Have you ever been in a church when some authoritative looking dude says “let us pray”, you bow your head, concentrate on God, and then after the Amen you look up and notice that the stage has been entirely reset during that time? I have a problem with this.

Though I did this many times while on church staff (usually playing the role of the guy moving around and doing junk during the prayer) I have had a growing uneasiness about this practice within our churches for one simple reason; this reduces prayer to a prop that helps us to put on a seamless service.

The way I see it, doing this is basically using prayer as a tool of distraction to direct people’s attention away from the stage so that set changes (or whatever) can get done more quickly. But this degrades prayer. Instead, shouldn’t prayer be something that we enter into as a body? Shouldn’t that be a time when we are completely unified, where every individual part of the body is seeking after Jesus and making themselves subject to Him?

I find it a little bit odd that we claim that prayer has so much power and yet we treat it with such little respect.

So, I propose that rather than stripping prayer of it’s authority and using it as a staging tool, that churches genuinely get on their faces, united in prayer before the living God. I propose that prayer become an integral part of our times of gathering (large and small) rather than being a side item that we simply throw into the mix when it is convenient. I propose that we take prayer so seriously that every person in the room stops cold to seek after God with eagerness and conviction.

Imagine the power that lies in this type of prayer, one unified body seeking after it’s Creator. If we are a community, let’s pray as a united community.

Note: I know that churches that do this respect prayer and would never intentionally degrade it, but I think this practice has subtly emerged within church culture and that it is harmful to the church as a whole. If you disagree with me that’s cool, I would love to dialog with you in the comments…so please leave one.

1. jason b Says:
   January 7th, 2008 at 9:57 am

   i propose that it can serve both purposes. i feel what your saying though.

2. josh Says:
   January 7th, 2008 at 10:57 am

   i worked at a church where we actually put that prayer transition on paper, what we called our run sheets. we had them for 15 and 30 second increments. which we would pick according to how much stuff we needed to get into place.

3. britt Says:
   January 7th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

   I totally agree.
   This Korean church I went to a few times did something interesting. When there was a transition, the whole congregation bowed and said their own prayer. It was kinda weird at first, but I really felt it was cool. Any time of trasition wasn’t a distraction, it was an opportunity to pray.
   But Koreans could teach us way more about prayer than we ever know.

   Peace.

4. Adam Says:
   January 8th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

   Wow Britt, that is a cool thought. During transitions allow people to just sit and pray, a novel idea.