In my (charismatic free) wing of the Church our services don’t feature much written or traditional prayers or liturgies. We prefer to change the exact words we speak to reflect the type of community we are waking in or what we think the Holy Spirit wants us to do at any particular moment.
There are big advantages to this approach.
It allows us to be flexible, fresh and to respond to the needs and characteristics of the people in Church. It also allows us to be alert to what the Holy Spirit might want to do at the time we are ministering. Finally it allows us to model for the people we are pastoring that they can pray in any language and in a way that is real for their personality and background.
With that said, emphasising contemporaneous prayer also has drawbacks.
Andrew Wilson has written about the need, in the midst of spontaneity, to maintain the essential elements of Christian worship (like praying, reading Scripture, taking communion etc). Otherwise our worship becomes progressively less and less full of the riches of worship the spirit has given to his Church in Scripture and Tradition. We want to be “Eucharismatic” in our worship.
My concern here is a slightly different one. When the charismatic or evangelical worship leader, venue pastor or preacher leads the Church in spontaneous or unplanned prayer, he (or she) is writing liturgy and language that needs to sum up, express and model the concerns of the Church, the needs of the world and the right way to address God. All at the same time as teaching the people how to do that for themselves.
This is a much harder task to do well than one might imagine. It involves formulating Scripturally sound, theologically rich, pastorally sensitive and reverent words, expressing them contemporaneously and clearly, and then fitting them into the rhythm and setting of an informal worship service.
If we are not careful the spontaneous prayer we bring becomes all the things we want to avoid as people of the Spirit and Scripture.
I think there are three particular areas we need to be careful about (drawn from my own failings leading prayer and worship over many years):
- Not including much, if any prayer, in public services.
Here we end up having extended singing followed by a sermon (and maybe communion). There might be a short prayer between songs or at the end. But, if we’re honest, it’s not a particular feature of the service, certainly compared to, for example, sung worship or a talk. - Having my own personal prayer time in front of the congregation rather than leading them in prayer.
Here I end up praying in a slight mumble with my eyes closed and talking quickly and informally, as if I am having an internal monologue. The problem is I am not leading the congregation at this point; instead, they are just watching me pray. - Praying prayers that, instead of expressing the immediate, urgent, prophetic intercession of the Spirit praying through me, become predictable, banal, cliched, and dominated by non-words that litter speech such as “just…”, “yeah…” and so on.
The ‘just’, and ‘yeah’ prayers are actually the least problematic form of this. It gets much worse when public prayer becomes dominated by the concerns or vocabulary of the leader’s own politics or concerns, narrate their own thoughts about life, politics, social issues or Jesus (often with the phrase ‘God, you know that… followed by explaining it to him anyway). At times they can become offensively bad. The most egregious one I’ve heard used the phrase ‘blaze, Spirit, blaze’ from Shine Jesus Shine (an excellent song people are wrongly snobbish about) to segue into intercession about a major fire in which people had lost their lives. It was, to say the least, not optimal.
What can we do to remedy these difficulties if they begin to arise in our context or ministry?
One approach would be to begin using formal, written liturgies. That approach might be one we should consider (I’ll leave that to Andrew to argue for). I think, however, that there is another approach that would allow us to keep the good that we find in spontaneous prayer while also remedying its difficulties.
Resolving these issues requires us to think a bit more about what is happening when we pray publicly, particularly if we do so spontaneously.
Filling Our Stores: The Christian Tradition of Prayer
When we speak publicly, whether in prayer, preaching or some other way, we are essentially bringing words, ideas and idioms out of our minds and memories. No speech is, in that sense, truly spontaneous. We are a bit like jazz musicians Who seem to be producing spontaneous, improvised music but are doing so using scales, techniques and phrases they have internalised over time practising. Or footballers, who produce moments and movements of inspiration in the immediate context of a match but draw on hours of drills and practised skilIs.
If we want to lead prayer well, therefore, we need to practise.
That means filling our minds and memories with great prayer, Scripture and discipline so that we have something to draw from when we pray in public. In some ways, this is more important for those of us in traditions that don’t use a formal liturgy in our public services than it is for those who do. It is precisely because we want to be able to lead the congregation in spontaneous prayer in response to the Spirit’s leading in the moment of worship that we particularly need to fill our minds and mouths with the language, cadence and concerns of great prayers. We might repeat these exact prayers as we lead people to pray. More likely, though, is that we will begin to pray with a greater fluency and depth when we create our own prayers. We will also find the content of our prayers becomes more timeless and aligned with the eternal and historic concerns of the Church and the saints she contains and less dominated by the phrases and personal preoccupations we unconsciously find ourselves repeating.
Similarly, disciplining ourselves to include in our daily devotional life a set time in the Psalms or the Divine Office imprints on our minds and hearts the central importance of prayer as a discipline for both public and private worship. We will find, then, that the impulse to overlook intentional times of public prayer on the basis that there is no time in the service or that it interrupts the “flow” or mood of sung worship is easier to overcome.
Moreover, the discipline of reading (out loud) the prayers of the historic Church and of Israel is an antidote to the habit of mumbling to oneself when leading in prayer. These are prayers written and published with the intent of being read publicly. They have that feel about them. As we begin to make them a part of the unconscious reservoir from which we draw our public prayers, we will begin to find that we construct and project our prayers with a similar tone.
What Does This Mean in Practice?
So what does this mean for those Who regularly lead prayer in charismatic or evangelical services?
There are, I think, three specific things that will transform the way we pray, and particularly how we pray in public.
- When praying, remember we are leading the congregation and not just praying on our own in front of them.
That means:- Begin your prayer with clarity. Don’t just let the prayer ’emerge’ from under your breath.
- Go at a pace where the congregation can follow what you are saying and agree with it. God can understand you at your fastest speed but we can’t.
- Think about what you want to say and then say it. Don’t feel the need to keep on speaking when you don’t have anything to say at that moment.
- Plan to pray as part of your service leading.
If you are not able to say when you are going to lead the congregation in prayer during a service, there is a problem. Choose a time in the service and allocate who is leading prayer and what you want for it. A good test is to think how you would treat the preparation of sung worship in terms of planning etc and then make sure prayer in the service is at least as good and focussed as that. - Twice a day, as part of your daily devotional times, include praying the Psalms and/ or a traditional Daily Office.
There are lots of modern versions of a liturgy of the hours or something similar. However, to be honest, I think you are better off with one of the older ones from a historic denomination. For me, the best you can do is get the free “Daily Office” app. It is a Catholic app, devoted to systematically praying through the Psalms and uses many of the ancient prayers of the Church. If you don’t want to use a prayer book then read three Psalms (give or take, depending on the Psalm length)twice a day as part of morning and evening prayer.
Throughout this article I have focused on the pragmatic reasons for immersing yourself in the Church’s historic prayers. There is, however, another even more powerful reason to do so. These prayers have been collected, edited, arranged and prayed over millennia. Praying them each day as part of a disciplined prayer life won’t just make you better at praying; it will bring you joy. Ultimately every worship leader themselves needs to draw close to Christ. Disciplined prayer with the church will help you to do that.
Further Reading and Resources
If you want to explore these ideas further or get into praying with the Church, here are some resources to get you started.
Books about this type of prayer for evangelicals:
- Scott McKnight, Praying with the Church
- Andrew Wilson, Spirit and Sacrament: an Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship
Prayer Books or Apps
- The Divine Office App (Apple or Google)
- My Orthodox Prayer Book (OCA)
Deep Church 