A friend and I have been having an internet discussion about preachers. We both love our preachers, and years ago, I was her pastor, so we have a mutual understanding about a lot of things.

The conversation went like this.

She: “One of the things I’ve enjoyed in our church lately is an enhanced understanding of every phrase of the Lord’s prayer. So much so that I was offended recently at a funeral when the minister asked us to stand and ‘recite’ the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t think it’s something to be recited; it’s something to be prayed diligently!”

She added: “Now don’t go getting the wrong idea. I think that preacher is a delightful person, and I like him very much.”

I said, “Asking someone to ‘recite’ the Lord’s Prayer reminds me of something similar that drives me up the wall. You’ll be in a moving worship service, and the leader will say, ‘Now, let us have a word of prayer,’ or ‘I’m going to ask Bill to lead us in a word of prayer.’ I don’t know why that bothers me so much. I feel like calling out, ‘Hey friend, pray! Don’t just have a ‘word’ of prayer. Go to the Heavenly Father and pray!’ Somehow, it minimizes the importance of prayer, as though we’re all tipping our hats to the Almighty, then going on with the important stuff.”

We branched out to discussing how we preachers sometimes say foolish things without a clue as to how it’s being received. I told her about a recent internet conversation with a friend in North Carolina.

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If anyone on planet Earth needs to pray faithfully and fervently, it’s the pastor. For one thing, this job requires more of you than there is and more time than you have. The person accepting the Lord’s call into the ministry is agreeing to live in a world of unfinished tasks. You are literally being sentenced to live beyond yourself.

It is by its very nature impossible to live this life and do this work in your own strength. You will develop a strong prayer life or you will not survive. It’s as simple as that.

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My son Marty, always on the alert to keep his dad out of trouble, has remarked on the irony of my beginning this series on prayer with the assertion that “there are no experts on prayer.” If there are no experts, he asks, am I not presenting myself as one with all these articles laden with instructions on how to pray?

I thanked him for the observation, and have been considering it ever since. (What he calls irony, someone else could call hypocrisy.)

The main response that suggests itself to me is that a third-grader might have some points to share with others in his class, or in the younger rooms, but he always knows he is still the child with so much to learn.

In the middle of his wonderful book on this subject (“The Meaning of Prayer” is a genuine classic), Harry Emerson Fosdick takes up a similar consideration. (I suggest you not buy everything Fosdick peddled over his lengthy ministry; he was admittedly and proudly a theological liberal with all that implies, but he sure could teach most of us a great deal about real prayer. Being a conservative, I’m still wrestling with how to reconcile those two!)

“A critic with discriminating insight has objected to Voltaire’s writings on the ground that nothing could possibly be quite so clear as Voltaire makes it. A book on prayer readily runs into danger of the same criticism. For, like every other vital experience, prayer in practice meets obstacles that a theoretical discussion too easily glosses over and forgets.”

Fosdick goes on to add, “Even when prayer is defined as communion with God, and our thought of it is thereby freed from many embarrassments, as a kite escapes the trees and bushes when one flies it high, there remain practical difficulties which perplex many who sincerely try to pray.”

So, I say to myself and to our longsuffering readers, that once we fill this “features” box with perhaps fifty articles on the subject of prayer, there will still be so much more to be said on this subject. No one has yet written and this one certainly shall not be the definitive last word on prayer.

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In the last couple of years, I have become a Pew-Spud. If people who occupy their time sprawled in front of the television are couch-potatoes, it figures that those who spend their Sundays soaking up sermons in church auditoriums are pew-spuds. And after over 40 years of pastoring, I have become one. It’s not all bad. In fact, I’m enjoying it, even though I still relish the opportunity to preach.

I keep reminding our pastors that when I drop in on their services, I come as a worshiper and not as a critic or advisor or their mentor. I come as a fellow believer. I consider myself a good audience for a preacher. I want him to do well, I pray for him and work at listening.

But, I’m about to violate that unspoken contract with our pastors. I need to tell you something that weighs heavily on my heart. Pastor, you need to give some thought to what you say from the pulpit. No, I’m not referring to the sermon. You seem to be doing well on that. I’m talking about what you say to the Lord, your prayers in the worship service.

In a typical service, there is the invocation and the benediction. In between will often come a pastoral prayer, an offertory prayer, and occasionally a prayer at the start and/or conclusion of the sermon. Some of those are spoken by staffers or deacons, but most belong to you, the pastor.

What follows is my impression of what the fellow in the pew would like to register with you the pastor. This is not to imply that he sits there thinking these things. In most cases, I fear he has long since abandoned hope that you might invigorate your prayers with fresh thoughts and uplifting praise and strong intercessions. But, if I were a wagering man, I’d betcha that the lay men and women who read this will connect with it in a heartbeat. As always, we invite them to leave their comments at the conclusion, in agreement or disagreement, contributing their own suggestions and anecdotes.

What Joe PewSpud wishes his pastor knew about his public prayers….

1) Remember that you are praying with me and for me.

This is not your private prayer time, pastor. You are voicing a prayer on behalf of the congregation. Therefore, say “We” and “our,” and not “I” and “my.”

At some point in recent history, some misguided influencer-of-preachers convinced them that no one can voice a prayer for someone else and that when you pray in public, you should use the first person singular pronoun. “I make my prayer in Jesus’ name, amen.”

My response is that this would be news to Jesus. He taught us to pray, “Our Father…give us…forgive us…lead us….”

So, make your prayers on behalf of the entire congregation. What are they feeling, where are they hurting, what do they need? What has God impressed you to request on behalf of your congregation? Then pray that.

2) We’re counting on you to lift us to the Lord’s throne in prayer.

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“Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you.” (James 4:8)

Dwight Munn, a member of the ministerial staff of the great First Baptist Church of West Monroe, Louisiana, pastored a church across the river from New Orleans some years back. He told me this story.

The television network was running a made-for-TV movie on the life of Noah, one covering two hours each night for several evenings. People who know their Bibles flocked to watch it, then grew disillusioned when the story took some strange turns and gave up on it. But on this particular Sunday night, Dwight and Lissa hurried home from church with their two small daughters to catch the story. On the way home, they picked up fast food and ate it in the living room while the movie ran.

Dwight said, “Lissa and I were on the couch, and 6-year-old Marissa was sitting on the floor halfway between us and the television. At one point, as Noah and God are conversing, we became aware that our little girl was sniffing. I said, ‘Honey, are you all right?'”

“Marissa turned her face around and I could see the big tears in her eyes. She said, ‘How come God never talks to me like that?'”

Dwight told the story, then said, “McKeever, how long has it been since you have shed tears because you’ve not been hearing from God?”

That must have been 8 or 9 years ago, but the question still haunts me. Why don’t I long for the nearness of God the way that child did?

Someone has said, “If God seems far away, guess who moved?”

Likewise, coming back to Him is up to us.

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I don’t know why this offended me. I was standing in the section of the local Lifeway Christian Store that features books on prayer–I must have a hundred and am always looking for the next great one–and picked up one by a Southern Baptist pastor from a nearby state. I scanned the table of contents to see what his book covered, then read the comments on the back.

At the bottom of the back cover was the author’s thumb-sized photo and a small bio. “Pastor So-and-So is an expert on prayer,” it announced. That stopped me in my tracks. Until that moment, I don’t think I had ever actually heard anyone referred to as an expert on prayer. On expository preaching, perhaps, and evangelism, leadership, sermon-building, stewardship, and a dozen other aspects of the ministry. But prayer?

How does one get to be an expert on prayer? At what point does he or she move from apprenticeship in this greatest of all subjects to becoming a master?

I wondered if the pastor wrote that line or if the publisher did it for him. One thing we can be sure of, it was done with the pastor’s knowledge and approval. And that makes me wonder if his choosing to leave the line in was an act of hubris and not of humility.

As I say, I’m still trying to figure out why that offended me. Maybe I’m just a tad upset that someone is a better pray-er than I, although that is certainly not news and never has been. I’m under no illusion about the inadequacies of my prayer life, even though I consider myself a person of prayer.

“We do not know how to pray as we should.”

Paul said that in Romans 8:26. It appears to me that if anyone could claim status as a prayer expert, it would be this apostle. Not only does he refuse the designation, he basically says there aren’t any, that no one qualifies for that august category.

There are no experts on prayer.

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