The purpose of this short paper is to encourage you in the area of public prayer and Bible reading to be prepared. As a church, this is one area our church needed some more thought and effort.
Firstly, it must be said that it is a great privilege to lead God’s people in prayer and the reading of God’s Word, wherever it is. Whether it is in Prayer and Bible study groups, or church or leaders meetings, if anyone asks you to read or pray, remember what a privilege it is! You are speaking the Words of God. You are praying to the almighty author of the universe. What a privilege!
Secondly, you are involved in serving the congregation. You are doing something very loving for us. You will be helping us learn about God, or helping us pray to God. However this does not happen automatically. This is the point I wish to make most strongly. You need to prepare! You will need to prepare the passage you will be reading, and if praying, almost certainly write your prayer out word for word. The time spent in preparation will differ from person to person, but if you are new to praying at church or reading the Bible, I don’t think you can prepare in less than 30 minutes. This means, that if someone asks you to pray, and you are not given enough time, you may need to say that you can’t do it. The meeting leaders need to give you time to prepare, and I need to give the meeting leaders the passage so they can ask you in time!
Why does it take this long to prepare? Well, with reading the Bible out loud, you need to understand the passage if we as the congregation are to have any hope of understanding the passage. It’s more than just understanding the meaning of the words or how to pronounce the words. You need to understand what is being said and often, in what manner it was said (angry, sad, contemplative, etc). This means that you will have to read the passage at least 3 or 4 times, work out by whom and to whom it is written, and for what reason. You may need to ring someone up or consult a commentary if you are stuck on a word or sentence that doesn’t make sense to you. Once you have understood the text, you may need to read it out loud a couple of times in front of the mirror.
An example may help illustrate what I am saying. If you were asked to read Galatians chapter 1, where Paul speaks of being astonished that the Galatians have deserted the gospel, and you read it ‘flatly’, without any emotion at all, as though you were reading out the answers to bingo at the local senior citizens club, we as the listeners will almost certainly fail to fully understand what is being said. The words will wash over us, we will fail to be affected (unless we are a very attentive reader), and worse, we will probably switch off from listening altogether. Contrast this with Psalm 5, which is a prayer to God. If you were asked to read Psalm 5, and you read it with the feistiness of Galatians 1, we would certainly listen, but be so confused that we would fail to follow you.
There are some other things to remember too when reading the Bible out loud- pausing and stressing certain words will alter the meaning of a sentence. So if we take a simple sentence- “the cat sat on the mat”. By stressing different words you can change the meaning of the sentence. “THE cat sat on the mat” is a statement about which particular cat sat on the mat. “ the CAT sat on the mat” is a statement about which type of animal sat on the mat. “the cat SAT on the mat” is a statement about the bodily stance of the cat while sitting on the mat- it sat, rather than lied down or stood…..and so on. As you read you will make all sorts of decisions about which words to stress, where to pause, which bits to read fast or slow, and so on. But you need to understand the passage in order to make these decisions properly.
Praying publicly in church takes time to prepare too. We have lots of prayer points at the back of the outline each week and these will be sent to you if you are praying. The meeting leader will tell you which points to pray for. We will usually not have time to pray through all the points.
What not to do, is to just read out the points. Or to try to ‘add-lib’ as you go. When we are praying we need to remember that we are leading others in prayer. You will be setting an example for others in what and how you pray. It is very hard up-front to make our prayers intelligent, and biblical if we have not put effort into them beforehand. For me, I need to write them out.
Don’t forget too, what prayer is about. It is about praying in line with God’s purposes for the world. Make sure that you read the Bible and especially the passage of the day, and see if you can pray those things that God wants us to pray for.
As well as the content of the prayer, the manner in which we pray is also important.
Don’t just read your prayer like you are reading out a shopping list. Pray your prayer. It sounds obvious doesn’t it, and we all appreciate it when someone prays so that it sounds like they mean it. This is harder to do, and takes more experience up-front, for nervousness will affect it. But having said that, if you are prepared, there’s no reason to be nervous.
I hope this has been helpful. I have certainly not wanted to make public reading and public prayer sound so hard so that people are scared off from praying or reading the Bible altogether. However I do want to urge you to prepare. You can’t expect to be able to get up and read the Bible without having prepared. Reading the Bible and praying in church are very very VERY worthwhile things to be involved in and to give time to. Be keen, be eager!!,… but as they say in the boy scouts- Be prepared!.
Andrew Moore