1. Introduction
This short guide is intended to help you lead other people in prayer. I hope it will be useful to all those who lead prayer in their churches and gatherings, however long you have been doing it. However, I have tried to start from the very beginning for those who have no experience and build up to more creative material for those who have begun to stretch their wings. If you have been asked to lead prayers in your church for the first time and have no idea where or how to start, then this book is for you – particularly its opening chapters – before you progress to more adventurous ways of doing things later in the book. If you have been leading intercessions for some time and want to explore how to develop them further, in different ways, and in various contexts, then this book is also for you – particularly its later chapters – although you might well find it helpful to rehearse the basic underlying principles in its early sections.
Nearly every time I have presided at an act of worship in another church (often one in a vacancy), I have asked a churchwarden what that congregation does at various points in the service, including the prayers of intercession. I have nearly always been given the same answer: ‘Oh, we just do it the normal way.’ It is astonishing just how many and varied the ‘normal’ ways of the Church of England are! What is normal in one place is quite new or strange in another. I hope this guide will be of use across many congregations, and not only within the Church of England, but it is impossible to cater for every local variation. I hope, however, that most churches, and especially those joining in Common Worship, will be able easily to recognize their own practice.
I have written this guide as a ‘how to’ manual. It contains some sample forms of the intercessions, practical guidance for carrying out this ministry, and some further ideas for you to explore. It may, therefore, like many ‘how to’ guides, seem more prescriptive than it is intended to be. What is offered here are guidelines for good practice, and the starting point from which to develop your own good practice. Among all the detailed suggestions, however, there is one piece of advice that needs to come first, head and shoulders above everything else, and is essentially the only ‘rule’ in this book. You are leading people in prayer, not praying in front of other people. The congregation don’t need to enjoy your eloquence, admire your deep and orthodox theology, or take pleasure in the fine sound of your wonderfully clear voice. They need to be engaged in prayer.
Anything else that is said in the booklet seeks to support that fundamental point. It is about helping you, as a leader of people’s prayers, actually to lead them in their own praying.
2. A word about prayer
Nearly everything in this book is practical, and there are many other guides around to explain the theology and theory. However, it seems important to include a short word about the Church’s understanding of prayer. There is a large range of activities that can come under that heading, but there is something characteristically Christian about corporate intercession. According to St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus said: ‘If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’ (Matthew 18.19–20). When he taught people to pray, that prayer began ‘Our Father in heaven’ (Matthew 6.9) and continued with petitions for God’s kingdom and human needs. In both cases, prayer is something done together with at least one other person and includes prayers of asking, such as ‘Give us today our daily bread’. Jesus wants his followers to live with a deep and radical trust in God, and he wants them to live as a new family. The pattern of prayer he teaches is one that joins both these themes: seeking God’s kingdom in prayer and action is something that is done together, because in God’s kingdom we will live together.
The significance of prayer is highlighted in the Common Worship baptism and confirmation services by the provision of prayers of intercession as the first activity for the newly initiated. The guidance note says that ‘Such prayers draw the newly baptized into the praying Church of which they are now a part. It may be appropriate for the newly baptized to introduce sections of these prayers.’ First, prayer is a foundational activity of the Church; secondly, it is one of the great privileges of the baptized to be able to pray – to call God ‘Father’ and to exercise the priestly responsibility of the Church to intercede for all creation. The Spirit, given in baptism and renewed in confirmation, is the one who enables us to call out ‘Abba, Father’ (Galatians 4.6) and who also ‘intercedes for the saints according to the will of God’ (Romans 8.27). It is an essential part of the gift of the Spirit that through the Spirit God enables us to pray. One of the very important features of contemporary church life is the recovery of this sense of the calling of all the baptized, not only the ordained, to share in Christ’s ministry. Praying, and helping others to pray, is one of the characteristic ways baptism makes a difference to our lives as God calls us to share the priestly ministry of Christ’s intercession for all God’s creation.
We learn much about prayer simply through praying with one another. That may begin at home, or in school, as well as in church. Leading intercessions is one of the ways we support others, not only by helping them to pray together then and there in church, but also by feeding their life of personal prayer. Traditionally, Anglican prayer has been fed and nurtured by the words and phrases of the Prayer Book and other liturgies. These still provide a significant part of the vocabulary of prayer that we can draw on, but those who lead prayer are continually enlarging, enriching, and updating the repertoire of phrases and themes everyone can draw on in personal prayer.
Preparation is important in all this. There’s an apocryphal story of a priest who decided that to make a little bit of free space in a very full and busy week he would use some of his sermon preparation time to relax, and risk extemporizing his Sunday evening sermon. After all, he reasoned, the congregation was quite small. He realized to his horror as he began the service that the bishop had just come in quietly and was sitting at the back of the church. This panicked him, and his sermon was, quite frankly, truly dreadful. At the door afterwards he apologized: ‘Bishop, I’m sorry about the sermon. Tonight I was relying on the Holy Spirit, but next week I shall do better.’
People sometimes take the view that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is synonymous with spontaneity. After all, Jesus says: ‘Say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit’ (Mark 13.11). However, he is very clear in the context that ‘at that time’ is when the disciples are being put on trial for their faith. I certainly do not want to denigrate spontaneous prayer; it has an important and vital place, particularly in small groups. Nonetheless, past generations were trained in speaking in a way in which our sound-bite culture is not, and most of us will benefit from significant preparation and writing. The Holy Spirit can and does work through careful reflection, alone at a desk, table, or computer, as much as in front of others. Preparation is about putting prayer as well as thought into the prayers. The remainder of this book is intended to guide that practical and prayerful work of preparation.
Note
3. The basic pattern
The most common pattern of intercession is one we have come to know first from the Alternative Service Book 1980, and now from Common Worship. It has five main sections, together with a separate beginning and ending. Those sections are:
¶ The Church of Christ
¶ Creation, human society, the Sovereign and those in authority
¶ The local community
¶ Those who suffer
¶ The communion of saints.
Many people find it helpful to get this basic structure right, and to keep it fairly consistent, since familiarity will help people join in. Everyone knows what’s coming, and also that the main areas of people’s concerns will be covered. Without a structure like this, someone might start off praying for the sick, for instance, while a member of the congregation is wondering whether they’ll ever get round to praying for a country recently affected by an earthquake. A common structure helps participation, although there may be occasions when it’s clearly right to do something different. A structure also acts as a basic checklist for you when you are planning the intercessions.
The Common Worship sample text
Here is one of the most familiar forms of the prayers from Common Worship. You will see this follows the basic thematic structure outlined above.
In the power of the Spirit and in union with Christ,
let us pray to the Father.
Almighty God, our heavenly Father,
you promised through your Son Jesus Christ
to hear us when we pray in faith.
Strengthen N our bishop and all your Church in the service of Christ,...
