Posts Tagged with prayer

Becoming Disciples Through: Prayer

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Prayer is one of the ways that we support the Body of Christ that is the church.

  1. Caveat: in our vows, we talk about supporting the ministries of the United Methodist Church… but if we are thinking about this as a path to discipleship, and not merely supporting the institution of the church, then we can expand that concept a little bit.
  2. The first letter of John reminds us that this isn’t about some institutional church – this is about claiming the fact that we are now God’s children – we belong to God! That is the message also from the gospel of John – Jesus Christ is the good shepherd who watches over the flock. We have nothing to fear, we know that we are in God’s hands. So how will we act as children of God in the world? What do we do?
  3. What if we practice these things: our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness as we work to strengthen the Body of Christ that IS the church and in doing so become disciples and members of that body? That sounds a bit more appealing, doesn’t it?

What do we mean by prayer

  1. Ask! What do you think prayer is? What comes to mind when you hear it?
  2. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul asks us to pray without ceasing. When I think about what else we do without ceasing – my mind goes to breathing.
  3. Breathing, for centuries, has been thought of as a wonderful companion to prayer, and a great way of physically understanding prayer.
  4. So I looked up some things about breathing.
    1. most of us breath unconsciously – and most of us breath the wrong way –
    at least if we are to get the most out of our breaths.
    2. If you watch a baby breathe, you will notice they breathe deep from
    their bellies, rather than the shallow chest breathing that most of us
    have grown accustomed to. I found a couple of guesses as to why our
    breathing changes, and some people think that it’s because we are taught
    to suck in our bellies and puff out our chests to look skinnier… in any
    case – most of us have to relearn how to breathe.
    3. Athletes, musicians, practicers of meditation and yoga – and yes even pray-ers benefit from relearning how to breathe.
    4. Diaphragmatic breathing technique: exhaling and inhaling) correctly is critical in maintaining the appropriate level of oxygen for energy, keeping the correct pH levels in our body, and maintaining the correct carbon dioxide level for bodily functions” (about.com)
    5. in other words – breathing correctly helps us to live better – it calms our spirits, allows us to accomplish more, gives us more energy and power…
    6. and so does prayer. Prayer is not so much about communicating our will to God, but about aligning ourselves with God’s will. It is about building a relationship in which we live within God. When we pray deeply our spirits are calmed and our fears are dissolved, we accomplish more of God’s will in the world, and we are strengthened through the Holy Spirit to do and speak the things of God.
  5. We breathe in and out… and we pray in and out and as unconscious as we think both prayer and breathing might be – we have to practice it in order to grow, change and thrive.

How do we practice prayer?

  1. You practice by doing…
    1. As swimmers learn Diaphragmatic breathing, they first practice sitting or standing still… then they practice with breathing while walking – every right step, or every left step… then they practice every fourth step.. then they practice breathing this way while they move their arms…
  2. “Although there are some people who can talk to anyone, anywhere (like my dad`), most people make small talk initially. This changes as their relationship develops. Sometimes this happens very quickly, other times it takes time. In all cases it takes effort…
  3. Now, I don’t want to make it seem like we are all terrible at praying and have to start from the ground up. In fact, Richard Foster reminds us that: . . . Countless people pray far more than they know. Often they have such a stained-glass image of prayer that they fail to recognize what they are experiencing as prayer and so condemn themselves for not praying.”
    1. in fact, we pray in different ways all of the time. Just as deep breathing is not limited to learning how to swim, but is a skill that we adapt and take into every facet of our lives, so is prayer. As we continue to practice prayer with one another, we learn both that many of the things we area already doing are prayerful, but we also learn how to incorporate prayer into other parts of our being.

We know what prayer is, we know how to practice it: by doing… now – what should we be praying for?

  1. if we were to look at all of the Hebrew and greek words for prayer we would find meanings like: seek, ask, desire, question, grieve, complain, intercede, bow, beg, demand, wish, meditate, ponder, contemplate, search, draw near, worship, visit
  2. We began today by thinking about committing to prayer in order to support the Body of Christ.
    1. First, I think we need to think of ourselves as members of the body. What are our needs? What are our struggles and frustrations? Bring those to God!
    2. We think about the members of the body: who is ill, who is hurting? The stronger the body of Christ, the more God’s will can be accomplished.
    3. What members of the body are missing? Who are the people in our community that are not working and supporting the body? Do we have hands that aren’t giving? Do we have ears that aren’t listening? We need to pray for those who are already members but who aren’t active or have forgotten their way.
    4. What parts of our body are working but need encouragement? Pray just as fervently for the leaders among you as you do for those who aren’t active.
    5. What is the larger body that our congregation is a part of? We can likewise pray for other churches in our community, in our district, for the United Methodist church and the church worldwide.
    6. What is the purpose of the Body? What is the ministry of the Body of Christ? We can pray for direction and discernment. We can pray for the courage to practice the ministry God has given us. We can celebrate with thanksgiving what God has already accomplished in the world.
  3. All of those things are exhaling. We are praying for and strengthening and accomplishing the work of God in the world through our prayer. But we also have to remember to breathe deeply and to listen. Let yourself be filled up with God so that you can be strengthened and encouraged to go back out there and do it all over again. Amen and Amen.

Derrama tu Santo Espíritu

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Last night we had our second monthly bi-lingual worship service.

None of the planning or preparation that we had really put into it could have created the spirit of worship that we shared. We couldn’t have made it happen… but God could.

In our first worship service, we decided to pretty much stick with the standard order of worship in the book of discipline. We gather, pray, hear the word (in many ways), respond with prayers, offering and communion. Es muy bueno y facil. Oh, and we stick hymns in there where appropriate.

Also, our first worship brought in a few spanish speakers – but no native spanish speakers. No one who wasn’t also fluent in english. And no one of Hispanic/Latino/a descent.

This time, as we gathered for worship, it felt like there were only a few of us. The sanctuary felt so big – but we began, hesitantly to worship. We hadn’t even gotten to the call to worship with sirens began going off. There was severe weather moving into our area and we had to go to the basement – to be safe.

So we huddled down in this little room that the church has for children’s drama – so it had a cute little stage and benches and chairs for toddlers. And we worshipped God together. and it was beautiful.

Because we were all in this little room, we filled the space with our singing and words. Because we lost our powerpoint, all of the leaders shared our worship scripts and sat mixed in with everyone else. We sang to the guitar, we sang whether or not we knew the tune, we sang from our hearts. We clapped and made music together. We heard the word of God proclaimed in english and spanish. And we prayed. I’m not sure that we would have had all of the prayerful time that we did had we been upstairs. There was something about being in that smaller space together that created an intimacy we might not have achieved otherwise. We realized we had no offering plate, so we passed around a sombrero (which we found in the props) and gave from our blessings to this important ministry. And we shared el cuerpo y la sangre de Cristo,
para que seamos el cuerpo de Cristo para el mundo,redimidos por su sangre. And at the end, I felt like we were el cuerop de Cristo.

THIS time, we also had some new participants and felt like we really met our target audience! In fact, we had a quite a few bi-cultural couples – which I think is a big part of our audience. One of the husbands said to me – this was really important for my wife to be able to be here – Thank You!

Please continue to pray for this important imporant ministry – and especially pray for me – I’m giving the sermon at our next service (on Pentecost) and I will be attempting to proclaim God’s word in Spanish!!!

making members, making disciples

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At my church, we have a pretty significant number of people who are “constituents” of our church and not official members. For various reasons, these people want to be an active part of our congregation but do not want to take the vows of membership and officially become United Methodist. And yet, many of those individuals are just as, if not more, active than the “members” of our church.

At School For Ministry last week, we talked a lot about making disciples, and very little about making church members. And at one point in the conversation, we actually admitted that we don’t really expect people to uphold their baptismal vows. If we did, we would have a structure for responding or holding people accountable to their choices. But we don’t. We baptize them, hold them in our prayers and pray to God that a seed we might have planted would take root.

Contrast that with early Christianity. Baptism was a process you only went through after years of formational training. I’m not sure that “membership” was ever the term used in that time, but certainly one could be excluded from the body for offenses until penance had been made. Confession of faith was extremely important.

Now, our church has very good reasons for upholding infant baptism. It says that baptism is a sign that God’s grace goes before us – even before we are able to respond. But… BUT… baptism is also supposed to be an act of the congregation as we together promise, covenant, commit ourselves to nurturing that baby in the Christian faith.

Perhaps it was because for such a long time, Christianity was just the norm that we lost touch of those promises. The congregation didn’t take seriously their role, because after all, this was a Christian nation and anyone who was raised simply by the culture would be brought up Christian. But that was a false presumption and it has led to whole generations of people who have been formed by the culture’s view of Christianity, rather than God’s view of culture.

So we make members. We ask people to join our club. And we count our success in ministry by the number of people we have on the rolls.

And there is nothing in there about making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

The big question for me is how do we start? How do I help my confirmation kids, or the baby who will be baptized this next Sunday – but whose parents do not even attend my church (her grandparents do), or the members of my congregation who think that simply by showing up once a month they are living out their commitments… how do I begin to show each of those groups of people that ideally, membership is a process of discipleship?

Let’s look first at the process of membership.

1) we ask people to renounce sin and profess their faith
2) the congregation promises to nurture one another in the faith
3) if someone has not been baptized, we do so
4) if it is someone who was baptized before and is now reaffirming their faith (new members or confirmands) we have a blessing over them.
5) we recieve people into the church with the following vow:
as members of this congregation, will you faithfully participate in its
ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness? I will.

In our tradition, being a member means taking on those five responsibilities.

And to be honest – I think that they are good commitments to make. I believe that they can be disciple making activities. But the big disconnect is the part where it says “its ministries.” We expect that all of this disciple making will happen in the congregation, or in some way connected to a ministry of the congregation. And it might not. It may be in a bible study at work, or in helping a neighbor, or partnering with community agencies to share your gifts. Our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness will be evidence of our growth as disciples… but we can’t let ourselves be limited to the church. We have to be disciples for the transformation of the world.

Maybe that is my starting place. As we baptise an infant next week, I need to uplift that it is our responsibility to help nurture her wherever in the world she may be. As we get ready to confirm our youth, I need to encourage them to be disciples wherever they may be. And as we go over these membership vows in teaching and preaching in the next five weeks – I need to remind people that this is their responsibility and commitment… and that we need to hold one another accountable to doing so in EVERY facet of our lives.

a simple prayer for pastors

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gracious god.

help us to speak your truth.

help us know that while judgment is reserved only for you, that sometimes you call prophets to share your concern for the world and for your children.

bless us with courage.

bless us with grace for the times we have failed to proclaim boldly your words of liberation and bless us with the ability to be ready the next time you call us to speak.

amen.

accountable.

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So. I’m going back and forth over whether or not to post what my lenten discipline will be. I was all for it, and then I got to thinking about the whole “do it in secret” call of Matthew’s gospel… the appointed reading for Ash Wednesday.

At the same time however, discipline needs accountability. With no one else to check in on me, or watch over my shoulder and gently nudge… “hey katie…” will I keep with it?

Also… I’m only like 75% about what my actual lenten discipline will be. I like to abstain from one thing and take on one thing – and I can’t figure out what I’m going to take on. (which is kind of important, since, um, Lent started today)

So. I need the push to make a decision and having to post it and then follow through before heading to bed for the evening is important.

1) I will be abstaining from meat for Lent. This is something that I have done in the past, and now is a good time for my body to also be abstaining from the extra fats due to my upcoming surgery. Meat is a really tough thing for me because my families are such big meat eaters. Even in meals at home with Brandon, meat is always center stage. So having to think about other cooking options for myself, or eating less at a meal really is not a natural step for me. Everytime that I eat, I will be recalling this commitment to God I have made. And I love to eat. Meals now become this prayerful time of communion, rather than a hurry up and cook up some boring chicken and rice-a-roni. Not to mention the benefits on the planet (which God calls us to take care of) that a vegetarian diet entails.

2) My prayer life has been suffering lately. I’m just going to be honest. I have really struggled with what I need to boost that prayer life. Do I need to keep a prayer journal before bedtime? Maybe use art as an expression of prayer (like Jan Richardson) to try something new? I have a beautiful handmade paper journal that I haven’t used yet (thanks Jill!) and I’m going to bust it out this Lenten season. I’ll have it beside my bed with some colored pencils and chalk… and then maybe I can do both!

Lazy.

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Today has been a lazy day. I’ve spent much of it on the couch playing games and watching movies. It’s been a lazy week, really, and I’m not to proud to admit it.

I feel like I’m kind of in a funk right now – like I have been working too hard and I just don’t want to anymore. And mostly, I know that’s not true – I really haven’t been working all that hard, and compared to some people, who labor very hard all day long, I’m hardly working at all. There is a guy in my church who works two jobs and is a lay preacher for another congregation. And there is my dad who works a bazillion hours a week and farms. I don’t know how they do it. And in some ways, they really shouldn’t be doing it – they are driving their bodies crazy with all that really hard work. (See Thursday’s post)

But I’m in a funk, and I need to get out of it. I need to get off my bum and hop to it.

One of my brilliant ideas this evening (late, late this evening) is to go back and post my sermons from the past year. I’ve started a new blogsite to do so and you can find the link at the top of this blog’s page.

As far as what I’m currently preaching on, I’m working on a sermon series that is largely and heavily borrowed from a wonderful little devotional book “Becoming Jesus’ Prayer” – so i’m not sure how comfortable I feel posting the texts… I’ve put my own spin on it of course, but I’m also using large quoted sections in the preached word. Anyone have ideas of how I can gracefully navigate around that one? Do I post it anyways and give the appropriate citation? Do I include only the sections that I have put in my own words, or the pieces where I have taken the chapter in new directions? Do I ask for permission to include their text?

a new seed has been planted

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I desperately needed to get away. I needed to clear my head and spend some time with my hubby. I needed to pull myself back far enough from all the ins and outs of the church to think about the big picture of what I’m supposed to be doing there (because – after 6 months, I’m starting to get a better idea). And I needed to replenish my spiritual life.

I’m embarassed to admit how far away from my own spiritual disciplines I have gotten. About a week before vacation, I looked into my prayer journal and noticed my last entry was from March. MARCH! Seriously people. I’ve done plenty of praying, plenty of bible study, plenty of worshipping… but all in the context of my job, of church, of what is expected of me… none of it for myself – none of it just for me and God. And I started to get back to that in the few days before I left and then had the opportunity to spend time each morning, in the amazingly beautiful outdoors of northern wisconsin with my devotional time.

I have a great resource that I use: A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People and it really helps not only center my thoughts, but I love the readings – I loved the fact that it also feels worshipful to sing and pray and that there is a psalm that guides me through the whole week. I highly recommend it!!!

Now that I’m back home, I spent my first morning on my back porch with a cup of tea and my devotional. And it felt good. And I finally feel like I have the clarity I need about what to do with my youth this fall – with my preaching this fall – with everything really. it’s taken me a while to get there, but things kind of have fallen into place. Now I just need to get it all on paper and present some ideas to the Administrative Board… and get some advertising going to try to bring back in old members who haven’t returned and to reach some other parts of our small town.

I’m excited. I’m rejuvenated. And even though tomorrow is a day off for me – I’m going to go to church with my congregation anyways. I thought about visiting somewhere else or taking the sunday off – but I WANT to be with them =) And that is a very very good feeling.

Despair to Hope

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There are only two things that I really want to comment on this morning – and then I want us to turn our hearts and minds to a time of prayer – because Heaven help us, this is going to be a long summer in Eastern Iowa.

First of all, I was so surprised last night when I again read the scripture from the book of Romans in this week’s lectionary. Not realizing what the situation would be, I had actually planned on not sharing this passage of scripture – I wanted to instead focus on hospitality and use the text from Genesis… the story of Abraham welcoming the three strangers.

But again, knowing that what was happening around us was more important than any preconceived notion of mine, I went back to our texts this week and was ready to use something completely different. Until I read Romans. (5:1-5)

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

When I wasn’t helping out my husband’s family in the past few days… helping to calm worried spirits, getting meals for 11 people on the table, trying to get to places around Cedar Rapids to help sandbag… I was glued to the television. I’m sure many of you were also. And what continued to amaze me were the statements of hope and strength that kept being shared with the community.

Rev. Linda Bibb is the pastor at Salem United Methodist Church. It is on the corner of First Avenue and 3rd Street West and on Thursday evening, their stained glass windows were almost completely under water. And when she was interviewed on KCRG she said: “that the church is not the building, so they Salem church is doing well and proclaiming that they do not fear the future because God is already there.”

Gail Gnaughton – President and CEO of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library had this to say:

“The Czech and Slovak peoples have endured many devastating events in their history and have survived to become stronger. Iowa is filled with the strength of those who settled here and built the Cedar Rapids community. The museum will rise again from above the flood waters to continue as the touchstone for Czech and Slovak cultural heritage in the United States.”

In Walter Bruggemann’s reflections upon this passage, he shares that the amazing thing about both the Jewish and Christian communities is that memory produces hope in us, in the same way that amnesia produces despair. “We hope in and trust the God who has done these past miracles, and we dare to affirm that the God who has done past acts of transformation and generosity will do future acts of transformation and generosity.”

He shares the hope of Israel even though their communities and cities were destroyed and they were sent into exile. In the prophetic words of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah, the people heard “a vision that defied and overrode circumstance…” They heard about a restored temple in Jerusalem, a new covenant with Israel where God would completely forgive them and would start again, and they heard of a wondrous, triumphant homecoming to Jerusalem. “So these exiled Jews – the most passionate, the most faithful – took these dreams and hopes as the truth of their life. They acted toward that future.”

In the same way, Christians refuse to see “the present loss as the last truth (for it is) a community that knows that God is not finished.” We can call the dreaded Friday on which Christ died “Good” because we know that it is not the end. This passage from Paul is a refusal to give in.

Bruggemann goes on to say that our ability to turn memory into hope, even in the midst of loss “is not about optimism or even about signs of newness.” In fact, if watching the images on television and even seeing the waters recede in Cedar Rapids, there is little hope there, little sign of newness anywhere – the streets, the buildings, and everything inside is covered with a disgusting brown film.

No, claiming that hope does not disappoint is according to Bruggemann, “a statement about the fidelity of God who is the key player in our past and in our future… “ and so we have the ability to say: The Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the Good News.
(Walter Bruggemann- http://www.icjs.org/clergy/walter.html – “Suffering Produces Hope”)

Secondly, I want to share with you the call that is before all of us from the Gospel of Matthew. Here again these words at the end of chapter 9:

35Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

The phrase that strikes me the most in this text is that Jesus had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless. The Message translation says they were “confused and aimless” and the American Standard Version says they were “distressed and scattered.” In any case… these were people who needed some guidance. They were having a tough time and they needed some love and compassion and some real help. And Jesus said – we can do this. There are so many of them and there are so few of us… but we just need to pray to God that more people will be sent our way and that we can do this!

At about 10pm on Thursday night, I was watching the news and heard a cry for help. The last remaining water pump in Cedar Rapids was in danger and there was great need to secure the well with sandbags. Evidently only about 10 people were helping there and it simply wasn’t enough. I desperately wanted to help, but I couldn’t get there – it was on the other side of the river, and with the interstate being shut down, it would have taken at least an hour to travel the half mile it would normally take. I couldn’t do anything but pray.

The next morning, they showed footage about what happened that night. More than one thousand people had showed up and created a HUGE fireman’s brigade to get the sandbags to where they were needed. And within a very short time, they had saved and protected that well and in doing so – saved the whole city’s limited water supply. It was extraordinary. A simply cry for help on the television resulted in that amazing response.

Two weeks ago, we heard about the communities north of us that were suffering from tornadoes and flooding, and we quickly sent out a plea for people to head up to that area and help in any way we could. With very short notice, we were able to get a team of 13 people together and go up and make a significant difference in one woman’s life.

The truth of the matter is, in these next weeks and months – the harvest that Jesus talks about is plentiful. There are so many hurting and helpless people in these communities that have been affected and they are going to need more help than what FEMA can provide. They are going to need more than money and flood buckets (although those things are necessary and we should give all we can). They are going to need people to stand beside them and to believe with them that there is hope for their lives. They need people to work along side them and to share the good news that this present circumstance is not the final word of God. And we can be the people who do so.

In your bulletin there is an insert… and it shares the ways that we can respond as a church to the disaster that has struck our part of the world. Two weeks ago I shared with you that Teresa of Avila once wrote: Christ has no body on earth but ours… with which to look with compassion on the world. And that statement is as true today as it was two weeks ago, as it was two hundred years ago. There are so many people out there, right now, who need our help, and we can respond with our hands and our feet and our hearts.

In the Message translation of the bible, the commission of those disciples who go out to serve in the name of Christ goes a little something like this:

“Don’t begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously.
“Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You are the equipment…”

You are the equipment. You are all that Christ needs to help those that are hurting… and we can share that love freely, because we have been given that love freely by Christ. We can help others and freely give of our time, because we know that others have freely given of their time to help us in the crises of our own lives. We can freely give of our hearts to others, because we know that others would freely give to us if we were the ones in need today.
So take the time to look over the call to help. Take some time to pray about it. And then I hope and I pray that you will say yes. Let us together walk with those who are suffering, and let us together find hope. Amen. And Amen.

Copyright © 2024 Rev. Katie Z. Dawson. All rights reserved.