When we pray

John L Bell considers ‘the most intimate act of shared devotion’ – public prayer.

WHEN in workshops I have asked lay people about how they feel leading prayer in worship, a common response has revealed an underlying sense of unworthiness. It is partly because they fear to be treading on ground presumed to be the prerogative of the minister, and partly to do with whether other people in the congregation will regard their activity as no more than a show of forced piety.

For lay people, at the heart of public prayer should not be the hope of mimicking ‘pulpit language’ or fearing the judgement of others, but the awareness that this is an offering to God for the public good. It is not (as I once heard in a kirk-session led service) about confessing every sin committed since the reformation and praying for every possible human disorder. It is about feeling for what these people at this time need as a community to say to God.

The leader is not there to expound his or her preferred theology, or to tell God in detail what God already knows well. Leadership is about offering the common yearnings, hopes, regrets and aspirations of the community gathered for worship. That requires a degree of careful, generous and altruistic thought, to find one’s own or other people’s words, and to regard the prayer not as a finished speech to be heard by others, but as a catalyst which will enable resonances in those present. It is not ‘I pray, God’ but ‘We pray’. And it might be that the minimum of words and a good measure of silence will encourage more devotion than an erudite package.

I don't remember many sermons, but I do remember many prayers ranging from the ostentatious: ‘And we pray thee Lord to deliver us from the fond servitudes from which, as yet, we have failed to be ransomed,’ to the simple yet profound: ‘We pray for those who we love, and for those we don't but should.’

I remember a prayer at a wedding which neither named the couple nor asked blessings specific to them; and I remember a prayer at a funeral which began: ‘We wish we were not here, and we don't know what to pray.’

The notion that all prayer should be ex tempore, or ‘off the cuff’, to use a more vernacular term, is a fallacy. It is a gift which some have and others don’t. For years I attended a church in which the minister always prayed ex tempore. What I discerned after a while was that the Holy Spirit seemed to be prompting the same expressions every Sunday. It was as predictable as a Latin mass. Favoured phrases such as ‘those in beds of sickness’ or ‘travelling mercies’ seemed almost obligatory. It raises the consideration that those who lead public prayer should perhaps consider being open not to the criticism but to the encouragement of trusted others to prevent dullness and encourage thoughtfulness in this most intimate act of shared devotion. ¤