In my childhood home, a small plaque hung on the kitchen wall. It said, Prayer Changes Things. This little motto sparked my first theological musings on the nature of prayer … not too bad when you're only five or six years old.
Could this really be true? I often wondered, as I downed my Cheerios. Frankly, my personal experience did not support the credibility of that statement.
After all, prayer hadn't forestalled my punishment when my father discovered the living room lamp I'd broken. Prayer hadn't closed down school the day it snowed. Neither had it hastened the coming of Christmas, produced a new bike, or brought the pastor's long and deadly Sunday sermon to a merciful end.
So what things did prayer change? Perhaps the adults knew. I didn't.
A Vulnerable Mystery
Prayer has remained a nagging, wondrous mystery in my life ever since. Because I am committed to living biblically, I believe—really believe—in prayer, even if I am not exactly sure how it works. I don't have to know all the "theo-mechanics" of prayer; I just do it. And, most of the time, I'm glad I've prayed. I believe that plaque on our kitchen wall was essentially correct.
Prayers can be said by one person or uttered by many. Prayers can be sung, spoken, written, or groaned. Prayers can be liturgical (like a symphony: carefully composed and often repeated) or they can be spontaneous (like jazz: improvised and incapable of exact repetition). Short or long; asking or thanking; shouting or silent.
Prayer is also an exercise in personal and pastoral vulnerability. I have never been confident regarding the eloquence of my prayers. Once, in my college days, a girl in my campus group said to me: "You don't pray like other Christian guys in the group. You need to ask the Holy Spirit to help you pray with greater maturity." What I think she was saying was, "If you sounded more spiritual, then, maybe, you'd be the kind of guy I could go out with."
You must never tell anyone I confided this. But I have never quite escaped that girl's judgment on my praying. I remember neither her name nor her face, but her assessment of my praying style haunts me to this day. During the many years of my pastoral life, I often heard her words as I led our congregation in prayer: "You don't pray like the other guys …"
Given the vital and vulnerable nature of prayer, it seems strange when I look back on my days of theological training and realize that I never took a course on it. I mean, if prayer really changes things, you'd think learning how to pray would be a more important course then studying how to decode Leviticus.
In my first search committee interview, I was bombarded with questions about my doctrinal convictions, my preaching style, and my vision (surely, everyone has to have a vision). But no one ever asked about my practice of private or public prayer.
Why didn't someone ask, "Gordon, do you believe that prayer changes things?"
Prayer on Purpose
Soon I became a pastor, and on the first Sunday of my tenure I was faced with an item in the worship order that said "pastoral prayer." When the time came, I got up and prayed, all the time remembering the girl who had wondered why I couldn't pray like the other guys.
Because experience counts for something, I managed to spiff up my pastoral prayers in the next few years. Words, phrases, and subject matter came with increasing ease. I prayed for the sick, the dying, and the high-schoolers off on their weekend retreat. But most of the time I had little or no sense that this pastoral prayer was anything more than a pit stop in the order of worship. It was a moment when the choir could vacate the choir loft and the ushers could prepare to take the offering. It was just there each Sunday morning, and it was mine to pray.
"Who, I asked myself, would ever come to our church to hear me pray?"
Then one day, during a visit to England, I found myself wandering the stacks of a theological library. Impulsively, I picked a 19th-century autobiography from a shelf. The book described the life of an obscure vicar. But what grabbed me was a newspaper clipping someone had pasted into the book. It was the vicar's obituary.
I read, "The vicar was a man of prayer. He loved to pray for his congregation. People came from all around to hear him pray for them. And as they listened, they were comforted and learned to pray by his example."
I was jolted. "People came from all around to hear him (not preach!) pray." Who, I asked myself, would ever come to our church to hear me pray? Was it possible that I had been squandering a great pastoral privilege?
That library experience was a defining moment in my life as a pastor. I determined that I would do my best to impact our congregation as much by my public praying as by my preaching. I didn't say impress people, but impact them.
Let me "bullet" some of my new intentions:
• I would "own" this thing called pastoral prayer, and it would be a time in the midst of worship to pray for the people and the world we lived in.
• I would pray using the language of the street, avoiding archaic religious language, and embracing a vocabulary that a child could understand.
• My prayers would include thanksgiving, exaltation of God's faithfulness and character, and attention to human needs and world issues.
• I would take time to prepare my prayers the previous day so that they had substance.
• Finally, I would pray expecting that some in the congregation would be learning how to pray by listening to me.
Within a short period of time, I began to hear, "Hey, thanks for your prayer this morning … meant a lot." "Your prayer this morning … I felt like you'd read my mail." "I'm going to live all week off that phrase you used."
A few months later, the technical people in charge of recording our worship service approached me. They said, "Something interesting has happened. We're getting requests for recordings of your prayers. So, we're bundling four weeks of prayers together and putting them on a CD."
People may not always realize or express it, but they want to be prayed for. In the darkest moment of our lives—almost three decades ago—my wife, Gail, and I would enter church for worship sensitive to the question: Is there any kind of tomorrow? When the prayers came, we searched for something that would underscore the theme of grace, some word of tenderness, of assurance that God was near. It was rarely heard, and more than once we admitted to each other by the end of the morning that it would have been better not to have come.
I see more clearly than ever the need for prayers with forethought and passion.
The prayers I miss
John Frederick Oberlin (think Oberlin College) spent his life in a desperately poor French valley in the early 19th century. He brought both the content and the way of the gospel to a people who were diseased and starving. Under his leadership the people of that valley survived, even thrived as the years went by.
It is said that Oberlin prayed for the people of the valley every morning from 9 to 10 a.m. And they knew he was praying because they began to feel the power, the love, and the hope that was in those prayers. And so it was that the people (the people, mind you!) established a rule. No one passing Oberlin's tiny home during that hour of prayer was to make a sound or utter a word that might distract the pastor from his praying. They believed that Oberlin's prayers changed things.
Over the years of my pastoral life, I came to love the pastoral prayer. Today, I miss praying for the people more than I miss preaching to them.
At the appropriate time, I would go to the head of the middle aisle in our sanctuary (not an auditorium) so that I was just a few feet from people in the first rows. I wanted to be close, priest-close. From that spot, I would talk to the people in a conversational tone about my affection for them, my delight in their blessings, and my awareness that some of them were under great stress. I would remind them of God's presence. And often I would say, "And now it's my privilege to lift you all to God."
I've read that there is a moment at the end of a work day when the monks gather at the gate of the monastery. Having worked hard, they are dirty, sweaty, and hungry. In that transition moment as they come home, they read these words together: "Is anyone among you in trouble? He should turn to prayer."
Those words were often on my mind when I prayed for the people. Who in this place is in trouble this morning? "Did you come angry with your spouse? … Worried about a child? … Fearful about your job? … Feeling guilty because of things done in secret? … Are you spiritually cold? Then again, are you here full of thanks, gratified with achievements, glad to be with your friends? What is your state of heart and mind at this very moment? Let us turn to prayer."
Sometimes I invited the congregation to kneel, and we all slipped to our knees—hundreds of us. This could be an emotional moment, as strong men and women, old and young, sophisticated and simple knelt together.
Sometimes we quietly sang together—without instruments: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
And then I would pray
My prayers usually began with an ascription to God himself, words to remind us of some aspect of God's character and faithfulness. Something he had done in the life of Israel, the early church, in the days of Jesus.
From there, my prayers usually moved to an expression of repentance. "We are your children, Lord, but we admit that, like sheep, we tend to wander." This was a moment for the entire congregation to acknowledge their brokenness and to be reminded that the one who confesses his sin will be forgiven. "Father, in this moment, we ask for a fresh new start. Help us not to repeat our sins." All of us needed new starts each Sunday, and this was the time to celebrate it.
From there, I would intercede for our church. "Lord, we are a people with needs. Some of us are weak, some of us are scared, some of us are alone, and some of us have lost our courage." Intercession is a moment for a pastor to pray so that the people know that he or she is in touch with life as they are living it. It is not a time to pray for church programs, for the offering, or for some new building project. It is a time to remember that the congregation spends its life in a much larger world where there is noise, intimidation, distraction, hardship, challenge, and sometimes pure evil. This needs to be prayed for. The people must hear someone describe their mutual experiences to God. This is supremely pastoral.
My pastoral prayers would also reflect world events. How else will people know how to pray for presidents and prime ministers, dictators, and oppressors? How will the people know how to pray for tragedies and disasters that hit from week to week? They must hear the prophet's cry against injustice, learn sympathy for the poor and the suffering, and remember the persecuted church. If one goes to church week after week and never hears a prayer for the issues in the larger world, how can one know that the church even cares for the rest of the world?
The Cross at Ground Zero
Many years after my visit to that English library, I found myself at Ground Zero in the days that followed 9/11. In the pit, that pile of rubble that just days before had been the site of the World Trade Center, there was almost total chaos. Police and firefighters swarmed over the twisted steel and concrete, listening for the shouts of trapped people, looking for body parts of the dead.
My task was to engage with rescue personal, talk them through their shock and over-whelming grief. Sometimes, though, my task was to simply get into the mess and dig with them.
Most memorable to me was a friendship that grew between me and a Trappist monk. Each day he appeared in his brown habit, with its white rope tied around his waist. As we walked among the men, many of them—obviously Roman Catholic—would rush up to him. Ignoring me (in my jeans) they would kneel before him and say, "Father, will you bless me?" Or, "Father, could you hear my confession?"
Why such questions? And why right there? Because we had been told that the buildings on either side of us might fall at any moment. We had been told that the air was polluted with toxic chemicals that might poison us. But none of us cared. Our strong conviction was, If something happens, it happens. If we die, we die. Our mission is right here, and it's more important than our safety.
"Intercession is a moment for a pastor to pray so that people know that he or she is in touch with life."
And so the rescue workers came when they saw my friend, the monk. They must have known that in a world like Ground Zero, the thing one needed most was a cleared heart and God's favor.
Many times I watched my friend put his hands upon each dirty, dusty head and pray. With his thumb he would make the sign of the cross upon their foreheads. I wished that I too had a robe so that people would identify me and ask for a similar blessing.
"What do you say when you bless them?" I asked my friend one day.
"I say, 'May the peace of God and the love of Jesus and the strength of the Holy Spirit be upon you. I press the sign of the cross upon your head so that you will always remember that God is with you."
When I heard those words of blessing, I knew instantly how desperately they were needed in such a hell-hole as we found ourselves. And, they are needed in every church, on every Lord's day.
Then I asked, "When was the last time anyone gave you a similar blessing?"
"I can't remember the last time."
"Can I give one to you right now?" I asked.
The monk did not hesitate. He knelt instantly and accepted my hands upon his head.
"May the peace of God and the love of Jesus and the strength of the Holy Spirit be upon you. I press the sign of the cross upon your head so that you will always remember that God is with you."
When he stood to his feet, we embraced, and we wept.
At Ground Zero, prayer changed things. It reminded us that on one of those occasions when one part of humankind has done its worst against another part, God is present and mighty to save. It was a pastoral moment. And it is a moment like this that every pastor is called to provide for the congregation as often as possible.
Why? Because that kind of prayer changes things.
Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership Journal, and chancellor of Denver Seminary.
Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
