Leadership Journal

Why the pastoral prayer releases God's power in ways even preaching does not. by M. Craig Barnes

Most pastors work hard. We try to be competent at many things. We go to hospitals to care for those whose bodies, and perhaps spirits, are broken.

We counsel church members who wonder what strange thing God is doing in their lives. We spend hours in meetings, trying our best to guide the church, supervise staff, balance budgets, and raise money.

Then there is the sermon. Our church has a pulpit that's two stories tall. Guess what's considered important in our tradition? It's an overwhelming responsibility to climb those steps Sunday after Sunday and utter, "Hear the Word of the Lord." I work on the sermon every morning, and I still go to bed every Saturday night fretting that I have not worked hard enough.

Facing my twentieth anniversary in the pastorate, I have about decided that none of this is the most important thing I do. Not even the preaching. These days, I'm thinking that the most important thing I do for my congregation is to pray. Specifically, leading prayer in worship.

When I pray for the church, I place it back in God's hands. Now, what else was I going to do this week that was more powerful than that? But I am ashamed to admit that most weeks I spend a whole lot more time doing everything else. I've started to wonder if I am taking my prayers for the congregation seriously enough. You sure couldn't tell it by my preparation.

The choir has spent hours and hours rehearsing the anthems. The janitors and altar guild have groomed the sanctuary. It takes a small committee in our church just to get the bulletin right. Even the florist has spent hours on the flowers. But when it comes to the prayers in worship, I was just hammering them out Saturday night, in the time that was left over after my sermon preparation.

Whether one reads written prayers or prays "from the heart" is really beside the point. Some ministers preach from manuscripts and some don't take a note into the pulpit. But I don't know anyone who steps up to preach unprepared, hoping God will provide something to say at the moment. No, we knock ourselves out parsing verbs and studying commentaries so we can honor God as faithful expositors of his Word. But the sermon is only part of the sacred conversation. These days, I'm trying to be just as faithful in voicing the words of the people to God.

By leading prayer in worship, my job is simply to keep the conversation going between the people and their only Savior. That means the people must recognize themselves in these prayers. When the prayer is done, they need to be thinking,

Yes, that is what I wanted to tell God, but I didn't know how to say it.

Only as we tell the truth about ourselves are we made ready to hear the even deeper truth of God's Word. Conversely, after hearing God's truth, we are compelled to respond and tell him even more. So by the end of the hour, we leave believing that we have not just listened and watched but actually ...