The Subject Is Prayer

Some of you know that a long time ago, since around 1981, I very suddenly began to get very serious about prayer.  Over time prayer became so much the center of my life and ministry that some friends told me I was a mystic.  Sometimes I saw myself that way, especially in times when I was paying deep attention to my spiritual life and was equally devoted to nurturing the spiritual lives of the people who called me "pastor."  I also know, for an absolute fact, that when I stay close to God amazing things happen; sermons are birthed in a micro-second, answers are given before questions are asked, I show up in the nick of time and others arrive in my life before I knew I needed them.

Leading a church in the year 2011 and preparing at the same time to go on a sabbatical--to say nothing of spending as much time as possible with my wife, children and grandchildren--has lately made it extremely difficult to take time for prayer.   (Exercise has also been short shifted recently.)  However, one aspect of my sabbatical preparations has been to get to know more about Islam and to meet some real flesh and blood Muslims.  There is a lot to learn and I still do not have anything like a significant friendship with a Muslim, but one thing that is impossible to miss in even casual encounters is that Muslims are people of prayer.  Formal prayer.  Disciplined prayer.  Prayer grounded in their holy book and the life of their prophet.  Frequent prayer.  Prayer in community.    Over and over I read and hear about the Muslim's commitment to pray five times a day, ritualized prayers memorized from the traditions of their faith.

I hardly ever pray prayers memorized from the traditions of my faith.  I take scant advantage--or at least I have of late--of the rich resources of prayer in my Christian tradition. "Not good," I told myself a few weeks ago.  I need to add something very significant to my practice of prayer.  This is what happened.

I decided that I would decide on five prayers or scriptures that were especially meaningful to me at this time in my life.  I would commit these five to memory and I would pray them all, in sequence, a couple of times a day.  I did this and I am continuing to do it and it has been making all the difference in my connection to God and in my life.  The five are:  1)  The Jesus Prayer,  ("Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, have mercy on me, a sinner.) 2)  The Lord's Prayer,  3)  The 23rd Psalm, 4)  Isaiah 40:28-31,  5) John 3:16-17.

One great difficulty I have with prayer is that I get DISTRACTED, BIG TIME!  I am one of those people who can listen to a lecture only if I am doodling.  I would need something physical to help me to focus on my five prayers.  Muslims help focus their prayers by bowing towards Mecca.  I thought about bowing to our family homestead in the Catskill Mountains, but that smacked just a bit of idolatry.  After a couple of experiments I settled on taking advantage of our church sanctuary which is definitely sacred space for me.  I visualize five places in the sanctuary, one for each prayer.  Four of the places are the corners and the fifth is the communion table at the front/center of the church.  I don't know why it works, but focusing my attention on these places helps me to stay focused on each prayer.  And when I am so focused and pray each prayer I feel the message of each prayer deeply, I experience the power of each prayer to draw me close to God and to change the way I am living my life.

I think it would be wise for anyone who wants to pray in a similar way to first pray for God's guidance in choosing the prayers and scriptures and I also think it would be wise to change the prayers and scriptures now and then according to the spiritual needs of one's life.

May your life of prayer be a blessing to you, giving you the grace and power to be a blessing to others.

The Subject is Worship

Worship is one of the major themes of my sabbatical,  It is also one of the arenas of church life that, at First Baptist, needs the most transformation.  It is an arena of church life that matters to a lot of our people--enough so that quite a few people have been impatient with our lack of progress over the past five years.   At various times I have tried to make significant steps forward  but I always encountered enough non-interest and resistance to cause me to keep worship transformation on the back burner.  This was frustrating but necessary.

Without having resolved the non-interest and resistance to worship change, we still included it as a major theme in the proposal we wrote to the Lilly Endowment for a sabbatical grant.  Maybe this was wishful thinking but when I was writing the grant proposal and listening to the input of others for the proposal it seemed like this might just be the time.  The sabbatical might create the context for us to become truly innovative with worship.

So far I would say that this is exactly what has been happening.  The sabbatical has created opportunities to explore and experiment with worship.  Worship Services on Sundays February 27 and March 6 were set aside for some experiments in designing worship in new and creative ways.  Three lay members of a worship design team worked with me to create two services on the themes of 'Life Is Difficult," and "Leadership."   We will meet soon to evaluate and learn from these experiences.

During the sabbatical each of the three lay members who designed the two services mentioned above will be forming their own worship design team.  We are trying to involve as many people as possible in planning and leading worship.  Each team will begin to plan some of our worship services between May 8 and August 13 by meeting and reading the appropriate lectionary texts and agreeing on a theme.  Our sabbatical interim, Allison Voorhees, will meet with each of the teams and will have a significant role in all of the services during the sabbatical.

I will make a continuing contribution to many of these services.  Once the design teams have chosen worship themes, I will be creating worship resources for the services based on my experiences during the sabbatical.  Learning to use Media Shout, the software the church uses to create our media show each Sunday. and growing my skills in digital photography will help me to make more creative and meaningful contributions to worship, now and in the future.

So, what about our worship is in the process of being transformed?  We are not seeking to transform worship by dramatically changing the kind of music we use using.  We are not going to focuse on what we title our emerging form of worship.  We are not trying to divide the church by declaring some practices of worship to be old-fashioned and others contemporary.  What is changing is the level of engagement in worship that our people have.  What is changing is the amount of time we spend together imagining the most powerful ways we can of praising God.

It is going to be very interesting to see how all of this evolves but it definitely seems that the sabbatical has created an exciting time in the life of our church when many things can be made new.

Sabbatical Preparations Continue--March 1, 2011

            I continue to find myself drawn to learning about Islam.  Three church members and myself attended a presentation on how Moslems, Christians and Jews view their scriptures.  I learned a lot from the speakers about each tradition.  There is absolutely no doubt that scripture is viewed very differently in our three traditions--to say nothing of the differences within each tradition. 

 Would anyone like to know more about these differences?

            Last Sunday I had my good friend Rabbii Janice talk about the same topic to our adult forum.  Janice is an exciting teacher.  I hope she will return and address two more questions, 1)  What it is like to be Jewish in Springfield, including being a Jewish parent, and 2)  What it was like to grow up in a family where both parents were holocaust survivors,   

             I have completed two books on Islam recommended by a student at Wittenberg and am reading three other books, one an overview on the Koran, one an overview on Islam, and the third a scholars look at the face of Islam across the world today.  A couple of the books read like the works of many Christians who are critical scholars of scripture.  A couple of others read like what I imagine I would experience if I could stomach reading a fundamentalist Christian apologist.   It is actually fairly easy, after many years of learning to discern the truth from among various Christian positions, to discern what feels like truth when reading works on Islam.  I don’t think there are any areas of my life where I don’t notice absolutist claims.  This is especially true when I am listening to individuals share their stories or give their testimonies.

I attended a class at the University of Dayton where a Moslem woman told about her life as a Moslem in America.  She was interesting and vibrant and articulate.  She was also, to me, unbelievable.  The answers to too many questions seemed memorized.   There was never a hint of ambiguity or doubt.   She was not seeking anything because everything of importance had already been found.  All declarations  were easy.  Above all, as I would be uncomfortable engaging her in a deep or honest conversation for fear that my doubts and fears would only make me vulnerable and that sharing would not open doors to a deeper relationship.

What do you think out there in cyberspace?   Do you also imagine that you can identify people whose minds and hearts and spirits are not open?   Is it reasonable that in the unfolding plan of God it might be possible to find new friends, especially in a place like Turkey, who might be so open that they can open my eyes and heart?  Are there such potential relationships closer to home?