Over the previous a number of years, I’ve taught programs to seminarians and pastoral interns on the theology and observe of worship within the Reformed custom. A part of the syllabus requires college students to work together with worship companies posted on-line, evaluating the weather, coherence, and execution of the liturgy. Providers are usually not prescreened, and we choose church buildings with varied worship types across the PCA.
The task requires college students to critically interact worship companies, cultivating a acutely aware interplay with issues that often fly beneath the radar. After reviewing a major variety of companies, a number of constant liturgical themes have surfaced that deserve remark.
Beforehand I surveyed the roles of the call to worship and confession of sin in PCA worship companies. This essay focuses on intercessory prayer by exploring the historic roots of Reformed observe, reflecting on fashionable observe, and contemplating just a few suggestions for renewal.
Historic Roots of the Intercessory Prayer
The Listing for the Public Worship of God presents a strong information for the intercessory prayer consisting of eight main sections:
- a strong confession of sin;
- a petition for God to guarantee his youngsters of their pardon in Jesus Christ;
- a petition for sanctification by the Spirit, power in temptation, and perseverance till demise;
- a petition for the advance of God’s kingdom all through the nations;
- a petition for all in governing authority, together with a prayer for pastors;
- a petition for the ordinances of God celebrated and loved on the Sabbath to result in fellowship with God;
- a petition for a fuller and extra good communion with Jesus Christ; and
- a prayer for the preaching of the Phrase and for the Spirit to illumine and sanctify God’s folks.
Ministers additionally had the liberty so as to add prayers of thanksgiving to the intercessory prayer.1 This substantive method to the pastoral prayer within the Listing follows the instance of the Reformed liturgies that preceded it.
As an illustration, John Knox provides an intercessory prayer, or recommends one thing prefer it, to be mentioned after the sermon. The prayer accommodates 9 main petitions: (1) a petition for God to make the preaching of his Phrase fruitful; (2) a request for the assistance of the Holy Spirit to information the congregation that their petitions be agreeable to God’s will; (3) a petition for assist in weak spot and temptation; (4) a petition for all males to consider the gospel; (5) a petition for pastors and ministers to be trustworthy to God of their method of life and doctrine; (6) a petition for these in governing authority; (7) a petition for these bothered with tribulation in physique or thoughts; (8) a petition for these persecuted for his or her religion; and (9) the Lord’s Prayer.2 The prayer is filled with Scriptural quotations and allusions, as Knox sought to supply a complete prayer that accorded with Scriptural commandments.
Regardless of the similarity in content material, the Listing of Worship additionally considerably differs from the intercessory prayers of the Reformed custom, significantly concerning the prayer’s location within the liturgical order. The principal Protestant liturgies—these of Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, and John Knox—all place the intercessory prayer after the sermon. The liturgies of Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger don’t.3
Within the liturgy of John Calvin, the intercessory prayer adopted the preaching of God’s Phrase4 and displays a deep theological conviction. In his commentary on John 17:1, Calvin roots the order in Jesus’ instance from his higher room discourse and Excessive Priestly prayer. He writes:
Now he [Jesus] betakes himself to prayer; and that is accurately, for doctrine is chilly except it’s given divine efficacy. He due to this fact exhibits lecturers an instance, that they need to not solely occupy themselves in sowing the Phrase, however by mixing their prayers with it ought to implore God’s assist, that his blessing ought to make their work fruitful. In brief, this prayer of Christ is, because it had been, the seal of the previous educating, each that it is likely to be ratified in itself and that it’d get hold of full authority with the disciples.5
For Calvin, our Lord Jesus units an instance that ministers are to comply with in John 13-17 by sowing the Phrase and sealing it with prayer. Calvin believed that prayer following the sermon highlighted, not diminished, the importance of God’s Phrase. Given this, the broad pastoral intercession all the time adopted the sermon in Calvin’s liturgies in Strasbourg and Geneva.
Although it accommodates comparable content material, the Listing differs from the intercessory prayers of the Reformed custom by placing the prayer in a special place within the liturgy. Within the Listing, the divines judged that it was most handy for the intercessory prayer to be situated previous to the sermon. Some petitions, together with the Lord’s Prayer, had been beneficial for after the sermon. Nonetheless, the primary intercessory prayer was to precede the sermon.
Sure delegates loyal to Knox’s liturgy objected strongly to this innovation which led the committee to incorporate a provision for the minister to defer some petitions till after the sermon.6 In line with the final method of the Listing, ministers had been permitted to make use of their discretion, allowing flexibility whereas additionally stating a choice that formed subsequent Presbyterian observe.7
Fashionable Intercessory Prayers
In fashionable Presbyterian worship, like in broader evangelicalism, the intercessory prayer is the service’s chief weak spot. This prayer in classical type was an prolonged pastoral supplication that adopted the sermon and lined a broad vary of petitions, however many ministers within the PCA in the present day give perfunctory consideration to the intercessory prayer.
Fashionable intercessory prayers exhibit 4 essential deficiencies.
First, little time within the liturgical order is dedicated to the intercessory prayer. In lots of circumstances, the prayer is nothing greater than a barely prolonged prayer for illumination forward of the sermon. Some church buildings even omit the intercessory prayer altogether, preferring a liturgy that prioritizes congregational singing and the sermon solely. My college students and I noticed this alarming observe in a 75-minute service that devoted over 40 minutes to the sermon whereas neglecting the intercessory prayer altogether.
Second, the substance of recent intercessory prayers is anemic compared to their historic ancestors. The content material is often restricted to a really slender set of native considerations, not the broader food plan commanded in Scripture and beneficial within the Listing and Reformed custom.
Third, ministers are often ill-prepared for the prayer, lapsing into cliches and stumbling over themselves. Substance and magnificence are sacrificed on the altar of authenticity, brevity, and freedom.
Lastly, the intercessory prayer, virtually universally, precedes the sermon within the liturgical order of PCA church buildings. Though it follows the Listing, this order dislocates the prayers of the congregation from listening to the Phrase of God, severing the dialogical relationship between the Phrase and prayer.
Within the Reformed custom, prayer is the response of adopted youngsters to a loving Father who has made us his personal within the true Son, Jesus Christ, and despatched the Spirit into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”8 We communicate to God solely as a result of he has first spoken to us. God’s gracious guarantees guarantee us that we are going to acquire an viewers with him by way of Jesus Christ, inducing us to wish. The order of intercessory prayer following the studying and preaching of the Phrase preserves this theological conviction in liturgical observe.
Moreover, the dislocation of the intercessory prayer from the sermon hinders ministers from inducing intercessory prayer with any sense of a broader theological narrative within the service. As an illustration, after the sermon, the minister can lead the congregation into the intercessory prayer with the next transition: “Having heard God’s Phrase this morning and studying of all of the gracious advantages which can be ours in Jesus Christ, let’s take up our privilege, as little kids, to make our requests recognized to him.”
The sort of transition subtly introduces the congregation to a story that connects the weather of the liturgy and encourages the congregation to have interaction on the premise of God’s grace. Sadly, most liturgical transitions are extra procedural because the minister marches by way of the weather of worship and not using a sense of a theological narrative that ties the weather collectively.
Suggestions for Renewal
To treatment these deficiencies, I’ve two essential suggestions.
First, ministers want to order substantial time through the week for making ready the intercessory prayer. Calvin famous that not each minister has the present of extemporaneous prayer. Due to this fact, he suggested these missing the present to make use of a ready prayer.9 Preparation doesn’t stifle the Spirit. Preparation permits intentionality, forethought, and freedom. By making ready, ministers can develop a wealthy palette of petitions with Scriptural quotations and allusions woven into the material of the prayer.
Pastors also can research the prayers of the Reformed custom, to not repeat them, however to study from them. The intercessory prayer, as with its Reformed predecessors, can develop into a strong rhetorical occasion through which the congregation attracts close to to the Father in and thru the Son by the Spirit.
Moreover, ministers have to focus consideration on the artwork of public prayer. The intercessory prayer ought to contain the substance, rhetoric, and pathos of a sermon. The minister must exhibit to the congregation what full of life communion with God seems like by way of the intercessory prayer. Sadly, Reformed theological training presents little instruction in the direction of this finish, so we forfeit the chance.
Second, ministers have to mirror on the placement of the intercessory prayer within the liturgy. Few appear conscious of the broader Reformed observe of finding the intercessory prayer after listening to God’s Phrase. Even fewer appear conscious of the theological rationale behind this liturgical observe. The Phrase is to be sown with prayer.
Moreover, there’s a dialogical ingredient to the order that preserves the connection between grace and gratitude: we communicate to God in prayer as a result of we have now been spoken to in his Phrase. After listening to the Phrase, we’re ready to method our heavenly Father by way of our Mediator, Jesus Christ, to make intercessions in accord together with his will by the Spirit.
Contemplating the impoverished state of prayer in company worship, the second presents the PCA a chance to entertain a theological dialogue concerning the liturgical location of the intercessory prayer that may contribute to the renewal of this implies of grace.
Conclusion
Intercessory prayer has fallen on onerous occasions. Congregations would profit from ministers exploring the riches of intercessory prayer within the Reformed custom, increasing the content material of their prayers, contemplating how one can develop within the artwork of public prayer, and reflecting on the placement of the intercessory prayer within the liturgical order. Intercessory prayer is a present through which we commune with our heavenly Father by way of Jesus Christ—it’s a technique of grace. Let’s do all the pieces attainable to avail ourselves of the privilege we have now because the adopted little kids of God.
Chuck Colson serves as senior pastor of Christ Church Presbyterian in Jacksonville, Florida, and likewise serves as visitor lecturer at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.
1Westminster Confession of Religion (Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 2001), 376-382.
2Mark Earngey and Jonathan Gibson (eds.), Reformation Worship (Greensboro: New Development Press, 2018), 574-577.
3For a pleasant compilation, see Earngey and Gibson, Reformation, 669-684.
4Earngey and Gibson, Reformation, 311-317.
5Commentary on John 17:1, Calvin’s New Testomony Commentaries 5:134.
6Hughes Oliphant Previous, Worship: Reformed In keeping with Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 102-103.
7As an illustration, the PCA’s Listing for Worship recommends a full and complete prayer previous to the sermon (BCO 52-2).
8Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15
9Previous, Worship, 101.
