The Long Prayer

No call to worship

No opening prayer

No creed

No Doxology

No Gloria

No choir

Minimal scripture reading

No "long" (pastoral) prayer

Next possible "No"  No Sermon?

No congregation

I wonder if our "long prayer" is too short.  Perhaps we need a different view of what is being done.  What if instead of a pastor leading a "prayers of God's people", the pastor shares the highlights of what we will be praying for and then invites the congregation to gather with those near them and pray.  I remember attending a church of another denomination many years ago and being struck by the fact that when they go to the "congregational prayer" the congregation prayed.  Once in my present context, being nudged quite persistently by the Holy Spirit as far as I could tell, instead of me leading a congregational prayer, I invited the congregation to stand up and gather here and there in the sanctuary and share a few prayer requests with each other and pray for each other.  If anyone did not wish to participate, they were invited to remain seated and pray silently for the needs of the congregation and the world we live in. 

Now this Sunday happened to follow a funeral of a young adult child of members of our congregation the day before.  The reactions after Sunday were both strongly positive and strongly negative.  A few were very upset that we "did not pray for the grieving parents!" Many more found the practice to be moving and meaningful ... including the grieving parents who had a group come around them and intercede on behalf of their suffering!  Also a single mother, her first time in our church and in any church for a while, told the people near her what she was struggling with and they prayed for her.  She continues to come here with her son now.  Those reactions confirmed for me that it was the Spirit leading me to do this that morning.  The negative reactions also indicate to me that the "long prayer" is safer than praying for each other.  A few members told me that it was a stretch for them to do that praying and they are uncomfortable with it because they end up crying as they try to pray for each other. 

Having the pastor only speak the prayers of the congregation in worship, tacitly communicates, I think, that it is the pastor's job to pray and the people's job to listen.  Not much in keeping with the priestly office of all believers.  And by the way, most of my congregational prayers tend to be lists of people either ill, injured or dying or grieving.  In a mid to large congregation, that takes up the bulk of the time.  It is meaningful and supportive to many, but I wonder if what encourages them is that the "church" is praying for them out loud.  Is that any different than the congregation taking time to actually pray for specific people in person, out loud, in worship?  We have also, at times where there seem to be numerous crises going on have had people come forward and we gather around them to pray for them including people who can come forward on behalf of someone.

I think the church praying in the service of worship is an essential part of what we are called to do.  However, let's not let the medium (pastor does all the praying) communicate the opposite message of what the Body is called to do.  Thanks Joyce!

Most Sundays we have a Community Prayer, our name for the Long Prayer. It varies in length and content. We do pray for specific people but we often add such phrases as "and all others who are struggling with chronic conditions". We try to keep tabs on what we pray for so that we are praying for our cities, province and federal governments, the world etc at some point in a 2 month period. We pray according to the needs that are expressed by the people during a time of sharing. Sometimes our prayers are headline driven such as the tsunami and earthquake in Japan. We also pray in general terms for people in our congregation who are struggling physically, emotionally, mentally. I often find myself "prayed for" without being named and that is a comfort.

We also provide opportunity for personal prayer after the service with prayer team members or during the week as arranged.

If we miss the community prayer 2 weeks in a row, I feel like something important is missing and will often bring it up at our planning meetings. I think it's important for the church to pray together. I also think that praying together models how to pray for those who are new to the faith. It's a blessing I hope we never go without.

This morning, as I was thinking about the "long" prayer question some more, I was reminded of a very long prayer, one that lasted over 100 years.  The Moravians in 1727 started praying 24/7 in one hour shifts known as the Hourly Intercession, and this continued for over 100 years...  through it they pioneered lay missionaries, sending the first lay missionaries out in 1732 or so...  in 1780's William Carey, the father of modern missions, read an article about what the Moravians were doing and so he went to his baptist brethren, and asked "why can't we do what the Moravians have done"... it wasn't well received at first, and it was several more years before his mission work began with the support of his denomination...

may the fire on the altar never go out...  Lev. 6:13

One suggestion:  (maybe two suggestions):   Have the preacher do the congregational prayer once in four times, and have an elder lead it the other three out of four times or so.   When we have a visiting preacher, we almost always have an elder lead the congregational prayers instead of the preacher, and the elders take turns doing this.    On some special sundays we may have three or four people lead in various parts of the congregational prayer.   I do think we should stop calling it the "long" prayer, a term which I have not heard for a long time.   It is not about making the prayer long.   It is about praying for the blessings and thanks and needs of the congregation.   Some of those needs also include paying attention to the disasters and needs of others, and to other global issues.  

"Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, unuttered or expressed."   But prayer is many things, including communicating with God, and demonstrating what is important to God.  God already knows every thought, every desire, every need.   Still He wants us to come to him, in prayer.  Prayer teaches us who we are , and public prayer teaches each other who God is.  

Prayer of Christ for three hours in the garden of Gethsemene.   The Psalms of David which are mostly prayers of praise and supplication.   Many of our hymns are actually prayers. 

A service that is planned to exactly 60 minutes and only permits a two-minute prayer, might not be a good thing.   It might be serving an idol of some sort, the idol of time, or the idol of competing interests.    Making a public prayer personal, when possible, may be as good as a sermon, or better, in describing our relationship to God.  

I am new to the CRC, having been in reverse chronilogical order a United Methodist, atheist, Jew, so this is a new question for me. I always thought church was a primary prayer place. It is where we commune with God on a regular basis, so how could we hold a worship service if we don't talk to God.  Sometimes I think we confuse God with Santa Claus. Its not just intercessory prayer that is important to our life as Christians, but also praise prayer. We need to thank God not only for all he has done in our life, but just for the fact He is God and has chosen us as His people.  We need to stop thinking about ourselves and what prayer does for us and the time it takes from us and refocus on God.  St. Augustine called it right love - if you have God at the center of your love life, then you are in a right love, if anything else is at the center, your life is off kilter.

Just this past Sunday, I heard the women behind me mutter about the fact that we have four prayers in a row -first an opening prayer, then a prayer over the children, then the congregational prayer and then a prayer over the offering. She was actually complaining about it.

I don't understand this attitude or one that limits time for prayer in a worship service.  Prayer is a necessary part of any time that we spend with our Lord and especially in worship service.  I agree with the person above who mentioned the Lord's Prayer. I think we need to add that to our service if only on Communion Sunday. I think we lose alot of our connection to God when we eleminate the prayer that Jesus taught us.

Grace, Debbie Grossberg