For Whom Shall I Pray?

What does prayer look like for you? Is it silent contemplation or a noisy day of volunteering? Do you use words or images or sounds or ideas to pray? Do you pray in church or in the car or in the grocery store or on the sidelines of your child's soccer game? 

There isn't a "one-size-fits-all" approach to prayer. It will (and should) look different for each person. The way that I pray works for me and won't work for you, because we are different people. But here's the Good News - all prayer is good prayer.

The silent prayer where you don't know what to say or how to say it? Good prayer.

The expletive-laden prayer? Good prayer.

The liturgical prayer you pray every week in church? Good prayer.

The bedtime prayer you pray with your children every night? Good prayer. 

In a lot of ways, the church has done a really terrible job at telling people about prayer. It's turned into Vending Machine Theology - a way of seeing God that claims that if we punch the right code in and offer the right amount, we'll get the prayer result we're looking for. Unfortunately, that means the opposite would be true - when bad things happen or when our prayers aren't answered, it must mean we didn't pray/try/ask/give hard enough. 

What if prayer was like coffee with an old friend? Meandering and slow. Honest and direct. Casual and comfortable, where you moved smoothly from topics of heavy depth to light-hearted remarks that made you laugh so hard, you'd feel it the next day. 

Below, I've shared some additional resources to help you think about prayer in a different way, starting with a new weekly opportunity each person in the St. Mark community can share in together.

I've decided to start including a weekly prayer intention in our email blast. I had a bunch of different reasons for this, and I figured I could share them with you. 

1. Faith communities should pray together, and they should know it. Of course, our liturgy is shared prayer. And of course, we all have our own practices and experiences of prayer. But this is something that connects us in a different way when we know that we are sharing the same prayer, in different spaces, at different times. 
2. Prayer takes practice. I say this as the person often thought of as the "professional prayer" - it takes practice to pray. This isn't so that we can get better at prayer or somehow make our prayers more effective. When we practice prayer, we're creating room for vulnerability. We're accepting that there's something new to learn or something new to experience.
3. A little structure can be helpful. I'll be honest - I'm really bad at spontaneous prayer. I literally have an alert on my phone every day that reminds me to pray at 12:15 and even then, sometimes I just ignore it. Perhaps, with a little structure, your own prayer life might find new growth.