Prayers for the Church

I don’t think I could call myself a passionate person. And I use the word “passion” loosely. I use it the way we romantics use it: fervor, ardor, flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, pounding hearts and fists. There aren’t very many things that fill me with such passion, that boil my blood or move me enough to shake a man just to make him hear. Not politics, not religion, not science or art or civil rights. (I’m ashamed to admit that, truthfully.)

But — and this is a tentative “but” filled to the brim with disclaimers — lately I have felt an exhaustion when it comes to the topic of church. The Church and the church. On the surface, I seem to be falling into the precise opposite of “passion,” to be falling out of love almost. And let me be clear: I love the Church and my church and the several churches I’ve visited and have been a part of throughout my life. But I have grown complacent in how I love the Church. I love it, I appreciate it, I often forget to tell it thank you, or to stick up for it to the doubters and the scoffers. I am an appeaser of the highest order.

Complacency, as I am learning, is exhausting. It is exhausting to live with very little passion or purpose. That seems backwards; but it exhausts me in the most literal sense of the word. It drains me of the things that ought to fuel me. I am running low on the good stuff that moves this world, that makes this life and all that comes with it worth it.

So back to the Church and the doubters and scoffers and the passion that drives.

I don’t want to watch the Church grow weak, timid. I don’t want to see it placed on platforms just to be ripped apart from all sides. I don’t want to see it cower beneath political correctness, nor refuse to bend against things that might not matter much at all. And I cannot watch it grow arrogant and indignant, huffing at the naysayers beneath a banner of staunch righteousness, retreating into its own walls.

Neither do I feel needed or equipped to defend it. Neither do I feel the power to restore it in little, rebellious ways a girl like me could do. See, if God were most concerned about his image in this world, he never would have chosen yokels like us to bear it.

So all I have left to do for the Church is the pray for it, and to invite you to pray right along with me. We are the salt and the light of this world. We were formed apart from creation to make this world taste good, to make this world glow in the dark. Not for God’s neat and tidy public image, but for his great and wrecking glory, a glory that doesn’t need PR or marketing strategies or carefully sanitized statements, a glory that banishes fear and crashes into the brokenness. A glory that does not tread lightly but dares to overcome and redeem and reconcile even the ugliest of all.

I want to be a part of that. I want the Church to be a part of that.

So maybe we should begin.

Over the next few weeks (months, years, whatever, I am super at ambiguous timing), I’ll be posting prayers I have for the Church in hopes that you will read these words and be moved enough to fill in the cracks you see in the Church and your church. Not because I suspect I am eloquent enough to CHANGE THE WORLD. But because I am convinced prayer is ridiculously powerful.

I can’t exactly say, or even pretend, I really know the power of prayer. Most times I don’t even know what happens after I say “Amen,” if anything at all. I have never experienced a windfall, an immediate response to my prayers, even the ones that wrenched my gut.

But I am learning to love the act of prayer: the intentional, time-carved-out-for prayer. I’m not any good at it; I am only aware of it, of the gift of language to attach to my heart’s groanings.

I mutter reckless prayers often (though not often enough), but the richness of prayer — in my particular case — is most obvious when I sit down, breathe in deep, and write — actually write — the words I most carefully want to say to my King.

And that’s what these will be: letters to a king, words chosen for the formality and eloquence.

I admire those whose prayers are intimate conversations with a devoutly interested God. I am not there yet (or ever). So these will be my prayers to a sovereign God, the creator and artist of this broken world, prayers bold enough in my self-importance though hesitant to call too much attention to myself, to interrupt his majesty.

I hope you’ll find God here because I am certain he is listening.