transforming congregations a high percentage of individuals take time each day to engage in the ancient Christian practice of listening prayer. Listening prayer connects them with the empowering and enlivening Spirit. In Mark Nepo’s words, it allows them to still their own house and drop into the vital nature of things. It expands the eyes of their heart so that they can see the underlying oneness of all creation. It allows them to align their heart with the heart of God. It bonds them to a Spiritual energy that dispels anxiety and teaches them what it means to live as the authentic Self that is created in the divine image.
“I didn’t know how I would fit prayer into my life,” one young mother confessed, “but now I get up a half hour before the kids get up. When I take time to pray, it settles me down and gives me a sense of peace. That peace allows me to take on the challenges in the rest of the day without getting rattled by them. Prayer helps me tell the difference between the voice of God and all the other voices in my life. I wouldn’t trade my morning time for anything!”
Listening prayer comes in many forms including but not limited to:
1 PRAYING WITH THE IMAGINATION: Ignatius of Loyola encouraged Christians to enter into a Biblical passage and to use their senses to explore the scene. What does it look like? What sounds can you hear? What can you smell? What conversations do you overhear? What happens next? What do you do? What does the Spirit say to you as a result of your immersion in that place?
2 TRANSPOSING PRAYER: Augustine of Hippo taught Christians to transpose the words of a Biblical passage to their lives. For example, if the passage is about the “bent-over woman, the reader reflects on what or who is “bent over”—physically, spiritually, socially—in their world. They listen to Jesus saying to the woman (and to those situations in their own lives) “You are set free from your ailment.”29
3 LECTIO DIVINA (DIVINE READING): The Benedictine Tradition taught people how to read through a Biblical passage slowly, listening to the whole passage. Next, it encouraged them to read through it a second time, listening to the word or phrase that seems to speak directly to their own lives. Finally, it invited them to read it a third time, considering what action the phrase might be guiding them to take.
4 CENTERING PRAYER: A book by a 14th Century anonymous author entitled The Cloud of Unknowing taught a form of prayer in which a person sits in silence with eyes closed and focuses on one word or phrase of their choosing that invites the presence of the sacred Spirit.
5 CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER: Hildegard of Bingen and others taught Christians to focus on a scene or an object from creation, allowing it to reveal to them some aspect of God’s nature and purpose. (See Appendix B for a hand-out on the various forms of Listening Prayer.)30
However, it is not just individuals who engage in listening prayer in transforming congregations; the whole church corporately prays together in many different ways. Prayer keeps the congregation grounded in the power and presence of God. The church’s life together becomes a dialogue with God in which it tries to listen and respond to the leading of the Spirit. Prayer opens it up to wonder and gratitude for the gift of life. It gives the congregation time to be self-reflective, to notice what is going on instead of just plunging headlong through life unaware of the presence of the Holy in its midst.
In transforming congregations, leaders pray together weekly and the congregation prays every time it worships together. Prayers are spoken aloud by the pastor and lay people offer public prayer as well. Often there is a group within a transforming congregation that prays for those in need as its sole mission. Sometimes that group walks the streets and prays for their neighbors. Sometimes it gathers prayer requests and offers intercessory prayer on behalf of those who wrote them. Many transforming congregations also make time during their worship life for corporate silence, for being alone together in the stillness. Some offer entire worship services planned to allow for contemplation, making use of simple, repetitive, quiet songs.
Others practice the Biblical tradition of anointing with oil or placing hands on a person seeking healing and wholeness. Unlike some Pentecostal traditions that may promise a “cure” by such actions, transforming congregations seek only to be a conduit for the Spirit’s power, leaving the nature of the healing up to God’s good grace.
Making intentional time to connect with the power and presence of the Spirit, both corporately and individually, allows transforming congregations to practice resting in God without having to control anything. It teaches them to trust the leading of the Spirit, even when they do not have all the answers. It allows them to reframe their understanding of what it means to be human. When they take time to pray, they learn to see themselves not just as those who consume, but also as those who create, not just as those who seek comfort, but also as those who are called and sent for the sake of the world.
When transforming congregations take time for prayer they not only reduce the stress in their life, they also subvert the claim made by the consumer culture that there is not enough time to do what needs to be done. Prayer allows transforming congregations to let go of the anxiety that causes them to choose the safe, the expedient, and comfortable. It helps them to make bold decisions in order to become the people they believe God is calling them to be. It allows them to say yes to God’s future, even before they know what that future will bring.
Questions for Reflection
1 What causes you to feel anxious? How do you behave when you are anxious?
2 Which metaphor for the Spirit from the Bible particularly captures your imagination? Why?
3 What distractions keep you from making prayer a priority in your life?
4 What could you do to create a set-aside time of prayer amid the noise and clamor of each day?
Spiritual Habit 2
Waking Up
Life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.31
– David Whyte
The Gospel of Luke tells the story of a couple traveling on foot along the seven-mile path to Emmaus from Jerusalem after Jesus’ execution.32 Along the way, a man came up and started walking alongside the couple, but they did not recognize him. Since he seemed oblivious to the events of the week, the couple recounted all that had happened in Jerusalem. “We had hoped that he was the one who would deliver Israel,” they said. Then the man began to tell them how the recent events were a fulfillment of all that the Torah and the prophets had taught.
When they got to the edge of the village, the man acted as if he were going on, but the couple invited him to their home. “Stay and have supper with us,” they said. “It’s late and the sun is going down.” So he went into the house and sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, they suddenly woke up and recognized Jesus. Then he vanished from their sight.
“Didn’t our hearts burn as he talked with us on the road?” they asked each other. Immediately, they were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. When they arrived, the disciples and their other friends told them, “Simon has seen Jesus!” Then the couple related what had happened on the road and how they had recognized Jesus when he broke the bread.
Educator, clinical psychologist and theologian James Loder calls the events in Emmaus that night a “convictional moment.” Convictional moments are times when we wake up to the activity of the Spirit, when our eyes open to a larger reality that changes how we choose to act, and when we perceive the whole that is more than the sum of its parts. According to Loder, convictional moments follow a pattern with
