See Dennis Bratcher’s excellent article on “The Prayers of the People” in liturgy. A full tutorial on different kinds of prayers, litanies, collects, etc is available from ELC Canada.

The idea of congregational “prayer requests” in a worship service is enough to cause anyone orchestrating a seeker service to run screaming from a planning meeting.

In my own tradition, asking for verbal prayer requests runs a real risk of killing any gathering in which it occurs. One will very likely hear “too much information” about medical procedures, family problems and various situations where God’s intervention is required. The focus of prayer is rarely anything other than personal and medical. If one is a visitor in such a situation, these kinds of enumerations can provide an instant reason to never return.Continue reading “The Evangelical Liturgy 18: The Prayers Of The People”

Here’s the intro to this series. All posts are under the “Evangelical Liturgy” category.

In the past two years, I have written extensively here at IM in an attempt to recover some sanity, frequency and meaningful practice of the Lord’s Supper in my Baptist tradition. You can find those posts in the “Baptists” and “Church” categories in the IM archives.

For this series, my purpose will be modest: how does the Lord’s Supper (please allow me to use one term, with understanding other Protestants and evangelicals may use others) fit into the evangelical liturgy and into a recovery of Liturgy in the Protestant church?

I would begin by saying that a recovery of a liturgical place for the Lord’s Supper in evangelicalism is not to become Catholic, Lutheran or Anglican, but to learn from those traditions where possible and appropriate. There are aspects of the Lord’s Supper that evangelicals will want to affirm and practice that are of little interest to more “catholic” Christians, and there are aspects of more sacramental practice that evangelicals will want to avoid.Continue reading “The Evangelical Liturgy 17: The Lord’s Supper”