Praying Aloud - on Pentecost and beyond...

Dear friends,

One of the greatest gifts that we can give is to pray for another person.  Many times in my life, I have been deeply touched by the knowledge that someone was praying for me by name, especially during a time of special need or hardship.  I hope you’ve had that same experience.

On Sunday mornings when we gather for worship, we always pray together.  We pray for the Universal Church, our nation, the world, those who suffer, and those who have died.  Most Sunday mornings we include in our prayers the names of people on our parish prayer chain list who are in special need.  The names we hear aloud on Sunday mornings are only a tiny portion of the total number of names on our list.  It would take too long to read off every name one at a time.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible to pray by name for each person on the prayer chain list every time we gather for Sunday worship.  In fact, it’s easy to do so if we work together, sharing the ministry and responsibility of lifting those names in prayer simultaneously when the leader invites our spoken prayers.  What happens then is that for a few moments, the church sounds like what I imagine the first Pentecost sounded like: a swell of voices raised together.

Incorporating individual names in this way has a number of advantages:  It makes the Prayers of the People more truly the prayers of the people, with parishioners’ voices raised in prayer all over the church.  It allows us to pray by name for each person on the prayer list every Sunday.  Congregation members become more active, vocal participants during the prayers, and the prayers become ever more inclusive, as worshipers begin to add other names and concerns.

So, you’re asking yourself, how exactly will this work?  It’s easy.  When you pick up your Sunday bulletin on the way into church, you will have the option of also picking up a short list of six or seven names for use during the prayers.  During the Prayers of the People, the leader will invite our prayers “for those whom we now name, silently or aloud...”  And then all of us who are holding names will read them aloud simultaneously. 

It makes sense for us to introduce this new way of prayer on Pentecost Sunday.  I hope you’ll take part in it.  More importantly, I hope that you and all those for whom we pray will experience the blessings of God’s Holy Spirit and abiding love.

Faithfully, Anne