The organist played softly as the ushers collected the morning offering. Young and inexperienced, I usually used these moments to review my sermon notes one last time.
That Sunday, however, I looked at the faces of the congregation and soon forgot my sermon. As if scales fell from my eyes, I saw beyond appearances to real life.
In the third pew on the right slumped the pregnant high school girl. On one side sat her mother; on the other her boyfriend and his mother. It was his mother’s first time in our church. They all looked as if their whole world had tumbled in. It had. On Tuesday I had agonized with the girl as she poured out her soul to me.
Just behind her sat a widow. Her son-in-law had recently abandoned her daughter, leaving three teenage granddaughters filled with bitterness. “What can I do?” she had asked me. I didn’t have a lot of advice. We grieved together.
Nearby sat her sister-in-law, also widowed. Her pride in life, a son in the ministry, had just left his wife and church for a fling with another woman. A mother’s dream lay crushed. She bore her sorrow alone.
Beside her sat a granddaughter recovering from years of life in the fast lane. Bruised and confused, she wrestled with life and faith. I worried for her.
Halfway hack huddled a young couple trying to put their marriage back together. An extramarital affair within the congregation nearly destroyed their family and threatened the church. It was so hard for them to live with the past and their memories. After all, just across the aisle sat the other party in the affair. We rejoiced in real repentance and reconciliation, but I ached with them. The pain cut so deep. Small towns and churches are not very forgiving.
In the back on the left side, another young couple sat seething with rage. Their marriage was on the rocks. They had asked me to help, and I had tried so hard, yet it seemed to make little difference. How to undo so much damage? I wondered what they experienced from worship.
In front of them a mother agonized over her runaway daughter. The only word she had received was that she was living in a commune.
Nearby a depressed and suicidal woman wrestled with life itself. Her husband had accompanied her. The struggle had rearranged his entire life. They looked spent. They reminded me of a man not present that day. A recent widower, he scarcely had the will to go on. For days at a time he didn’t leave his house. One day we knelt by his couch and asked God for help. He cried. I prayed.
A few pews away a young man’s three sons surrounded him. His wife had left them all to “find herself,” so he struggled alone to raise the boys. I realized I had never seen him smile.
The woman in front of him was also sad. Her alcoholic husband abused her. Being from another culture, she wrestled with a strange language, different customs, and raw fear.
I felt so helpless. Falteringly, as I offered myself in ministry, I was learning powerful lessons about the complicated web of life. I had so much to learn.
As the organist concluded the offertory, I saw other faces. Many of the people were happy; they didn’t appear burdened or sad. I saw new Christians, newly-weds, new parents, and new beginnings. Although some worshiped with tears, others sang and prayed with smiles of joy. Nearly all waited expectantly for something from me, for my prayer and sermon.
The music stopped-time for the pastoral prayer. I stood to begin.
But the faces and lives of the people tumbled in my mind. Overcome, I could scarcely speak. Such enormous need! What a variety of experience! How could I pray pastorally? Could I possibly speak to God and touch these people’s lives at the same time?
With trembling voice I began. The words and emotions poured out as I loved God’s people before his throne.
“O Father,” I said, “you know us so very well. We kneel before you with vast and varied needs. Some are crushed, bruised, or broken. May your wounded heart respond with compassion to your beloved children. Heal our broken hearts. Strengthen our frail spirits. Enlighten our impoverished minds. Help us to grasp your grace in Jesus Christ.
“Others stand before you filled with your joy. Loosen our tongues to sing your praise. Help us, like the paralytic at the temple, to walk, leap, and praise your name . . .”
These people had captured my heart. Strangers but a short time ago, now they were my friends, my people. They had opened their lives and asked me in. They had taught me about life, shared the joys of birth and the pain of parenting. I had watched sickness and death steal the lives of people I loved. I had felt the ache of their loneliness and listened to soaring hopes and shattered dreams, significant success and tragic failure. And I saw growth, excitement, spiritual formation. I, too, had opened my life and asked them in. And they had helped me, joining me in triumph and growth.
That Sunday, seminary abstractions took on flesh and blood. The doctrine of the church lived before my eyes. Prayer moved from pastoral routine to throbbing reality. I never again would see people the same way. My prayers were changed forever.
I suppose I learned to pray that day. I discovered that intercessory prayer has nothing to do with a list of names, but everything to do with bearing soul and grit to God’s throne.
I learned, too, that if my heart is moved by the passion of God’s people, the divine heart of God is moved beyond measure. I see but a speck of life; God knows it all. He’s been here. He’s one of us. Really!
God answered my prayers that day. People were touched by the presence and power of God. We began to become a church where needs were met and lives put back together.
Ten years have passed since that Sunday morning, and I’ve since prayed many a pastoral prayer. But I pray with a new understanding: Eternity is irrevocably touched by the prayers of a pastor’s heart.
-David C. Fisher
Oxboro Evangelical Free Church
Bloomington, Minnesota
Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
