Thoughts on Public Prayer

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Fall ‘08 Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

This week’s discussion question evoked great response on how public prayer and reading of scripture in a worship service give language to our worship.  The prayers found in books of worship used in many churches give rich, Biblical vocabulary and focus to the worship.  Using these prayers helps eliminate the opportunity for individuals to preach their little mini-sermon under the guise of prayer.  These prayers are focused usually on a single theme or idea, and their reading keeps all on the same thought in the worship. But, from personal experience, they can lose their meaning when used week after week after week in the same manner.

It is my thought that it must be a very difficult task for a church’s leadership to keep the use of these prayers fresh and meaningful to the people.  An example I will offer is our way of creating a public prayer meeting around the Lord’s Prayer.

Four times a year, usually on a Friday night, we have a worship/prayer gathering. Our worship singing offers one or two songs for each of the themes of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2-4) followed by individuals to come to the mic to pray on that specific theme.  Our elders facilitate the prayer time with the pastor closing the meeting.  These are the themes we pray within:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name”  

“Your kingdom come”  (Here we pray for our community and community leaders and for the church of our community and for governmental leaders)

“Give us each day our daily bread” (Provision for the advancement of His kingdom and small group prayer for individual’s needs)

“Forgive us our sins…” (A time of personal and corporate repentance)

“And lead us not into temptation” (Strengthening of us as a church body, asking the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us)

Celebratory worship singing, declaring again who God is, and celebrating what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do.

The pastor then brings us all together with a prayer for unity.

Thought About Responsive Reading As Worship

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

Declaration of Worship

For the final Essentials Blue’08 course project, I developed a responsive Declaration of Worship to be read between the worship leader and the congregation. It declares that we worship God, the Creator, the Sovereign Lord, the Triune God, and Savior based upon our study of the ways God reveals Himself in Scripture as One who creates, rules, fellowships, and saves.

If I were to poll our congregation, asking, “What is worship?,” the majority of the people would respond to the time we spend in a service singing songs. This despite monthly newsletter items which I have written over the last six years and two to three sermons I give each year trying to teach that a lifestyle as described in Romans 12:1-2 is our spiritual worship. It is my intent to introduce this declaration as we transition from singing our worship to the sermon on a Sunday morning in hopes to intentionally bring a new expression of worship to the congregation.

Many responsive readings in liturgical settings have the congregation responding with a simple phrase while the leader articulates the substance of the reading. In my own experience, the congregation tends to blindly respond this way without ever having attended to or perceived the substance of that which has been read. In this declaration, the worship leader introduces the thought with the congregation articulating the substance. The responses are based upon Scripture, even quoting Scripture in many places.

This declaration, “We Worship The Lord!” is linked here in PDF format and as a PowerPoint slideshow. Please feel free to use it if applicable to your situation.

We Worship the Lord! PDF declaration_worship1

We Worship The Lord! Powerpoint slideshow we_worship1