I can do better???

This afternoon, I stood in a prayer circle with 30+ pastors, staff, and laity from the UMC. One can only imagine what happened when we were invited to pray whatever came to our hearts.

The prayer time started with a nice, short word of thanks. Then, the pastors started up. Each new prayer got longer, louder, and used more Christianese theological terms.

It was as if each person praying was using the time of prayer as an opportunity to give a short sermon. It truly felt like a competition.

Now, the truth of the matter is that I am extremely cynical. All of the prayers may have been totally authentic…genuine…from the heart. It’s probably my pour attitude…my pastoral pride and ego that stood in the way of fully engaging in this time of prayer and appreciating what was happening in the moment. Whether it’s my cynicism or not, some of the prayers were received as a show.

It felt like Matthew 6:5, 7, where Jesus instructs us…”When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I assure you, that is all the reward they will ever get…When you pray, don’t babble on an on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered only by repeating their words again and again.”

I felt led to pray a prayer of repentance…asking God to forgive us for trying to out do one another…to forgive us for attempting to draw attention to ourselves. But, then I realized that this would probably have been more offensive to the people in the circle than the babbling prayers were to me.

However, this does remind me to lead by example with my prayers. We don’t need long, drawn out prayers. We don’t need prayers with fancy words that only people with advanced studies in the theological arena understand (or simply pretend to understand). We need to simply be honest, straightforward, to the point, and speak from the heart.

I’m not saying that, for some, speaking from the heart won’t include long times of prayer of fancy language. What I am saying is that, too often, we church leaders tend to pray in such a manner that others feel intimidated to pray. You hear comments like, “Well, I can’t really pray like the pastor.” Then, you find out that some simply avoid prayer because they’ve never been taught about having a simple, open dialogue with God.

So, I believe we need to model simple prayers. When Jesus taught us to pray, it didn’t take 6 chapters. He didn’t model a 15-minute prayer with unfamiliar language. He broke it down to the bare necessities. Shouldn’t we follow His example?

So, I just attended a worship service that was…interesting. The music was led by an African-American man on piano and vocals and a Anglo woman on vocals and attempting to play the djembe.

The vocals screamed 1970’s Maranatha or Gaither Music Group. Very cheesey. Very over-the-top.

One of the most interesting moments was as the final speaker was wrapping up his message. The pianist began playing a chord progression with a certain rhythm that sounded oddly familiar. On the second round, I realized that he was playing the Dave Matthews Band “Crash Into Me.”

I thought to myself, “Well, that’s weird.”

Then, he proceeded to invite the crowd to sing “Sanctuary” on top of this chord progression. It worked in parts. But, overall, the chord progression and the melody did not work well together.

I think he was trying to blend some contemporary elements with this older chorus. It was…”creative?”

I have a few minutes before my next workshop and just had to write about this…

I really never thought that I’d hear “Sanctuary” and the Dave Matthews Band at the same time. How bizarre?

This summer, I’ll be speaking at a camp that is taking a pro-active approach to the vast usage of technology among teenagers. There will be opportunities for students to ask questions, respond to polls, and give feedback via text messaging.

I believe that this is a great response to what’s going on in the current teenage culture. I believe that this is a great opportunity to address the appropriate use of technology. I believe it’s a great opportunity to utilize a piece of technology that more and more teens are using. Of course, at the same time, I believe this presents a great challenge. There will be massive amounts of temptation to utilize the technology to disengage with the events taking place at the camp.

I am proud of this camp for extending itself and taking a chance on engaging students right where they are at. Rather than asking kids to totally ignore something that plays a major role in their daily lives, the camp is asking the kids to use it to participate in the experience.

This was solidified for me on Sunday night, when I had the opportunity to hang out with some teenagers. Rather than have conversations with one another, they would text each other. This blew me away. Rather than have a verbal conversation with someone sitting 10 feet away, the kids would text each other. Could it be that the topic of conversation was inappropriate? Potentially. But, from what I could gather, it was pretty much small talk.

There is a part of me that is concerned about the abundant use of technology for communication. Could it be that the more we use technology for communication the less we’ll be able to engage verbal conversations?

I’m excited to see how all of this plays out…at camp and in our world.