FIFTY years ago, in his classic work The Christian Priest Today, Michael Ramsey described the priest as, among other things, the “man of prayer”. Now, as much as then, Christian ministers and all in church leadership are called to be men and women of prayer par excellence.
We need leaders who are “addicted to prayer”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said. This is because (a) prayer changes things, (b) God changes us through prayer, and (c) prayer sets our ministry in its rightful context, reminding us that it is his ministry, his Kingdom, his will be done.
This is not the place to explore a theology of prayer, but it is perhaps worth underlining a few key principles before we consider how we pray.
First, prayer is fundamentally about talking to and, perhaps more so, about listening to God; so above all else, it is relational.
Second, as hinted above, because prayer involves talking with and listening to God, it is transformational. Whether God visibly intervenes in a given situation we have prayed about or not, the very practice of prayer is transformational in a personal and collective sense, because it is about the aligning of our lives with Christ’s life, inviting him by his Spirit to live in us.
Third, prayer is missional, in that its overall direction and co-ordinates are given in the line “your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Whether it is lament and confession, intercession and pleading, or thanksgiving and celebration, every aspect of prayer should be an outworking and expression of the basic faith statement “your kingdom come.”
Since in its relational, transformational, and missional DNA, prayer changes things and changes lives, it is no surprise that its importance is emphasised in relation to Christian ministers. Thus, in licensing services in the Church of England, the bishop asks those who are about to become LLMs or ordained ministers, “Will you be diligent in prayer, in reading Holy Scripture, and in all studies that will deepen your faith and fit you to bear witness to the truth of the gospel?”, to which the candidates reply, “By the help of God, I will.”
Similarly, in Love for God, the discernment frameworks flag the twin-turbo combination of scripture study and prayer. Thus, under the domain of “Self” in the discernment framework for licensed lay ministry, we read the following: “The candidate desires to grow closer to God through worship, prayer, Bible reading, study and reflection of the Church and the living traditions of faith. . .”
When you step up to become a church leader, you commit yourself to spending time on your knees before God. Those who take on licensed ministries officially sign up to become prayer warriors. I wonder, though, how many people in public ministry are happy with their personal prayer lives?
Despite our prominent role in leading worship, intercessory prayers, and groups, I suspect many of us feel more like prayer wimps than prayer warriors.
At an inter-diocesan gathering, a colleague remarked with respect to ordained ministers: “The one thing parish clergy don’t get much time to do, is pray.” This is definitely counter-intuitive, and might seem surprising — shocking, even, to some. After all, aren’t our deacons and priests set apart precisely to devote themselves to prayer and spiritual things?
As often in life, the reality on the ground can be somewhat at odds with how we might like things to be in an ideal world. Whatever role we exercise, church life is crazily busy, and time to pray can be scarcer than we would like. Therefore, it is truly essential to establish strong patterns of personal prayer and daily spiritual disciplines early on, and to revisit and regularly refresh our practices of devotion. . .
If you haven’t already, [one possible] immediate thing to do is to download the Daily Prayer app on your phone, and start praying the daily Offices from Common Worship. More than a tick-box activity, praying the Office is a discipline that keeps you grounded, and a great way to start and round off your day.
On prayer, Jesus himself is the role-model. Thus, in Mark 1, we’re told that “very early in the morning” — and, just in case we were in any doubt, the Evangelist adds “when it was still dark” — Jesus went off alone “to pray”. If you are thinking about giving your life to Christian ministry, then, wherever you happen to be in the world, and whatever stage of life you happen to be at, your day should always start with prayer.
For me, prayer in the morning will include praying for others (and Morning Prayer on the app helps here), but, to be honest, it is largely about getting myself right with God and tuned in spiritually. It’s about meeting Jesus and committing the day, its tasks, myself, those in my team, and those around me, to his care. Ultimately, it’s about doing what Paul advises Timothy to do: namely, to guard the good treasure entrusted to us with the help of the Holy Spirit.
For all Christians, and perhaps especially for ministers, prayer in the morning should be as automatic as popping the coffee on, or grabbing a slice of toast. Some people, like Tamara, my wife, are great prayer warriors, praying often and at great length for all kinds of people and situations, whether over the road or overseas. Others, like me (confession time), have terribly short attention spans, and need to work really hard at being disciplined about prayer, otherwise the prayer-life falters and spiritual vitality takes a hit. . .
If you’re anything like me, you probably need a bit of a framework to ensure that you start your day in the best possible way. Again, the Daily Prayer app is a marvel of modern technology. . . A couple of people I know always pray the Lord’s Prayer at midday. In the office, some colleagues aim to stop for five minutes at lunchtime and pray for particular individuals and groups of people.
Additionally, you could develop some prayer habits around tea breaks: anything that helps us to “pray constantly” is worth tapping into. People from a more Catholic tradition might use a rosary to aid them in prayerfulness. Icons or religious art can be a good way into prayer, especially when the prayer routine has become, well, a bit routine. Worship music can be a wonderful aid to prayer times, and is very much part of my mornings, but, equally, silence, as they say, is golden.
Praying in the evening is natural for some, and a slog for others. When I’m tired after a long day, I’m ashamed to say that my evening prayers with our children rank among the most unimaginative, uninspiring, insipid, agonisingly pedestrian points of thanksgiving and petitions on the face of the planet. Wherever possible, therefore, I try to encourage the children to do the praying, and I always have some useful kids’ devotional material to hand.
If you’re a morning person, like me, you may struggle to stick to the discipline of evening prayer/compline. That’s OK, but it’s worth considering that there are lots of ways to keep it fresh. At the close of the day, why not use a light touch form of the Ignatian examen? This involves looking back at the events of the day, identifying what was positive, and thanking God for it, but also naming the difficult things and giving these over to his care.
Alternatively, you might take a moment to read a psalm and slowly mull it over, perhaps focusing on a verse or two just before you nod off. These ideas, and a thousand more creative ones besides, are essentially tools that may help you build up a rhythm and routine of prayer, bearing in mind that it is the relational, transformational, and missional heartbeat of prayer that matters — not any given form of prayer.
Fasting
I RECALL meeting a young Iranian Christian who recently arrived in the West and felt overwhelmed by our culture of excess. This man was horrified to discover that most Western Christians don’t tend to fast. Similarly, I have Egyptian and Middle Eastern students for whom fasting is an integral part of the Christian life.
For many of us, however, fasting is something of a lost discipline. That, perhaps, is a tell-tale sign of how watered down and comfy our spirituality has become. Jesus tells his disciples, “When you fast . . .”, not “If you fast . . .”. In other words, he assumes that those who are seeking first the Kingdom of God will engage in fasting.
Fasting is helpful in so far as it reminds us of a few fundamental things. First, since it draws attention to a basic physical need, fasting reminds us of our humanness, our dependence on God and his material provision for us through creation. Thus, fasting points us back to God and encourages us to be thankful to him.
Second, fasting helps us become more mindful of those around the world whose resources are scarce, and for whom hunger is the norm. Thus, fasting points us out from ourselves towards the world, and gives us more of a Kingdom perspective. As a spiritual discipline, fasting focuses the mind, wherein hunger pangs are converted into prayers and the soul is strengthened against sin (cf. Romans 12.2).
In this way, fasting points us in the direction of God’s Spirit, whose indwelling presence, to paraphrase a great Wesleyan hymn, takes away the love of sinning. Now, I can’t pretend to be an expert on fasting. To be honest, I find that I’m fairly good at eating, but fairly bad at fasting. All the more reason, then, to build it into the routine.
There are, of course, many different ways in which to fast, and, it’s true, fasting needn’t be just about abstaining from eating. Taking a break from social media is a nice example of a 21st-century twist on fasting which is likely to do us the world of good. Nevertheless, there is still a place for old-school fasting, and many Christian leaders find that building in a regular food fast — once a week, once a fortnight, once a month — can be greatly beneficial to their spiritual health.
This is an edited extract from When Jesus Calls: Finding a simpler, humbler, bolder vocation by Marcus Throup, published last month by Canterbury Press at £12.99 (CT Bookshop £11.69); 978-1-78622-451-4.