{"id":22036,"date":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/1996\/10\/01\/cloud-of-witnesses-5\/"},"modified":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1996-10-01T00:00:00","slug":"cloud-of-witnesses-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/cloud-of-witnesses-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud of Witnesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nY<\/strong>esterday Debbie and I registered our son Evan for his first semester of\ncollege. Per his instructions. Evan is in Germany as a foreign exchange student,\nfinishing his senior year of high school. He requested a pre-med biology\nmajor.<\/p>\n\n

\nWhen we mentioned “pre-med” to the director of admissions, she said, “That’s\neasy.” Out came a single sheet of paper with four years worth of courses\nlaid out; few slots remained open for electives. His first semester looks\nlike this: biology, chemistry, calculus, and writing. With labs, his weekly\nschedule looks like a country road sign shot up by bored gopher hunters.<\/p>\n\n

\nOverwhelmed, my fogged-up brain entertained a profound thought: “Boy, you\nsure have to know a lot to be a doctor.”<\/p>\n\n

\nI can remove a splinter without a course in dermatology and prescribe aspirin\nfor a headache without biochemistry, but I don’t want a doctor to listen\nto my clogged lungs and prescribe antibiotics without a knowledge of\nbacteriology. I want someone with a detailed knowledge of the human body\nand its immune systems. Good doctoring is the fine art of integrating theory\nand practice.<\/p>\n\n

\nPeople deserve a similar depth of knowledge and integration from pastors\nwith regard to prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n

No middle-management prayers<\/h2>

Pastoral prayer is a scalpel, not a massage. Our prayers change\nthe whole being of those we pray for. This calls for excellence in our\nintegration of theology and prayer. We teach-quite correctly-that everyone\ncan pray, that even children can pray, and that prayer need not be theo-poetic\nor theo-logical to be heard and answered.<\/p>\n\n

\nBut that is no excuse for pastoral prayer sliding to the lowest common\ndenominator. The priesthood of all believers means that any lay person can\npray like a pastor, not that pastors ought to pray like lay people.<\/p>\n\n

\nThere are lots of good books on theology and lots of good books on how to\npray. Unfortunately, too often theology is written by people who know no\nmore about prayers than we do, and prayer books are written by people who\nknow no more about theology than we do.<\/p>\n\n

\nSo when a great theologian writes a great book on prayer, integrating theology\nand experience, it is something to cherish. Prayer,<\/em><\/strong> by Hans\nUrs von Balthasar, a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian, is just such a book.<\/p>\n

\nVon Balthasar writes seamlessly; you can’t tell when he’s writing theology\nand when he’s writing about how to pray. “It is not enough for the believer,”\nhe writes, “to let the Holy Spirit pray in the ground of his soul: he<\/em>\nthe whole human being, must pray. God expects from him the act of vocal prayer\nas well as that of contemplative prayer; the transition from possibility\nto here-and-now reality is something he must perform.”<\/p>\n\n

\nFor those of us schooled in the prejudice that speciality equals excellence,\nthat functioning in our little slot is a form of humility, reading someone\nbold enough in Christ to crash the categories is a bit of a shock. I warn\nyou: once you acquire a taste for this kind of writing, it is hard to go\nback to “middle-management” books on prayer and theology.<\/p>\n\n\n

Word pierce<\/h2>

Von Balthasar discusses primarily contemplative prayer, since it\nis the meat-in-the-nut of all prayer. Dialogic participation in the inner\nnature of God is the foundation of every form of prayer, personal and corporate.\nIt is what Jesus means when he bids us pray, “Our Father.” It is what Paul\nmeans when he informs us that “because you are children, God has sent the\nSpirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father’ ” (Gal. 4:6, nrsv).<\/p>\n\n

\n“For we have been permitted to glimpse his inner nature,” von Balthasar writes,\n“to enter into it, into the inner core of eternal truth; bathed in this light\nwhich radiates upon us from God, we ourselves become light and transparent\nbefore him.”<\/p>\n\n

\nVon Balthasar tells us over and over that prayer begins with, is filled with,\nand ends with the Word of God: “Man was created to be a hearer of the Word,\nand it is in responding to the Word that he attains his true dignity. His\ninnermost constitution has been designed for dialogue.”<\/p>\n\n

\nChristian prayer is always Trinitarian: “[T]he Christian has an absolute\nduty to cultivate Trinitarian contemplation.” Throughout the book von Balthasar\noffers sharp critiques of Eastern and non-Trinitarian forms of contemplation,\nthe best I’ve read.<\/p>\n\n

\nVon Balthasar understands our dry times compassionately. In comparing himself\nand us to the Samaritan woman, he confesses, “I am this dried-up soul, running\nafter the earthly water every day because it has lost its grasp of the heavenly\nwater it is really seeking. Like her I give the same obtuse, groping response\nto the offer of the eternal wellspring; in the end, like her, I have to be\npierced by the Word as it wrings from me the confession of sin.”<\/p>\n\n\n

Worship curriculum<\/h2>

Ironically, von Balthasar has affected most my pastoral prayers.\nThe pastoral prayer in Sunday morning worship has always been difficult for\nme. My nature suits me to praying alone. But the kind of personal contemplation\nvon Balthasar teaches-Word-centered, Trinitarian dialogue from the center\nof the whole person, body and soul-is well suited to public prayer. After\nreading Prayer<\/em> I began praying through Scripture in my pastoral prayers\nin a fashion similar to that in my personal devotions. People tell me they\nlook forward to the pastoral prayer as much as anything in the service and\nthat they are learning how to pray by praying with me. Thus, the Sunday morning\npastoral prayer is developing a priesthood of all believers in our church.<\/p>\n\n

\nAs pastors, prayer is our life, and it is our life’s work. It is our tool\nand our cure. We need to know the biology<\/em> of prayer: our living, breathing\ndialogue with God. We need to know the chemistry<\/em> of prayer: our\ninteraction with the Word of God. We need to know the calculus<\/em> of\nprayer: God’s very nature, the Holy Trinity.<\/p>\n\n

\nPrayer<\/em> is a curriculum for a lifetime. It teaches us prayer that meets\nGod, that heals, and that is, above all, worship.<\/p>\n\n

Dave Hansen is pastor of Belgrade Community Church in Belgrade, Montana.\nIn this column, he explores how church leaders from earlier generations can\nmentor us today.<\/p>\n

1996 by Christianity Today\/LEADERSHIP, journal.<\/p>\n

Last Updated: October 8, 1996<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Debbie and I registered our son Evan for his first semester of college. Per his instructions. Evan is in Germany as a foreign exchange student, finishing his senior year of high school. He requested a pre-med biology major. When we mentioned “pre-med” to the director of admissions, she said, “That’s easy.” Out came a Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[1271],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[154],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[648,649,156],"tax_ctp_tags":[4604,4606,4679],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-22036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-dave-hansen","tax_publications-1996-leadership-journal","tax_publications-fall_1996-leadership-journal","tax_publications-leadership-journal","tax_ctp_tags-pastor","tax_ctp_tags-pastors-role","tax_ctp_tags-prayer"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"\nCloud of Witnesses - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday Debbie and I registered our son Evan for his first semester of college. 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