Public Access Prayers - Christianity Today

One Sunday after worship, a first-time guest said to me, “I appreciated the pastoral prayer.” I forget my response. I was stunned to learn that someone cared about that part of the service. Someone besides God. Since then I’ve learned how important the pastoral prayer is.

A few years ago, Leadership printed a cartoon with a pastor greeting people after the church service. He spies the man next in line to shake his hand. The cartoonist takes us into the pastor’s thoughts: “Oh, no! There’s Bob. I told him last week I’d be praying for him and I forgot! Dear Lord, bless Bob. Amen.”

Then the pastor says, “Hi, Bob! How are you? Been prayin’ for you!”

As I look across the faces in the congregation, I wonder how many Bobs are out there. How many people long to be prayed for, but don’t know the comfort of hearing another believer speak their need to the Lord?

I want our people to know they are prayed for. And I want them to experience the peace of resting under the prayers of a pastor who takes seriously the charge to carry them before God’s throne. One of the best ways is through the pastoral prayer on Sunday morning.

I mean it . …

I discovered early in my ministry that my “spontaneous” pastoral prayer began sounding repetitious. Even the offertory prayer grew redundant: “Bless these gifts and use them to your glory.”

If the congregation was to know the depths of my heart in praying for them, then I needed to replace the routine of ad lib prayers with a fresher approach. So I sought out resources.

The prayers in Scripture offer a rich source of proven ways to approach God. Psalm 66:20 grabbed my attention during devotions, and I traced the phrase “Blessed be God” through the other psalms.

The next Sunday I began the first six statements of the pastoral prayer with, “Blessed be God,” followed by a reason for blessing him.

After worship a woman came up and grabbed my hand. She said that she had prayed on the way to church for that morning’s service to be different. “When you began the prayer with, ‘Blessed be God,’ my heart soared. I knew God heard my prayer.”

On the first Easter we scheduled two worship services, I did not have lots of time for a rambling extemporaneous prayer. Every word had to count. How could I make the prayer communicate the joy, power, and wonder of the Resurrection?

A pastor friend had loaned me The Book of Common Worship so I’d know the liturgy for the community Good Friday service. I lifted some ideas for my Easter prayer. Our invocation that morning began, “Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels! Exult, all creation around God’s throne! Jesus Christ our King is risen!” In the pastoral prayer I adapted words from the ancient Prayer of Adoration: “Glory to you, O God; you have defeated death, raising Jesus from the grave, and giving us eternal life. Glory to you, Risen Lord; for us and for our salvation you overcame death and opened the gate to everlasting life.”

Those words had never been used in our church, and the response was electric. People listened. People responded. Most were glad for the vitality of carefully chosen words.

So I plan it

From those experiences I began to plan my pastoral prayer.

Usually I complete my sermon preparation on Saturday evening. Then I work on the prayer. I refer to our Thursday night prayer list to remind me of those persons with specific needs. I also list the situations different families find themselves in: our farmers need rain; families are grieving the death of a loved one; marriages are strained; one family is about to adopt a baby, while another family has suffered miscarriage.

I do not mention anyone by name unless I have their permission. Some situations are too sensitive to identify, so I pray for “persons facing” specific issues (those in need of work, those who feel the absence of a loved one, those who struggle with depression).

Almost every pastoral prayer also includes intercession for our national, state, or local leaders, for at least one of our missionary families, and for one of the other churches in town. Mentioning another church and pastor by name heightens awareness of the breadth of God’s work in the world.

Once the intercessions have taken shape, I shape the bookends of the prayer. Beginning with the address, I search Psalms and Epistles for unique names for God. The language of address informs the words of praise and adoration that follow.

If I begin with “God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” I direct an ascription of praise to each person.

If the address is to “Our Lord Jesus,” I may refer to his authority as Head of the Church, then invoke him as Good Shepherd when praying for those who grieve.

Here is a favorite expression of adoration: “O God, let us rise to the edges of time and open our lives to eternity. Let us run to the edges of space and gaze into your immensity. Let us climb past the barriers of sound and enter your silence; and then, in stillness and silence, let us adore You, who are Light, Life, Love, without beginning, and without end” (from The Oxford Book of Prayer).

Before moving into the intercessory prayers, I reserve a moment to address spiritual issues. If the church family is facing a test of faith, I may adapt the words of St. Anselm: “We desire to understand a little of your truth which our hearts already believe and love. We do not seek to understand so that we can believe, but we believe so that we may understand.”

Finally I work on the closing, often drawing on the season. In Advent I might say, “We pray in the name of him whose coming is certain, whose day draws near. As the saints long have prayed, so we now pray: Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” At Easter, “in the name of our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we pray.”

The Book of Common Worship has several prayers for each Sunday of the year, based on the lectionary passages. Especially for Advent, Lent, and Easter, these prayers offer both variety and a unifying theme for the service.

If there is any part of the prayer that I still repeat often, it’s the Amen. I like to end my public prayers with the phrase from Psalm 106:48, “and all of God’s people said,” to which congregations never fail to respond, “Amen.” It allows the congregation to participate and verbally affirm what’s been prayed.

The final form of the pastoral prayer may last four to seven minutes, and I do not write out every word. The address and adoration are mainly phrases, the petitions simply listed, and the closing is as full as I need. On most Sunday mornings I learn of other requests and jot them on my prayer guide.

Every Sunday, I want the whole flock to know their pastor is taking seriously his charge to lift them before the Great Shepherd.

Dave Wiersbe pastors the Clear Lake Evangelical Free Church in Clear Lake, Iowa clefree@juno.com