I first heard about Matthew Dicks on The Gist when he came as a recurring guest to give short lessons on storytelling. He has since started his own podcast, Speak Up Storytelling, based on his storytelling workshops.
On a recent episode of his podcast, he talked through his storytelling process from ideation to revision, step-by-step. It’s really a remarkable episode, and I love anatomies of process; you should really give it a listen.
Recently, I was asked to do something similar regarding my occasional prayers as an elder at my church. I guess I have a hyper-local infamy regarding these somewhat florid invocations (there I go again), and a few want to know how I come up with these things. For their edification, and for my own reflection on my process, I offer this over-long post.
[Note: I know not every reader of this blog shares my faith. The very nature of this entry makes it both about writing and about spirituality. Just so you know.]
I usually start with what things I already know.
- I try to confine my prayer to about a typewritten page, double-spaced.
- I’m given the theme of the prayer ahead of time; the elders rotate through praying about pillars of our church’s mission, and my next turn will be about “philanthropy.”
- Our senior pastor has recommended that we include in our prayers an exhortation to members derived from Titus 2:1; for my topic my suggested exhortation goes, “We ask our members to fulfill their area of service and to do this with all their might. Unless each party of the body….”
- At the tail end of the prayer, I include some specific entreaties that have recently become relevant in the congregation. I know I’ll probably mention issues of health, financial difficulty, and mental distress.
I’ve patterned my prayers after the ones I heard as a congregant at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. I’ve always admired their psalmic quality, how they stood at an intersection of theological explication and confessional unbosoming. I think an ideal corporate prayer expresses both the mind of the congregation and the truth of God’s Word.
So then my first guiding question is: What might be the questions, thoughts, anxieties, misunderstandings, celebrations, etc. around the topic within my church right now? Two prepositions and an adverb set the parameters for this question. I’m confining myself to my given topic (philanthrophy). I’m considering my specific parish. And I’m minding the immediate context.
In the past, I explored how the term “philanthropy” might be misconstrued and that it has a certain definition within our church’s mission, and I also considered how it might be difficult to serve given constraints on time and other resources.
By the time I pray (as a church elder) next, our area will be facing a peak of Covid-19 admissions. Easter would have passed. A good chunk of our congregation works in government, another good chunk works in healthcare. There are a number of singles in our church, as well as members with parents whom they are physically separated from. Most everyone would have been in isolation, confined with their families or roommates or just themselves, for almost a month. I sense stoic strength but also angst and sadness. I also sense a kind of restlessness, a desire to be more active or emotional, a yearning for catharsis maybe.
In this context, the notion of “philanthropy” might seem like too weak a word, too passive a gesture. It sounds like throwing money at a problem or making only the slightest overture of care, whereas in the past the term “philanthropy” might have seemed grandiose. That feels like a good starting place to me. I can go in a lot of other directions, but it’s better to stick to one main idea that seems deep and relevant.
My next guiding question is: How does Scripture speak to these thoughts? This question usually breaks down for me into three corollaries: “What is our sinfulness?,” “Who is God?,” and “What hope does the gospel give?”
By the sinfulness inquiry, I don’t mean to imply that having concerns is sinful. Instead, I want to reflect on how our concerns reflects our mortal limitations, immanent temptations, and spiritual desires.
Well, I think we have the ultimate helplessness of the human condition — and the natural desire for control and significance. There is also a desire for closure, for satisfaction, to see good and right triumph over suffering. And there is a profound denial that instead of the solution, we are the problem, and it sometimes takes massive systemic failures for us to realize how foolish, small-minded, and short-sighted we are.
In contrast, Scripture tells of a God who is all-powerful, sovereign over time and creation. His will is absolute; His word is efficacious. Easter celebrates His triumph over death and sin. And His philanthropy was one of covenant-keeping through revelation, sacrifice, and promise. He forms, through improbable candidates, ambassadors of His redemption.
Which leads us to the Gospel. The good news of Easter is that of a catharsis already achieved. After eons of frustration and experimentation with idols, ages of slavery under laws both worldly and godly, generations of anticipation of a promised hope, God provides a lamb for our atonement, which turns out to be a lion for our worship. Under His aegis we have the righteousness, power, and blessing to enact a kingdom reality in a still-fallen world. What we do in God’s name gets magnified in an eternal dimension.
Those last couple of paragraphs, I should say, took a while to write, with a lot of pacing around. All of this takes some time and reflection; nothing is as easy as it looks. And when I usually do this, I don’t actually write it all out; I just scribble notes on scraps of paper.
Do I have a prayer yet? No. I have some direction and some material, but there’s still a lot of shagginess here. I need to now hunker down and try to crystallize what I have into something with a beginning, middle, and end.
Beginning. I always start by writing out my introductory patter — just because it’s pretty easy to do, and it gets a little momentum going.
Hi, I’m Tom. I’m an elder here at NewCity, and this week we’re going to pray on our church’s mission of philanthropy. While we’re all shuttered up inside our homes, we may feel stymied from serving each other. We may even feel helpless or hopeless in the face of such enormous changes. Let’s pray through those fears.
This is slightly different from how I usually start; I want to address the atypical context of this prayer. It also hints at the theme to come.
Now to start. How do I want to address God? I think here I want to emphasize Christ in his incarnation and victory.
Dear Lord, you came into a world frustrated in its fallenness, a world emasculated in sin. You took on our darkness and disease and frailty and let it suffocate you on the cross. But on the third day, you broke free, and our chains fell away.
I tend to write slowly, picking my way through diction, feeling out the sound of phrases in my mind. I’m a sucker for alliteration, like the F’s in “frustrated…fallenness…frailty…free.” “Emasculated” is a powerful, almost shocking, word that emphasizes our crippled agency. “Disease” and “suffocate” are nods to the pandemic. I have to be careful not to be too heavy-handed with such allusions.
I think there’s a rhetorical opportunity with “But on the third day.” It feels a little bit like a gospel call-out, and repeating the phrase might build its effect. But if I’m going to repeat it, what concepts do I want to fold into it?
You suffered in a mortal body — wept, grew tired, grew hungry — let it break, let it bleed, let it die. But on the third day, you rose and greeted us with open arms, in a body still scarred by your sacrifice.
You were left utterly alone, abandoned by your disciples, rejected by your people, separated from yourself, the face of the Father turned away. But on the third day, you gathered back your flock, one by one, calling to each who would hear, forming them into a church.
So I chose how Christ suffered and conquered bodily then socially because these are the prevailing anxieties of our current climate. I’m starting to pile on short phrases and clauses to extend sentences because they’re useful in building up rhythm and tension.
The drama I’m building is a little risky. It can easily start to sound overreaching and bombastic — something I’m sure my other prayers can be faulted for. I think it’s worth going for here because the prayer is addressing a longing for significance and story and catharsis.
I’m also aiming for that last phrase (“forming them into a church”) because that would give me a good transition into the topic of philanthropy.
We, too, then are your body, formed in your victory but not yet in full glory. Let us honor it faithfully, from the most visible part to the most vulnerable. Let the members of this church continue to serve each other, not programmatically, but out of the creativity and generosity of your compassion.
This takes advantage of Paul’s metaphor of the church as compared to Christ’s physical body. To honor the church is to honor Jesus himself. I modified the exhortation to tailor it to our isolated circumstances. I don’t use the word “philanthropy” at all in the prayer because I think we’re talking about something more broad, less technical.
What I still think I need to address is our power in Christ. Here I think I’m going to pick up a phrase from a recent devotion in Luke that has been lingering in my head.
Unworthy though we are, you have redeemed us and elected us for such a time as this. Take our measure, press it down, shake it together, and let it run over for your good and sovereign will.
Quoting Scripture (appropriately) always elevates a prayer. The references to Esther and Luke brings a depth that would normally take whole paragraphs to conjure.
That might be it for the main section. I usually leave writing out the specific entreaties at the end until the night before. I’ll recall specific conversations I’ve had and also check the shepherding notes compiled together by the pastoral staff.
Before wrapping it all up, it’s worth considering how the prayer might be received by different kinds of people in the church: kids, parents, seekers, Republicans, etc. Will they find something edifying in it? Something provocative? Who has been overlooked?
Once I give it that once-over, I try to let it go. Hopefully you were in God’s hands when you wrote it, and now it will be in His hands once you deliver it.
Tom Kim 