The Language of Prayer

The text of a prayer is only one element important in the act of public prayer. For the way in which a prayer is spoken, the attitudes that accompany it, and the nonverbal gestures which complement it often communicate as much of the meaning of the prayer as the text itself. This article looks at the whole act of public prayer, offering worship planners pastoral, liturgical, and aesthetic guidelines regarding prayer.

It is a sign of health and a cause for rejoicing that the shelves of bookstores carry so many resources for prayer in worship and books about prayer. In my reading, however, one crucial part of prayer in worship draws scant attention: namely, the ways that prayers are spoken and experienced in worship. This act of praying in worship is the focus of this article.

We have all had the experience of sitting in a congregation and having prayers spoiled by the way the leader speaks them: prayers of thanksgiving voiced in a desultory, dejected fashion; prayers of intercession undercut with a mean or arrogant edge, as though the congregation was being scolded for insufficient concern for the causes in the prayers. Several years ago, I was asked to speak briefly to a church study group. The assignment was to speak about love in the most thoroughly unloving fashion I could manage. I remember, incidentally, that I found it a disturbingly easy assignment and wished there was more demand for such speeches. That experience is called to mind when certain prayers are spoken in worship: the mood of the speaking violates the content of the words.

It is a bit surprising, then, that the voicing of prayer receives relatively little attention in the literature. Perhaps that inattention is because many of the people who write frequently about prayer have a nearly magical view of the power of words. There is, I suspect, an unvoiced assumption that the words for prayer if written beautifully enough, will necessarily be prayer simply because they are so forcefully written. Such trust in the power of the right words can lead also to a kind of smugness about the worship being led and the prayers being offered. It occasionally seems as though we leaders of worship feel that as long as we have the right prayers to say, no criticism can touch us.

Some years ago, I heard a comparison of the worship of black churches with that of “high church” congregations. The worshipers in a black church, it was observed, knew that if Christ were to return and visit their worship, all their frail human attempts at praise would be burned away by the presence of God’s holiness. In high church Protestantism, however, if the Lord were to return to worship, the leaders of worship would expect the Lord (a) to be impressed by the splendor of the style and the seriousness of the content, and (b) to take a seat quietly in the back and not disturb the flow of worship. This comparison might serve to point to a certain belligerent rightness, a false pride in some of our prayers which can make worship very difficult.

The concern that prayers in worship not be ruined by the way they are voiced is somewhat akin to a concern expressed by Professor Ralph Underwood (“The Presence of God in Pastoral Care Ministry,” Austin Presbyterian Seminary Bulletin 101:4 [October 1985]). Under the section of his article “Guidelines for Pastoral Prayers,” Dr. Underwood calls for “prayer as authentic response … [as] opposed to the conventional prayer at the end of a visit, the pastor’s ritual escape.… ” He then offers three guidelines that would encourage this authenticity in prayers in pastoral settings. These guidelines are in the form of three questions:

1.     “Is the prayer we have with people a response to God?”
2.     “Is the prayer a response to the person or persons in whose presence we find ourselves?”
3.     “Is the prayer a response to the God of Scripture?”

It is obvious that prayer in worship is different from prayer in pastoral care. Prayer in worship should not be as personal or unguarded as the prayer in moments of pastoral ministry. Prayer in worship has far more people praying with the leader and has some educational effect on these people; those who lead prayer in worship must strive to take account of them. In spite of these obvious differences in the kinds of prayers, there is still a great deal to be learned by using Dr. Underwood’s guidelines to assess our prayers in worship, particularly those prayers spoken by the leader for the people.

Response to the People

It will be helpful to begin with Dr. Underwood’s second question: “Is the prayer a response to the persons in whose presence we find ourselves?” Prayer in worship, like prayers in pastoral care, will be more nearly alive and authentic if the people invited to pray with the speaker recognize some of their experience reflected in the prayers. When the prayers voice thanks for what the congregation feels thankful and when they pray for what the congregation feels needful, those prayers are more likely to enrich and energize the worship of the people.

This reflection of the experience of the people will require both pastoral content with the people and some focused attention on that experience. Dr. James A. Jones, in a classroom lecture printed as an introduction to a volume of his prayers, told of following the example of F. B. Meyer (Prayers for the People [Richmond: John Knox, 1967], 11). Mr. Meyer would go into the church and walk the aisles during the week. He knew where people sat, would sit in their pews and pray for them there. A discipline like that can make the prayers in worship an authentic response to the people.

The prayers in worship will be more nearly alive and authentic if the people find them reflecting not only their own experiences but also their own prayers. While we can never know fully the prayer life of a congregation, we can safely assume that people know their prayers are imperfect and inadequate. An awkward question needs then to be faced: can prayers in worship that are always carefully crafted and elegant be authentic prayers of the people? The question could be turned around: when our prayers in worship are always well turned and controlled, do we not teach the people that only perfect prayers are acceptable? Do the people not conclude that prayers less than elegant will (to use Dr. Underwood’s phrase) “require suppression”? Raising a question about the effectiveness of well-prepared prayers could be misused, of course, to justify the worst kind of sloppiness in worship prayers. Recognizing that danger does not, however, change the need for prayers that reflect, at least to a degree, the prayer life of the people in the congregation.

Dr. Underwood argues that prayers in pastoral care settings can be offered even out of our false consciousness or our confusion and still be an authentic response or, at least, can lead to that authenticity. The same argument can be made, given the proper guards against overuse, to apply to prayers in worship.

Mrs. Merel Burleson, a member of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Midland, Texas, an artist and art teacher, told me of her “blue bead theory” about certain types of Mexican art. Her theory developed out of two experiences. The first was a remark to her by her art teacher when she was a child. As she worked so very hard on a project to make things exactly right, he tried to ease the pressure on her by saying, “Only Christ was perfect.” The second experience was in watching necklaces being strung with colored beads. The colors formed a repeated pattern: black, yellow, white, again and again. The pattern was perfect except for a solitary blue bead, a built-in flaw, spoiling the perfection. The two experiences set her looking for other “blue beads” in the works of artists, deliberate flaws which could serve as reminders that there is no pretense of perfection. She reports finding large numbers of works where patterns are set up and, in what is obviously not just an oversight, the pattern is broken. “Only Christ is perfect.”

Perhaps if our prayers in worship had an occasional “blue bead” to remind us that prayers need not be perfect, our people would feel those prayers as an acknowledgment of and response to their condition. This presupposes that the pattern set up in worship is one of the carefully prepared prayers. While it makes no sense to build in awkward prayers deliberately, it could be helpful to leave open a possibility of a prayer that stumbles. Perhaps one prayer—such as that for illumination or of dedication or one part of the intercessory prayers—could be left open to the moment. Or perhaps the prayers could, from time to time, acknowledge the inadequacy of all our prayers. The hope is that our people learn that prayers can be offered before they are perfected.

Response to God

Dr. Underwood’s first and third guidelines ask us to examine whether our prayers are responses to God and, more specifically, to the God of Scripture. For purposes of brevity, I will treat these two guidelines as one: our prayers need to be authentic responses to the God of Scripture.

The often-heard criticism of “read prayers” by people in the pew needs to be taken seriously. What that criticism longs for is not necessarily a spontaneous bravado in praying or spiritual exhibitionism; it may be asking for some sense that the prayers are an authentic response to God. There are styles of speech and tones of voice which communicate nothing of life and involvement and which signal a mere going through the motions.

It is, I suppose, conceivable to deal with this problem by encouraging certain characteristics of voice and inflection that sound “sincere.” That would run several dangers: trying to create a contrived authenticity and promoting prayer as a performance, among others. The only alternative I can see to that manipulation of prayers is to ask a very personal question of those of us who lead prayers: are our prayers in worship authentic responses to God? In this regard, Dr. Underwood’s “Catch 22” can be paraphrased: there is no prayer in worship that has not begun before worship. If prayer in worship is our only prayer, it has little chance of being authentic. This demands that we pay some attention to the connection between our private life and our prayers in worship. It does not require that this private prayer be perfect or even exemplary; we all share the feeling, I suspect, that our prayer life is inadequate. It does, however, stand as a guideline and challenge: we need not expect that our prayers in worship will be (or will be felt to be) responses to God unless that response is well-practiced in private.

There are various ways to conceive of this continuity between private and public prayers. Some of the variety can be hinted at by looking at three forms of prayers in worship which are spoken by the leader for the people: spontaneous prayer, a prayer written by others, and self-prepared prayer.

Spontaneous Prayers

The dangers of spontaneous prayers are obvious: while they may feel spontaneous to the one praying, they most often sound like a reshuffling of stock prayer clichés; also they tend to overlook important elements in worship prayers because these are not thought of on “the spur of the moment.” Some of those dangers are minimized, however, if spontaneous prayer is part of the private prayer life of the worship leader. In that discipline, a sensitivity that avoids overworked phrases can be developed, and the habits of including the basic elements of prayer can be well-practiced. If spontaneous prayer in worship is not deeply rooted in the long use of this style of prayer, however, it will scarcely seem an authentic response to God.

With spontaneous prayer in worship, the leader also needs to arrange for some feedback from the people in the congregation on how these prayers are being heard. The one who voices an extemporaneous prayer may intend the words one way, but the people can hear them in ways altogether different. For example, persons who use phrases such as “I just want to thank you … ” or “I just pray that … ” may well intend the phrases as efforts at humility, avoiding pretense. These phrases can strike others, however, as calling undue attention to that humility or even as devaluing the reality of the prayer. Feedback as to how prayers are heard is helpful regardless of the form of the prayer; it is crucial when that prayer is spontaneous.

Prayers Written by Others

The dangers of using prayers written by others are easy to name: the temptation to read the words in a rote detachment, using these prayers as a substitute for one’s own life of prayer. However, if the leader’s own prayer life is rich in the use of these prayers by others, then these prayers will likely be alive in worship. A private prayer life that is guided by the prayers of others will discover particular prayers that are more readily made one’s own and certain prayers that will be useful in giving voice to the hurts and hopes of the people. When these prayers have been prayed before, they can certainly be felt as authentic responses to God in worship. This is not to excuse, however, grabbing a book of prayers five minutes before the service and selecting a few we think we didn’t use last week to get us through the prayers of the people.

Self-Prepared Prayers

The discipline of preparing one’s own prayers for worship may have fewer necessary dangers than the other two forms. The most obvious danger is to give the preparation so little time that it consists of little more than a few notes to remind one of who is in the hospital. A second danger, perhaps not frequently encountered but nonetheless real, comes from spending plenty of time on the prayers but making them so self-consciously pretty that attention is called to the words rather than to the focus of prayer. The most frequent offenders are strings of alliterative words that do nothing but show off and analogies so graphic as to be grotesque.

Both of those dangers are avoided when prayer in worship grows out of prayer in private. One way to do that is to use a prayer diary in which are kept phrases, sentences, even full prayers that came out of a particular time of private prayer. Such a diary of prayer can serve as a resource from which to select those elements of prayers that fit in corporate worship.

In preparing one’s own prayers for worship, the writing needs to be done for the spoken content. A part of the writing process involves speaking aloud the written prayers in order to judge, not only if they make sense, but also if they can be when spoken, authentic responses to God and to the people. Spoken tests can be the occasion for inspired revision—and rejection.

The reflections in this article take aim at an event that can not be controlled, manipulated, or guaranteed. The intent and hope is that in our corporate worship the words spoken in prayer may so resonate with the lives of those praying, including the leader, that they claim God’s reality in the present hour and give a faithful response.