Teleprompting prayers

There are two kinds of preachers in the world: those who write out their pastoral prayers beforehand, and those who pray extemporaneously.

Ok, so that's a bit of an oversimplification. But I've found that people (both pastors and laity) can have strong opinions one way or the other.

Those who think all prayers should be offered without preparation often argue that the Holy Spirit works best 'in the moment,' and that preachers should open their hearts to pray on behalf of the congregation in the way the Spirit directs them in a particular worship setting.

On the other hand, those who believe in written prayers tend to emphasize that the Holy Spirit works just as effectively through the kind of careful discernment that goes on in the pastor's study, as the prayer is being written with the confession, petition, praise and thanksgiving of the congregation in mind. (I also recently heard a preacher cite Matthew 6:7-15 as an argument against extemporaneous prayer, although I think that is a bad reading of that text.)

In my own ministry, I've done both. Recently, in fact. During our Holy Week services, I used a lot of written prayers, simply because there are beautiful ones out there related to the great moments of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. Because they use images and allusions from Scripture in such beautifully poetic fashion, I find that offering liturgical prayers in specific seasons of the Christian year can express the church's praise and thanksgiving better than I could ever hope to do.

But my standard practice for pastoral prayers week in and week out is to pray extemporaneously. I do that in part because my congregation pauses in the middle of worship to offer individual witnesses of praise and to lift up prayer concerns. I write notes about those testimonies of praise and prayer during the service and then incorporate them into my prayer. I have found that this allows me to pray a prayer that is more fully of the whole congregation. And it also ensures that the pastoral prayer speaks to the particular joys, thanksgivings, concerns, and petitions of the church in that given week.

I've been thinking about the issue of how we pray in worship since I read a column on Barack Obama's use of a teleprompter by the Washington Post's Michael Gerson. In his column, Gerson pushes back on those who deride Obama's dependence on the teleprompter, arguing that the "careful sorting of ideas and priorities" that written remarks reflect, whether at news conferences or in full-length speeches, is an essential part of the craft of governing.

Gerson is a former presidential speechwriter, of course. So he is hardly unbiased. But what about introducing the teleprompter to church? Sermons, even pastoral prayers, could be scrolled down a couple of screens set at covenient angles in front of the pulpit! And then we could have the best of both worlds - the appearence of extemporaneous eloquence with the grounding of a carefully crafted text.

How is it that nobody's doing this yet??

New Year's Note

As the final hours of 2008 tick away, I have thought a lot about what the last year has seen in my life and my family's life. I have also been looking ahead, with both hope and anxiety, to what the new year holds.

But most of all, I have reflected on the goodness of God's creation and the blessings of living in a time when God is working for the redemption of all things. We live in a troubled world, and we experience troubles in our own lives, but we also know that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

My prayer for you, the readers of this blog, is that you would grow increasingly in love with God and your neighbor in 2009, and that you would experience the fullness of salvation through His grace.

Happy New Year.

Thanks be to God

Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices;
who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
and keep us still in grace, and guide us when perplexed;
and free us from all ills, in this world and the next.

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;
the Son, and him who reigns with them in highest heaven;
the one eternal God, whom earth and heaven adore;
for thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

- by Martin Rinkart (1636); trans. Catherine Winkworth (1858);
The United Methodist Hymnal, 102

A subtle, faithful witness

I was running at the gym this evening, watching the final few miles of the men's marathon at the Olympics in Beijing. The winning runner was Samuel Wanjiru from Kenya, who finished in a time of 2:06:32. That means he was averaging less than 5 minutes per mile over the entire race! Not only did he win Kenya's first-ever gold in the marathon, but he also set an Olympic record time.

Needless to say, I've never run one mile in less than 5 minutes, let alone over 26 of them. Talk about motivation! There I was, running my 3 miles at a little less than 7 mph on a treadmill. And this guy was winning gold halfway around the world running through the smoggy streets of Beijing at a faster clip than I've ever even dreamed about.

The thing that really struck me about Wanjiru's win was what he did immediately afterward. He dropped to his knees right after he crossed the finish line and put his hands on the ground with his head down. At first I figured he was just collapsing from exhaustion (after all, who could blame him??). But after pausing for a long moment, he started to get up and made the sign of the cross on his chest as he did so. Then it hit me: He was praying. Here's a guy who just set an Olympic record time in the marathon, inside a stadium of screaming fans, with TV cameras all over him. And he take the time to stop and thank God for sustaining him through that grueling race.

Now you might say that Wanjiru doesn't deserve to be praised for doing what he ought to do anyway. But I think stopping to pray at that point took considerable discipline (considering what he had just endured and accomplished) and courage (considering the location, i.e., a country ruled by an atheistic totalitarian government). You'll often see American athletes make a comment about their "personal Lord and Savior" Jesus Christ when they get interviewed after a big win, but the way they do it often strikes me as perfunctory and almost thoughtless. Wanjiru's act, on the other hand, was a prolonged, subtly faithful gesture.

I immediately thought about what Tertullian talks about in his treatise De Corona, where he refers to spiritual practices in which we engage even though the Bible doesn't specifically command them. He uses the sign of the cross as an example, and says something to the effect that we cross ourselves in all our going out and our coming in. In a way, Wanjiru was doing what his fellow African, Tertullian, had described 1800 years earlier. He was engaging in a tradition-laden, faithful practice that helps to remind him where his life is truly located. And thanks to television, he made a witness to the rest of the world as well.