The Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning asks the church to engage with the General Assembly’s call to prayer

WHEN the Council of Assembly introduced in its report to this year’s General Assembly a section of deliverance that proposed to call the Church of Scotland to prayer, I confess I sighed a little.

Isn’t that what the Church has been doing for over 2,000 years? Have we not been bombarding the Almighty with our endless petitions, confessions and intercessions for centuries, and occasionally remembering good manners and offering our adoration, thanksgiving and praise?

I sometimes imagine God throned in splendour with hands firmly placed over ears and muttering: “Won’t they simply shut up for a moment and get on with what they already know they ought to be doing?”

It is not that I’m against prayer, but did the Church really need an instruction to do what it should be doing as its daily work? If the Church is not doing this, would an instruction from the General Assembly make much of a difference?

Then I thought again.

A lot depends on what you believe prayer is and does. Prayer is not telling the Almighty what the Almighty already knows. Nor is prayer a human attempt to armwrestle the Almighty into submission and do something that was not already thought about or in the Divine economy for the unfolding Kingdom of God.

It has helped me over the years to think of prayer as a means of open communication between God and God’s people, helping us to tune in to what God may be saying to God’s people today. God is still speaking; are we listening? If we are listening, are we understanding?

God will have ideas and priorities and will have been finding a variety of ways of bringing these to our attention as our understanding of God’s world-view has evolved and developed as we have evolved and developed. I rather suspect that when we come up with our latest idea, or our eyepopping understanding of how things might be, God, perhaps with a wry smile, mutters: “At last, they’ve got it…” Or perhaps more accurately, “At last, at least they’ve got this bit of it….”

As the Church of Scotland and its General Assembly, as the Presbyteries, Kirk Sessions and congregations of our denomination grapple with what our priorities might be and must be, we will not be in for a time of plain-sailing.

Even if we start with Jesus’ command to “Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself” how we interpret this, and then apply it, will prove the challenge. That is a good thing. The Creator God wants us to think and to use our imagination, and to apply our efforts to what is going to work in the part of God’s Kingdom we are tending.

Which is why we pray. Listening first, speaking next, listening again then deciding how (or even if) we should act. We should have little time for prayer initiatives or any kind of initiative that are only about talking. It is undoubtedly ‘good to talk’, as an advert once advised us, but talking is only a part of a greater picture. Think, listen, talk, act, or even choose not to act.

If prayer is about anything it is essentially about discernment. There is no one-sizefits- all exercise when we come to assessing what our strategy and priorities should be. So much will depend on context, resources, vision, and ultimately commitment. Even if national strategies are chosen, how these will work out will vary from parish to parish, and across our different Presbyteries.

Will God be moved to do a ‘fresh work amongst God’s people’? I wonder if, when we pray, what we will find is God, as God always is, already way ahead of us, and simply slowing down so that we might at last catch up, and then get on with the next part of God’s plan for God’s Church.

Do engage fully with the praying, dreaming and enacting of this time of discernment – God has not finished with us yet. The page is turning, and the adventure of God’s future awaits our discovery.