Pastoral Prayer following the US Presidential Inauguration

Holy God:

We give you thank for the gift of your Son, who has given us new life, who has offered us a new way of life.  We thank you that through our shared love of the living Christ, we have become true family with one another.  Jesus, you said that to know you is to have eternal life.  And so, teach us today what it means to live in the fullness of that life, to walk as a heavenly people, to live with heaven in our hearts, to share the eternal life of the eternal kingdom in all our living in this world.  Help us to tread lightly on this good earth, to remember where we have come from and where we will go to, to taste the eternal banquet even now as we live this life in living loving relationship with you and with your people with whom we will live forever.

You have blessed us to be a blessing.  We thank you for the gift of living in a good land.  On this inaugural week, we offer intercession for the new president, Donald Trump, his family, his administration and all who advise him. We pray for our federal legislature, especially those newly elected. Shape all of their hearts, guide their thinking, help them to have just courage and compassionate sensitivity, to care and advocate for all citizens, to speak with wisdom, clarity, and discretion, to act with the highest ethical standards and rise above even the appearance of corruption.  We also ask that you would bless our outgoing president, Barack Obama, and his family. May he feel the gratitude of the nation for his service and may you bless and guide him in his service to come.  

Forgive us, holy God, when we have succumbed to the temptation to enter into the increasingly uncharitable partisanship of our culture.  Help us to rise above, to speak the truth in love, to listen more than we speak, to find solidarity with those who are different than us.  May we never give in to the contempt so often expressed in our culture.  May we always remember that we serve a Lord who commanded us to love our enemies and demonstrated his love to us while we were yet sinners and rebels to your kingdom.

Amen.

A Prayer for the Upcoming Election

Lord, you taught us to pray for those in authority over us, to pray for leaders and for your blessing to rest upon every land you would send us. We have been blessed to live in a good land, a nation that lets us worship and offer witness to our faith freely. We are blessed to live in abundance and freedom. We thank you for a land without dictators, a land governed by its own people, a land in which we have a say in our leadership at every level of government. 

We confess that many of us have allowed our nation’s election to fill us with anxiety, especially in this year. Many of us have participated in the demonizing of our opponents and have often overlooked and excused the failings of those we support. We have held uncharitable thoughts and shared uncharitable words about those whose views are different than our own.  

In just a few days, this election will be over, and no matter who wins, our nation will need to find healing. So, Lord, may your people, followers, become healers of the breach. Make us people who speak the truth in love, who refuse to slander our opponents, who seek common ground, who serve and listen and love our enemies. We pray that you would guide this election this week. We pray also that you would guide us as we begin the work of healing in our nation afterwards.

Pastoral Prayer for September 11, 2016 (inspired by the Parable of the Lost Sheep and Remembrance of 9/11/01)

Holy God:

Once again, we come before you in humility and joy, offering our hearts, our lives, our prayer to you.

We thank you for the love we have found in your son Jesus Christ, who took flesh and died, who rose from the grave on the third day, because, as he said, he came to seek and to save the lost.  We have been lost—we have known what it means to be completely unable to save ourselves, completely without direction, trying to make our way in the world and making everything worse through out own efforts.  We have known what it means to take our lives apart with our own hands, to hurt the ones who love us the most.

And we know what it means to feel the grip of your grace grabbing ahold of us, drawing us to your side, turning us back to truth, to wholeness, to sanity, to love, to joy.  We who claim your name have experienced the tremendous joy of being found.

The hymn writer confessed as we confess to you, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” We, too, have been prone to wander once again.  So we ask you to find us through your grace today. draw us to yourself.  may we feel the joy we found at the first.  

If anyone here today has yet to taste of the joy of your grace, we ask that you would reach out to that one this morning.  We ask, Lord, that no one would leave this service without having been born anew through a gift of your grace.

Today, Father, this nation and the nations of the world remember a dark and tragic day fifteen years ago in which the human family was torn asunder by an evil act. Ever since, we have, as a global community, wandered from you in many ways. None of us could have imagined on that day the rage, the violence, the killing and misunderstanding that would come.  we are still trying to figure out how to put things back together.  We don’t know how to stabilize the world, to return to a world without hatred and fear between nations, regions, religions, and political opinions. One evil act seems to have spawned one outpouring of hate after another, a cycle of recrimination and untruth.  Our efforts to fix it have failed. And so, Lord, we cry out for mercy. Bring peace to our world. Heal the wounds of our world.  May we be ready to allow you to be our shepherd.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for September 4, 2016

Holy God:

We thank you for the love of Jesus Christ.  We praise you today because we have found life in him.  He has made us new people.  He has made us family with each other .  He has given hope to our world.  In sending Jesus to the cross, you put to death death itself, and all that is lifeless and broken.  In raising him to new life, you opened up the beginning of all things being made new, everything in heaven and on earth being restored.

We openly admit to you, Lord, that living in this world is often difficult.  We have come today believing in our heads that what Christ has done is true and real.  And yet, all that we face causes us to struggle to have a mind and heart to live as people who trust what Christ’s work has done.  We believe that he has conquered sin and death, and yet we are weighed down by the effects of sin and death.  We struggle to live as free people.  We struggle to overcome despair.  We struggle to overcome discouragement.  We forget who we are.

And so, our living is often halfhearted.  We live with one foot in heaven and one foot in the ways of the world.  We try to live Christ’s way, but we are so used to the old way that we find ourselves constantly compromising, equivocating.

Today, we ask that you would give us new life.  Give us fresh vision.  Overwhelm us with your spirit.  Renew us. Restore us.

We give our lives entirely to you.  Have us as your own. Every choice, every dime, every moment, every relationship.  body, mind, soul, spirit.  The good, the bad the ugly.  Our businesses, our children, our marriages.  Our thoughts, our dreams.  Our hurts and sorrows.  Our gifts and our shame.  Have us entirely.  Make us entirely a people whose heart and life is entirely dedicated, entirely consumed, entirely shaped by Jesus.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer (August 28, 2016)

Holy God:

We praise you for you are worthy of praise.  You are great, greater than all we can ever know.  You are all wisdom, all knowledge, all power, all goodness.  Everything belongs to you, and all things and all people have been made to praise you.  

And so, we have gathered in your house and with your people to offer the sacrifice of praise.  We join our voices in song, we join our hearts and prayer, we approach you with open hearts and open ears, waiting upon a word from you.  

We open our lives to you. May the words from your holy book, the words from your beloved son, reshape the way we see ourselves and our world.  May we, each and every one, leave different than we arrived.  Today, make us a little more joyful, a little more holy, a little more like Jesus. Free us from our ways, our thinking. Free us from what we’ve been taught, what we’ve always done.  

Make us into a people who serve you.  Make us into true followers of your Son Jesus Christ.  we yield to his ways, even though we don’t always understand them.  Sometimes they seem so foreign to us, sometimes Jesus teachings seem so impractical to us.  We are born selfish creatures, and he has taught us to yield our lives in humble service and joyful abandon.  We have come to the end of our ways—what we have always done is no longer working for us. So, holy God, teach us your ways today.  Grace us to live in your way.

Our hearts break for those who have been affected by recent floods in Louisiana.  Lord, be merciful to the victims of this disaster, and to all who are affected by natural disasters around the world.  Turn our hearts to compassion to ease the sufferings of others.  May our faith be of action and never of words alone.

Amen.    

Thoughts on Young People's Ministry

I've been very blessed in my new appointment to get actively involved in ministries with children and youth, and so I've had opportunity to think through and share my thoughts on these ministries.  After I shared my thoughts to a group discussing children's ministry, one of the participants asked me to share them more broadly.  So here we go.

Why are ministries with young people important, and who should be involved in ministries to young people?

Psalm 78 recites the story of God's redemptive work throughout Hebrew history.  Before the story is told, the psalmist says, "We will not hide them from their children; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done (Psalm 78:4)."

I have a Jewish uncle.  He almost completely abandoned practice of Judaism after his Bar Mitzvah. But when he had children, he was absolutely insistent that they go to Hebrew school, prepare for Bat Mitzvah, celebrate holidays, etc. When I asked him why, he said, "I'm part of a people who have had this faith for thousands of years. I don't have the right to take it away from my children."

We live in a time when many children, including children who are raised in homes that consider themselves "Christian," no longer know the basics of the faith. They have never sung "Amazing Grace" or "Jesus Loves Me This I Know." They don't know John 3:16. The don't know who Jesus was, or that he died on a cross, or that Easter is about his resurrection, or even that Christmas is about the celebration of his birth. They've never heard of the Ten Commandments and certainly have no idea what they are. It's hard for those of us who grew up in Christian culture to comprehend, but please trust me that this is true.

These things are precious to us and they were offered to us as a gift from others.  We have no right to hide them from our children.  And all children are God's children. Young people's ministry is EVERYONE'S responsibility.

We take this responsibility upon ourselves every time a child is baptized in our gathering.  We promise to "surround this child with a community of love and forgiveness, that s/he may grow in his/her service to others. We will pray for him/her that s/he may be a true disciple who walk in the way that leads to life."  This is a promise for the whole community. Young people's ministry is not the work of a staff person, a children's council, a few ladies, or the parents of the children alone.  Ministries with young people are a central task of the entire community of faith, every single person. Not everyone is suited to lead a children's moment or lead a small group. But everyone can do something (even if it's taking out the garbage during VBS) to strengthen ministries with young people and insure that the congregation keeps its promise.

I firmly believe that it is wrong for clergy to absolve themselves of responsibility for young people's ministry by shuffling off the work of children's ministry or youth ministry to a children's ministry or youth ministry staff person.  These staff people are necessary and important and churches must employ them in order to allow clergy to do the many things that they must do.  But a pastor is called to be a pastor to all the people.

In our United Methodist ordination charge, we are asked, "Will you diligently instruct the children in every place?"  We say that we will.  In part, the keeping of this promise means that we will organize the congregation to make sure that children are being nurtured in faith in Jesus Christ.  But it also means that children and teenagers know their pastor, that even in the largest church, we take the time to be present in young people's ministries and develop relationships with kids.  I think it's important for pastors to teach confirmation, to show up for football games, to stick their heads into children's Sunday school classes, to play on the church lawn.  Our tradition has determined for us that these ministries are a priority for us.

Whose job is young people's ministry?  Who is supposed to work in children's ministry and youth ministry?  EVERYONE.  We all have a part.  We all have a responsibility. We all have the gift to offer the love of Christ and pass on the gift of the Gospel to emerging generations.

Pastoral Prayer for August 21, 2016 (based on Luke 13:10-17)

O holy God:

We thank you for the great love you have shown us in Jesus Christ.

You could have chosen to punish us.  You could have chosen to destroy us for the ways we have failed to acknowledge you.  You could have responded in so many ways.  And you would have been justified.

Instead, you looked upon each and every human life and were moved with compassion.  You are more aware of the ways we can be unlovable, and yet you have loved us more than anyone.  You responded to our fallen ways be taking flesh, joining your life to our lives, getting your hands dirty, becoming weak like us, suffering and dying for us.

So Father, open our hearts today.  Help us to be real before you.  Help us to lay our lives open before you, with all that makes us strong and beautiful and with all our broken and shameful place, too.  Heal us, change us, remake us, restore us.  Fill our lives with joy as we enter into a life-long relationship of being made strong in your strength, being made whole in your holiness.

Give us a heart like yours, free from condemnation, full of compassion, full of grace.  Give us a heart to put people first, to reach out with love and goodness and to offer healing to hurting lives.

O God, may you blessing rest upon the land in which we have been graced to live, upon the leaders who have authority over us, upon your Church proclaiming your Gospel throughout the world. Bring healing and hope to those who are sick and grieving.  Use us to bring win the lost of our community to new life in your Son Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray saying…