Prayer as drama

After our weekly noontime planning meeting of la Fonderie, I had a good discussion with Jim Beise about having a Paris arts team with our organization. Some good questions were raised about how this team might look. One thing important to both of us is "non-branding" (i.e., not having this project as being solely owned by any one organization that sponsors it). This goes against the tendency of many mission executives to "claim" a successful ministry project at their own.

Afterwards, I took an hour in a local café to start reading Kyle Lake's (Re)understanding Prayer: A Fresh Approach to Conversation with God (Relevant Books: Orlando, 2005). He was a young and visionary pastor who tragically died of electrocution while doing a baptism at his church in Waco, Texas.

Chapter 6 is titled "Prayer as Drama." Here are some of his more challenging words.

If every church is a family, then specific to every church is a family script. But rather than involving behaviors like alcoholism, suicide, or domestic violence, a church's script has to do with its own unwritten codes of Christian behavior: how to pray, read the Bible, worship, evangelize, counsel, even communicate. (p. 43)

It is in our conversations with God that I think the unfiltered way of a child provides clear, unmistakable direction. Surely, prayer is what happens when you are no longer conscious of how you look or how you sound. It is the uninhibited space where costumes and scripts are laid aside. Especially religious ones. Ironically, if we are serious about following Christ, I would propose that the number one part we as Christians must sacrifice on a daily basis is the script of spirituality. It is the desire to scale spiritual heights--to become the next super-spiritual heavyweight--that has the greatest potential to pull us away from the actual following of Christ. (pp. 51-52)

There is an aspect of our life in prayer, then, that demands an inward attentiveness to words and behaviors cloaked in spirituality. In order for us to be people of truth from the inside out, we must develop a constant suspicion toward the very thing in which we're involved--religion. For this reason, I suggest the abandonment of all insider language and spiritual clichés while praying. (p. 53)

If you've spent any length of time in a church setting, then truthful speech will demand some serious excavation. You must be willing to locate and uncover the scripts that have been handed down for generations in regard to the way you should pray, what you should say, which words and phrases can supposedly travel the greatest distance. The irony here is that many times those who've lived the majority of their lives outside of the church have an easier time being truthful than those from within. (p. 59)

With this in mind, I suggest a list of words that need to be mined for meaning. This list is by no means exhaustive. In fact, I wonder how many more words and phrases you could add? In offering this list, I have operated by this rule of thumb: If I can't use other "real-life" words to articulate what I'm saying, there's a good chance I don't know what I mean or for what I'm actually praying. (p. 61)

The lost--Rule of thumb: references to a group of people that could come across disrespectful or demeaning shouldn't have any place in our conversations, whether conversations with God or conversations with friends. A possible alternative: "people outside of the church." (p. 62)

Obviously, my aim here has been to unload some of the words and phrases that have been employed far too long. My fear: that 90 percent of our communication with God has become cliché, a subconscious crutch. My target: simple conversation with God where tired, vacant language is abandoned and replaced with truthful speech. (pp. 65-66)

Perhaps Christ brings rescue not just to those loaded down with addictions, greed, lust, and self-absorption, but even to those loaded down with religion. After all, He did say, "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out with religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I wan't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30, MSG) (p. 67)