So much of prayer isn’t about speaking to God. It is about listening to Him. I am not sure that a large public gathering, such as a worship service, is conducive to long periods of prayer. Who knows, unless it is tried?

I’ve been to many all-night, unstructured prayer gatherings. I’ve been to drop-in 24 hour prayer gatherings. The students at a near-by high school have been doing this for years, before each school year, praying over the school, staff and students. It’s simply a different way to honor our God, with worship.

BTW: Feel free to come and pray for an hour during W&CA prayer time, on an ‘off’ week. All who wish to pray over the services, our church and our community are welcome.

I think it depends on your flavor of church…that is, denomination and tradition. As you are in the Presbyterian group, not much has changed over the past several decades, even though great attempts are made to appear otherwise. Not a bad or a good thing…just is. The order of worship is going to be music, announcements/prayer, sermon, event, music. On the other hand, there are plenty of groups that spend most of their time in prayer, very little time on music and events like baptism, etc. I know people involved with churches like these, and they often have conversations like “we are strong in prayer, perhaps we need to put more thought and effort into music”. Same book, different chapter.

All of this to say…I think prayer is extremely important. So is music (praise), so is learning (sermon or adult study classes, etc). I may be going down a rabbit trail a bit, as you were kind of leaning toward prepped prayer vs spontaneous prayer…but I see it not as an overarching issue of decision, rather a decision of emphasis. If you have an hour (or an hour an a half) where will the emphasis be? Different churches put emphasis on different parts of worship…that is what makes God’s church so wonderfully eclectic. To your question, does lack of prayer in the service subtly indicate that it isn’t important? I don’t think it says that, but I do think it speaks to what the leadership in general wants to put more or less value on. We’re all given the same amount of time in the day, what we chose to do with that time indicates where our values lie. Taking that to a micro-level…if we are all given the same amount of time to “do church”, then it will also reveal where values lie.

Why not pray from the scriptures? There are some great prayers throughout the Bible, and even some of the epistles can be read as prayers. This would prevent prayers during service as just being “brain dumps.”

I think especially during music, many of the psalms would be great prayers.

Only praying a few minutes isn’t good enough (OK I don’t know how to quote and make it italic.

Longer (outward) prayer is not necessarily good enough either. Quality over quantity.

but I ain’t no gettin’ them edumacation at them bible collidges ‘n stuff..so I might be wrong.

Thoughts…

1. Prayer is the spiritual discipline I struggle with the most. And everyone tells me it’s the most important. I’ve read books, gone to talks and lectures, watched presentations, so I know why people say it’s foundational. And that’s still not enough to get me to do it. I need someone to beat me over the head. Constantly.

2. Speaking of constantly, Paul said to pray unceasingly. Unless we think he was joking, maybe we should try.

3. Saying that a pre-planned prayer is somehow less sincere than a spontaneous one seems a bit like saying that an amazing presentation from a dynamic, brilliant, gifted speaker is less powerful than a one-on-one conversation on the street. We use the Lord’s Prayer once in a while. You bring up that some folks think that prayer should never be scripted or pre-planned. But didn’t Jesus say right before it, “Pray like this?” And why do our inspired Scriptures bother to record some of the other great prayers of desperation and thanksgiving? Just so we’ll be impressed with great impromptu words? Moses and the Israelites after crossing the sea…David pouring out his heart to God in the Psalms…Jonah within the whale…Job wishing he had answers… We shouldn’t script prayer? What, do we really think we’re that amazing when we have no preparation at all? The Church has a long history of other people who wrote great prayers, too. When did we stop using those? They’re really written with quite a bit of genius. They’re ours for the using. Even if they were copyrighted, I don’t think their legal teams will rise up from their tombs to sue us for public readings.

4. Cut yourself some slack on spending more time choosing a hymn than finding the right words to say in a prayer. If you set the prayer to music, it’s still a prayer.

5. Who says we can’t pray more? If you think we’re not praying enough, lead us to pray more. If you’re having a seminar, teach more. If you’re having a concert, play more music. If you’re having a worship service, pray more.

Totally agree with you there Yonas. Quantity doesn’t mean quality at all.

Great thoughts Jeff, thanks for sharing them.

Sorry I mispelled colledge earlier.

dumps of random thought: mmmm, i think it’s a little disheartening how you see your conversations w/ God. prayer is just talking to him, and he loves our honesty, our humility, our mental “dumps.” and if you’re unsure what to pray, i like the suggestion above to use the scripture as prayer if you simply feel that your words are measuring what you want to say to the eternal God. i don’t know whether or not you should plan it, but know that He hears it, no matter how together or how “sloppy” you think it is, as long as it’s from the heart.

Actually, since singing IS prayer. See Exodus 15 for the first published song about God. This is our tradition going back to Moses’ sister Miriam and the women praising God’s mighty power as they played the tamborine and danced on the seashore after their water deliverance. It was the blowing of horns that brought Jericho’s walls down (Joshua 6:20). In Judges 7:16-22, the soldiers in Gideon’s army had each one horn to blow and one burning lamp to guide their way. Singing and music always brings deliverance — my favorite OT example is Jehoshaphat and his people (2 Chronicles 20). And don’t forget after the Last Supper, even though Jesus knew what was ahead for him that night, he and the apostles sang hymns as they traveled to the Mount of Olives and to Gethsemane (Matthew 26:30)
As Augustine of Hippo said, “Singing is praying twice.”