed by the music or the preaching. The strength of the traditional service is that some of the prayers are traditional and written and can be wonderful vehicles to express one’s heart to God, but there is also a time of prayer that is open to praying for very specific needs and situations.
I want to make a side comment that I think has some bearing on congregational prayer, and indeed on prayer in many different situations. That is, I think that personality has some bearing on how we experience prayer in general, and prayer in worship in particular. Some people are extroverted, while others are introverted. Some people are intuitive, while others are very able to focus on and name details. We are all some blend of a variety of characteristics, and our personality make-up will probably lead us to prefer or at least be more comfortable in one worship setting than another. That being said, however, persons of all personalities must remember that worship is fundamentally about God, and not about what style one might prefer. It is one thing to prefer one style of worship; it is quite another to insist that it is the only valid style there is.
We have covered a number of things over the last two months that talk about what prayer is and how to pray. While there are certainly some basic aspects to prayer that cannot be compromised, there are other aspects that can and will vary. I love to pray with and for other people. One theologian I know of regularly spends eight hours in prayer, delighted to enjoy the Lord for such a period of time. Some people can write prayers that express one’s longings in a marvelous way. Others have a gift of being able to lead a large group of people in praise and intercession. God invites all his children to come before him for the pleasure of his company and to listen to their hearts, but his children do so in a wide variety of ways, depending on their personality, their gifts, and so on.
I have outlined three basic styles of prayer in worship, the liturgical, the traditional, and the contemporary. I think that they are all valid styles. Each has its strengths and each has its weaknesses. I do think that the contemporary style is the one most likely to “go off the rails” because it is so flexible and can easily become about “what makes me feel good” rather than about God. As an Episcopal pastor, I led liturgical worship for years, and I love that style – but I have also experienced liturgies that were hollow and empty because the leaders were just going through the motions. When I was at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, I spent a summer as an intern at a Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and led some traditional services while the pastor was on vacation –and I can tell you that praying the pastoral prayer is a real challenge!

II. Prayers in Small Groups
Besides prayers during Sunday worship, many churches used to have a Wednesday evening prayer meeting, and in some places it is still common. I am not sure, but I think that these prayer meetings got their start in the mid-1800’s as a time to pray for missionaries. They are not as focused now, and for quite a long time they have been more like an informal worship service with a little more prayer than usual. Such prayer meetings have also been a smaller gathering than Sunday worship, and this leads me to a second major setting for prayer: the small group.
This setting is one that is dear to my heart because I learned to pray in a small group while I was a student at the University of Virginia. The local chapter of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship held a prayer meeting Monday through Friday at 6:00 PM in the University Chapel. I began attending these meetings in the fall of my first year at UVa and I attended regularly during my time at The University. They were simple: we sang a few hymns, shared prayer requests, and prayed for those requests. Attendance ranged from four to ten students and usually our faculty advisor. We had one simple rule about praying: pray about one request and one only at a time. That meant that you could pray only one sentence if you liked, which made it easy to pray out loud. Sometimes in a prayer group there will be two or three people who will pray about all the requests, leaving the others wondering what to say.
Inter-Varsity called our method “conversational prayer.” One person might pray a few sentences about one of the requests, and another person would pray about some other aspects of the situation. As each person prayed, it was likely that their insights would be used by the Holy Spirit to give further insights, so that as most of the group prayed on a given topic, the topic received extensive coverage in prayer. The group was also more united in spirit, for they had not simply prayed in one another’s presence, but had prayed together.
When one topic was covered, we moved onto a new topic. Each evening, we would sing for about ten minutes, share for ten or fifteen minutes, and pray for ten or fifteen minutes. It was not long, but it was powerful. I think that it was most powerful in the lives of those who attended. Most of the requests were for relatively small matters – tests we were facing or other academic challenges, dealing with a difficult roommate, a few health concerns, and so on. But the experience of praying together and of seeing real but undramatic answers to prayer deepened our faith and encouraged us.
We also prayed about the spread of the Gospel among the students at UVa. We held a few outreach events, and followed up interested participants, and most of us tried to learn how to share the Gospel one to one. Inter-Varsity had come to UVa about 1955 and it had a small but consistent presence up through my fourth year. A professor of economics, Dr Ken Elzinga, joined the faculty at the start of my third year. He began his lecture on the first day of teaching Econ 101 with the statement that he was a committed Christian and that he would welcome conversation with any student who wanted to know more. During my fourth year, a local Baptist pastor who had gotten to know some students through conversations as they worked out at the gym began a ministry that had a profound effect on our fellow students. More and more students became Christians because of these men. Our prayer meeting grew and grew until we had forty or fifty participants – and rather than pray as a whole group, we sang and then broke up into smaller groups so that the personal dimension of prayer would not be lost.
When the members of the Virginia Christian Fellowship prayed for all those years from the mid-fifties to the late sixties, we did not expect God to answer our prayers for the spread of the Gospel at UVa in the way that he did. We thought that he would teach us more and better ways to share our faith, and that our fellowship, and perhaps the Navigators and the Baptist Student Union, would be the agents of sharing the Gospel. But God had other ideas in mind, and the heart of our prayers was answered, as many students came to faith in Christ.
When I began at UVa, there were perhaps two hundred committed Christians in those three groups, out of some 7,000 students. Today, there are several thousand committed Christians students, a network of Christian ministries who work together harmoniously, a Christian study center that offers a great series of courses, and many Bible studies and prayer groups. The faculty has many Christian members and they are well respected. Indeed, Dr Elzinga went on to become chair of the Economics Dept.
As we gathered in the University Chapel in the mid-60’s to pray, we had no idea that God was going to answer our prayers in the way he did. But he certainly did – and as things developed, we discovered that, while we sometimes felt all alone in praying for the spread of the Gospel at the University, there were others, in groups and individually, who had been praying for the same thing. God answered, and continues to answer, all our prayers in a wonderful way.
This is one instance of small group prayer at work. As I said, I think that one major thing that enabled the depth and extent of our prayer as a group was the pattern of conversational prayer: each person who prayed was to stay on one topic, and to leave room for others to add their own prayers for the same topic. I have an idea that the once-common Wednesday night prayer meeting came to resemble a less formal Sunday service was because two or three people prayed for everything at length, so that the rest of the people did not know what to pray for – and even if they had had an idea, would have been too scared to say anything because they could not be long and eloquent in their prayers. Conversational prayer lets a beginner learn how to pray in a group by praying a sentence at a time, not necessarily a paragraph at a time.
There are three basic types of small groups that pray together. One is the sort of group that I experienced at UVa, where the purpose of the group is prayer. There are two others. One is the fellowship group which meets to study the Bible and to pray. I have known of some large churches, such as Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., where everyone is encouraged to a part of a fellowship group of a dozen or so people. One person cannot be friends with all the people in a 1200 member congregation – but one person can know a dozen, and enjoy mutual fellowship and support as they study the Bible and pray for one another. The group leaders are trained and have regular meetings together, which helps the groups all work toward the goals of the larger congregation.
Another group in which prayer is appropriate, and indeed needed, is the leadership group. The governing board of an Episcopal Church is responsible for the business dealings of the congregation, and in many parishes, the Vestry did simply that, with perhaps a perfunctory prayer at the beginning of the meeting. When the renewal movement came to the Episcopal Church in the 70’s, many congregations awakened to the reality that business decisions were really spiritual decisions and prayer became a major part of their time together. The Vestry of St Paul’s Church in Darien, CT, began to have two meetings a month. One was for business and the other was dedicated to prayer, seeking to discern the Lord’s will for the parish. The leadership, most of whom were newly converted Christians, recognized that if they were going to have the Lord direct the parish according to Scriptural principles, they would need to rethink everything about the life as a Christian body. They needed to be clear about God’s purpose for the Church and God’s purpose for their congregation. They also needed to be clear about how they carried out the business of the congregation and how they related to one another. So they spent one evening a month in Bible study and prayer, and one evening a month doing business – with a lot of prayer throughout the meeting. It was a lot of hard work, but St Paul’s has remained a godly, Bible-based parish and its example was used by many other parishes as they sought to become Christ-centered, Bible-based congregations.
The leadership of a Christian congregation should conduct its business according to sound business practices. There should be no sloppiness in bookkeeping or undertaking projects without thinking them through and calling that “moving in faith.” But when Christians think things through, they must also pray them through, carefully reviewing Scripture and listening to the Lord so that they do the right thing, at the right time, and in the right way. Prayer is hard work and it can be very tempting to bypass it, but leaders need to pray for what they are doing as leaders.

III. Prayer Chains and Prayer Partners
There are two other settings for prayer that are much quieter than congregational prayer or prayer groups. These are prayer chains and prayer partners. Prayer chains are wonderfully simple ways to have people pray for pressing concerns, especially since the advent of e-mail. The request comes in to a head of the chain, who sends it out to the members of the chain by phone or e-mail, and the members of the chain pray for the request. Some are able to pray for a few minutes, other for longer. Some may add the request to their daily time of prayer, others may not. Each prays as he or she is able, when and where they are able. Such praying lacks the fellowship of a group gathering to pray, but people are able to pray about a situation quickly and easily, and to keep on praying over time.
Another quiet setting for prayer is a prayer partnership, where two people agree to pray for one another. They meet anywhere from once a week to once a month. The meetings last an hour or two, as the two exchange their concerns and give updates to one another. Sometimes life is fairly calm and the prayer partners are able to give praise and thanks to the Lord more than they need to make requests of him. At other times, one of the two may be undergoing severe trials of some sort. The other prayer partner can listen, offer support and understanding, and often is able to see things that the one in trial does not. Together, they can walk with each other through a hard time.
Faith Alive, which was one of the renewal movement groups in the Episcopal Church, emphasized the importance of prayer and encouraged parishioners to form prayer partnerships. The father of a friend of mine had teamed up with another man in his parish back in the Seventies, and their prayer partnership lasted until 2005, when one man died. God used their partnership to help them and encourage them in the challenges and trials of life, and, because each man, in a sense, held a mirror up to the other, each was God’s agent in helping the other to grow in being like Christ.
In a sense, a married couple is a natural prayer partnership, and such a couple would not have too much trouble making the time to pray together at least once a week. But there is something good and helpful about two men or two women setting aside a few hours on a regular basis to get together and pray. Married couples can see things those outside the relationship cannot see – and a caring, prayerful outsider can offer things that a spouse cannot.
Prayer chains and prayer partnerships are quiet settings for prayer. A prayer chain will usually only have a name and number to call in a congregation’s bulletin, and a prayer partnership is not likely to have any official notice at all. But God can and does use such prayer settings to bring glory to himself and strength and help to others.

IV. Individual Prayer
The setting for prayer that comes to mind most readily when the topic of prayer is raised is that of an individual praying. A great deal of what I have said over the past eight weeks applies to individual prayer, but I do want to add a few things to that today. Individual prayer is another area where personality makes a big difference. Some people, according to their personalities and to their setting in life, can pray for hours at a time. Others are only able to pray for a few minutes a day. Some people are very systematic, and others less so – although I do think that a regular discipline of prayer requires some kind of system.
I am going to share with you my system. I have left a lot of details out, but you can see the broad structure of how I pray, and some details for some areas. Some of the things on it come directly from suggestions given by Scripture Union, a Bible study guide that I used for some thirty years. Some people I know simply use the Book of Common Prayer and pray through the service of Morning or Evening Prayer, adding in details of thanksgiving, confession, or request as needed. Other people may use a collection of devotional readings and prayers. Mary has her own system for her daily prayers, and it is different than mine – although both of us have decided that, rather than pray for everything everyday, we divide our concerns up over the course of a week, so that we can pray with more definition on a particular item, rather than trying to fit everything in on each day.
A man was told by his doctor that he needed to exercise or risk having a heart attack. The man joined a gym and asked the athletic consultant, “What is the best exercise to avoid a heart attack? Should I use the treadmill, the rower, or the stairclimber? Should I lift weights or not?” The consultant replied, “Well, I can tell you which exercise will give your heart the best conditioning – but the truth of the matter is, the best exercise is the exercise you will actually do.”
The best format or system for individual prayer is the one you will actually use. Those of you who have an established custom of regular, personal prayer know that as time goes by, you change your format, through greater insights, to refresh your method, or to focus on some area more fully than you do now. I am not fully satisfied with my format, and I am sure that it will change in the future. But the important thing about individual prayer is not the perfection of the format or method, but that one actually goes before the living God to enjoy him, adore him, confess to him, thank him, and ask him for what is needed for ourselves and those around us.

V. Ecumenical Services and Healing Services
The settings I have looked at so far are the most common settings for prayer: congregational prayer in worship, small group prayer, the prayer chain, prayer partners, and individual prayer. I want to look for a few moments at two other settings for prayer that are less common, ecumenical prayer and healing prayer services.
On Sunday, September 16, 2001, hundreds of people gathered at the Village Congregational Church to pray for our nation. Only a few days before, we had suffered a dastardly attack by Islamic extremists which had killed 3,000 people and could easily have killed many more. We were fearful and angry – and as Christians, we knew that being fearful and angry might be understandable, but it was not really where we were supposed to be. We needed to pray for ourselves, for the families and friends who had lost loved ones, and for our leaders. So we gathered, sang, heard a message or two, and prayed. It was an extraordinary service of prayer.
Most ecumenical prayer services are not as intense as that one was. Some, indeed, can be dreary affairs, if the planners try to operate from the smallest common denominator of the various Christian bodies who have gathered together. But an ecumenical gathering can also be an occasion of wonderful prayer, if each Christian body brings the best of its tradition and invites the others to use it thoughtfully – and, most importantly, if the Lord Jesus is the center and focus of the gathering. The Northbridge Association of Churches has sponsored some good ecumenical worship services over the years and I have been thankful to be a part of them.
In some areas, there are regular gatherings for interdenominational prayer. A few years ago, I heard of a city in the Central Valley of California (I think it was Fresno) where the churches reached out to each other, saying, “God has placed us all in this city for a reason. Let us see what we can do to work together to share his Gospel and to reveal his love.” So the clergy and many laity began to meet together and to pray to know how best to work together to share the news of God’s amazing grace to those who did not attend church. As the churches worked together, some amazing things happened. One particular thing I remember about their joint work in prayer and action was that all the churches agreed to have a common pre-marital process that would challenge couples to not only plan the details of the ceremony, but to deal with the hard places in their relationship to one another. The churches also agreed to form a support system for the recently married. As a result of these commitments to one another, the divorce rate in the city went down markedly. This was but one result of a commitment to pray with one another in Jesus’ name and for his honor.
I ask you to note that I am speaking of ecumenical prayer, not of inter-faith prayer. Sometimes there is an effort to get leaders, at least, of various faiths to join together in a prayer service. I cannot imagine participating in such a service, because the unspoken message of such a gathering is that we do not, and indeed, cannot, know who God truly is. I am not free to put Jesus up simply as one member of a pantheon. He is Lord of All, not Lord of Some. To share a prayer space with Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims is to place Jesus as just one of a crowd of equally valid religious expressions.
I want to close out with one further setting for prayer, and that is a healing prayer service. Such a service is not common around here, but I have participated in a number of such services over the years, and while I was in New Jersey, the church where I was an assistant pastor held a weekly service of healing prayers. But there was a critical difference between the services I was a part of and of those that many people might think of when they hear “healing service.” Some of the ministries that focus on healing through prayer make the assumption that the same gift of healing that the apostles used is still available today, and there are those who can, if your faith is strong enough, heal you through prayer.
If you read Acts, you will read of many instances of healing. In Acts 5:15, we read of people needing healing standing where Peter’s shadow would fall on them, and of their healing as Peter walked by. Later on, in Acts 19:11-12, we learn that handkerchiefs and aprons that had been used by Paul were taken to those who were ill or demon-afflicted, and when those cloths touched those needing healing, the illness or the evil spirit left. In those very early days, before the Gospels were written and before the writings of the apostles were collected and recognized, the Lord used miracles of healing to demonstrate the truthfulness of those who shared the Gospel. The healing miracles showed that God was alive and active, and that those who trusted Jesus would be freed not only from the burden of illness, but also from the burden of guilt that they carried.
The healing prayer services of which I was a part did not see healing by command or by simple presence as a gift that God had continued to give after the apostolic age had ended. God has his Word written, and we do not need to confirm it by signs as they did in those days.
God still has the power to heal, however, and as his children we are privileged to come before him and ask him to work within us or those for whom we care. We recognize that here each Sunday in the pastoral prayer, and as we note those who are ill or injured in the notes in the bulletin, so that we can pray for them over the week. The services of prayer for healing that I have been a part of are opportunities to focus on this area of need. In the services I have been a part of, one person or a team of two or three people speaks with a person seeking healing for himself or for someone close. The request is listened to by the team, who then pray for the needs expressed – and often for a few more needs than are expressed, for as those who are praying do so, they come to understand various dimensions of the situation, and lift up those things as well. It is not done flashily, and it is not done expecting that someone will say “Be healed!” and a person throw his crutches away.
The blessings of a healing service are twofold. The first is that it is a blessing for a person to share the need and to be surrounded by people who care about the need. As I mentioned when I was speaking about prayer in small groups, to pray in the Name of Jesus is to invoke his presence and to experience it. The person who asks for healing prayer is encouraged by the compassion of those who are praying. More than that, God has received the prayer and will give an answer in his way and in his time. In my own experience, God has responded by giving the person health, through the skills of the medical profession and through his own Holy Spirit, or by giving the person courage and patience to endure cheerfully. And, as in our prayers for evangelism at the University of Virginia showed, what God does and when he does it may be far beyond what we imagined or expected.
I want to close with a quote from Tim Challies, who maintains the blog “Informing the Reformed.” He recently wrote reviews of five books on prayer, and here is what he said about the book A Praying Life:
"One of the areas in which this book spoke to me was in the way it moved me away from structure, at least in certain cases. We’ve all been taught ACTS or another model for prayer. These are often very helpful guidelines for praying carefully and systematically. But where Miller helped was in freeing me from those under certain circumstances so I could pray “randomly,” praying as my mind moved from one thing to the next. There is a certain freedom I’ve found in that, realizing that structure is not the same as depth. In my review I point to another strength. 'Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is Miller’s unrelenting emphasis that prayer cannot be an add-on to the Christian life; it cannot be supplemental but must always be instrumental. This book will equip you to understand prayer properly and, on that firm foundation, to commit yourself to it, with confidence that God is willing and able to hear and answer your prayers.'"