Lex Orandi Lex Credendi
Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days…That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. Kyrie EleisonWhat does our local evangelical church prayer communicate? We know everything communicates, and only a portion of communication is the words themselves, so what does our practice of prayer say? Who does it make us, and who does it make God to us? These questions will be answered in the following way. First we will analyze the practice of prayer in various evangelical local churches, then we will look at how this practice in turn prescribes the way we pray alone, and how these first two create in our denomination a lived theology that is in great disparity with our theoretical belief. Having made these first three observations, we will turn toward part two, in which we will explore an outline for a more faithful practice of prayer that will reunify our theoretical and lived theology. The current practice of evangelical local church prayer can be practiced more faithfully by praying in ways that are intentioned toward the directing of our affections in truth to God.Before we can turn to understanding the role of prayer on our lived theology to culture we must construct a paradigm of human formation afforded by James K. A. Smith, as this is what is at stake for the one who sets out to pray. In Desiring the Kingdom, he supplants modern understandings of humanity from the Cartesian thinker (who in thinking to being is little more than a brain in a corrupted body) to an embodied lover.1 This means that humanity is conditioned to think and believe by what he or she loves primarily, and our love is directed by sensory, physical liturgies, or repeated identity-forming practices. This means, “Before we put into words the lineaments of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God’s healing and illumination… We pray before we believe…we worship in order to know.”2 What Smith is presenting is a twenty-first-century rendering of the fifth-century maxim, Lex Ordandi, Lex Credendi, How the church prays is how the church believes.In the context of the Roman Catholic Church, this phrase means, on one level, that the faith of the church precedes that of the individual and that the individual is invited into that faith through the continued practice of the liturgy, or prayer. This is a function of the practiced liturgy being handed down form the apostles through the residing of the bishops, making it a ground for belief.3 But given Smith’s work, it can be taken in more than just a legal way. Indeed, it can mean that as we participate in the embodied—standing, sitting, kneeling, crossing with our hands over our bodies, speaking and feeling—liturgy passed down, it directs our love toward God, which in turn directs our individual belief and thinking into union with the faith of the church, which is the Body of Christ. This is the logic of the Roman Catholic Church’s ushering in the Kingdom, by making disciples who, through prayer, come to desire the Kingdom. However, what happens when our prayer is not grounded in the apostolic succession’s liturgy, not grounded in the Scripture, and in a startling degree not even grounded in what we claim in theory to believe?
How the Church Prays
Kyrie Eleison It seems today that we have a gap between what we theoretically believe and our lived theology, the second of which I suggest is more real. Rather than praying in ways that communicate our theoretical belief, our practice of extemporaneous prayer has been co-opted into best business practices. This in turn forms us, giving us unhealthy orientations to God and ultimately a lived theology that is not what we theoretically believe. Let’s have a look at the way we practice prayer in church.Prayer in the local evangelical church is a bit of a strange ritual. A man or woman on the stage signals that it is time to pray by either inviting the audience to join them, or by just suddenly addressing God. Either way, suddenly the whole room slouches over and closes their eyes while the pray-er up front speaks a few sentences into a microphone, usually with considerable emotion. Sometimes while they speak, the band who was just playing music will quickly get off the stage, or if it is at the end of the service, they will return to the stage for the last song. Then, the prayer is over, everyone opens their eyes and sits up straight and it is over. Usually this all lasts about two minutes at the most. What does this little ritual communicate?First, the church service is structured in such a way that there is very little silent or immobile time, every in-between moment is filled, which means that only that which is designated, is considered a part of the service. So the time designated to prayer is considered the only prayer time. This means that prayer is communicated to be only a verbal linguistic activity, only involving the body as much as the vocal chords of the pray-er up front are moving. It seems possible that the music set could also be construed as prayer, but you never hear a worship leader get up and say, “Pray with me” and then begin to sing. When the worship leader makes that declaration, it is always followed by words.Of that strictly ordered service, averaging about 120 minutes in length, only between four and six minutes are apportioned to prayer. (http://livestream.com/springs-church, Moody Church, Harvest Bible Chapel, Park Community, https://willowcreek.tv/type/weekend-series) This implicitly communicates a lack of value on prayer. And too often prayer is used as a convenient way to reset the stage while everyone’s eyes are closed, as a transition between the music and the sermon. Prayer is also used by the pastor as punctuation on his sermon, almost as if to drive home that main pedagogical idea one more time (Sermon: “Be Immensely Patient”). It is also practiced as announcement for what it is that the people are doing there at that time, almost more to tell the audience what is going on than to direct the congregation to God (“Be Immensely Patient” 23:51). Prayer is also practiced in the church as emotional primer, mostly through dramatic and emotional tonal speaking (The Springs Church 33:31). This emotional primer is practiced particularly effectively through sensational music that is occasionally used behind it (Willow Creek 10:58).One of the main faults with prayer being used in all of these ways is that in a real way it ceases to be prayer. Prayer is always directional to God, always a response to God.4 If we use prayer to motivate, to emotionally manipulate, rhetorically emphasize a point, or announce what is happening, it all seems to be communication that is more directed to other people, namely the audience, than to God. Are we truly talking to God, or are we talking to other people under the guise of talking to God?Finally in instances where prayer does indeed seem to be directed to God, it is very limited to only words, but within that it is even limited to intercession and petition; this is prayer that is supposed to bring our needs before God, but in the words we use, it sounds more like a wish-list. Much more rarely do you see anyone on stage praying a prayer of confession, or adoration. On occasion the prayer does not even seem to be indicative of any the seven types of prayer (adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession and petition), but just thoughtless words. But even at best when the pray-er is sincere, it is enough to notice that as long as prayer is strictly extemporaneous, as in this tradition, it always has the danger of being something that we form, and then are formed by in return, rather than something that forms us first. As long as this is the case, prayer communicates more who the pray-er conceives of God to be, rather than who God is in reality. But all of this still remains a very mental activity, again making our relationship with God, disconcertedly Gnostic. Kyrie Eleison These practices of prayer as emotional or rhetorical device have great effect on the congregant who sets out to pray. We always naturally internalize practices and then proceed to imitate them in every way (be it words, sentence structures, bodily involvement, or the why of the action). So even if these prayers fail to be effective in directing the love of the congregant to God or anything else, the practices will still be subconsciously imitated. This principle is stated in the field of Media Ecology: “You become what you behold.”[1]So what kind pray-ers have we become in light of going to churches that prays this way? Because the church limits prayer to words and limits those words to intercession and limits the time of those intercessions to about five of the 120-minute service we have a very stunted practice of prayer. It becomes difficult to pray individually, devotionally, or even in small groups for any long or meaningful period of time because we only intercede, looking for a change in reality. Prayer, of course does affect reality, God does deign to hear us and answer our prayer, but prayer is much more than just intercession on behalf of those we know and the world, let alone the words that encase those intercessions. And so we quickly run out of words. But this does not seem a great tragedy because if the church service only values prayer 5/120ths, than why should I value it any more?Similarly, if we experience prayer as transitional, rhetorical on the part of the preacher, emotional or sensational, what room does that leave for us to pray by ourselves, since none of these activities are things we would ever think of doing by ourselves? This again confuses the individual congregant about what exactly prayer is for, and how to practice it when alone.Even more dangerous is the emotionally manipulative music that is played behind the prayer, which implicitly associates rhetorical manipulation with prayer in the mind of the one who is taking it in. If we feel manipulated while prayer is happening in church, or if this is happening even if we are not aware, it is not a far leap to praying to God, trying to manipulate Him into doing our bidding. In this case prayer becomes not so different than what Jacques Ellul calls magic in The Technological Society. In talking about primitive technical activity, he describes magic as leading, “to efficacy because it subordinates the power of the gods to men, and it secures predetermined result. It affirms human power in that it seeks to subordinate the gods to men, just as technique serves to cause nature to obey.”[2] We seek to find just the right—even technical—words in order to get God to do the same predetermined result every time. This of course is the combined effect of over emphasis on the linguistic, the intercessory, and the emotional manipulation that accompanies prayer, or even is prayer, in the local church worship.When we practice prayer by ourselves we most often pray silently, because there is no one to hear… oh wait. Because prayer is so often directed more to the audience than to God, when we pray alone we automatically assume that since there is no other human around to overhear, there is no reason to pray aloud. But to pray only with words in the mind is yet another way we can easily become functionally Gnostic. Along with this, because the bodies of the congregants are not addressed in the church setting, except for standing for the music set, and occasionally standing for the reading of the Word, we do not know the correct posture for prayer, we do not know how to pray with our bodies. This again makes prayer disconcertingly similar to thinking, which will be a major formative factor.Finally when each individual’s prayer is influenced by our current practice of prayer, and prayer is restricted to words and intercession leaving our bodies unaddressed, our prayer does not form our love for God, and at the same time leaves us wondering who God is? We might learn about Him in the sermon, but we have lost our way of knowing Him in prayer. Knowledge must be more than justified true belief, it must be experiential and relational, and this is what is at stake when we pray to God as the receiver of our wish-list type words rather than the Lord of our hearts and love.
So the Church Believes
Kyrie EleisonPrayer is an absolutely unique medium of communication. Every medium carries a bias, or a telos that drives whatever content is presented in it toward some kind of end. But prayer is essentially communication with God, and the way we communicate with God—much as the way we communicate with other people—determines how we will be oriented toward Him. And how we are oriented toward God determines what we believe about Him and think about Him. Thus, the bias, the inscape or total nature, of prayer is to be the determining factor in our human formation in relation to God, or lived theology. George Lindbeck supports this when he says “it is through [nondiscursively symbolic dimensions of a religion—for example, its poetry, music, art and rituals] that the basic patterns of religion are interiorized, exhibited and transmitted.”5 Or, it is our prayer or lack there of that is transmitting our religion. So with our current practice of prayer in mind from the previous section, how is our prayer orienting us to God? Who is it making God to us?Since our practice of prayer has been so narrowed, our relational experience of Him has changed. Because we pray silently—our form of thinking and praying show little difference, with very little bodily involvement. Because of this our prayer makes God a God who does not care about our bodies, but only our minds. The church does not address our bodies in prayer and only one person’s body is active, albeit only their vocal chords. When this is copied on the lay individual level, we naturally do not consider our bodies in prayer and pray silently with words in our heads, leading to a lived theology of mind over matter, immaterial is good and material is bad. This is not in line with our theoretical belief. John 1 introduces the Word of God as being God and also taking on flesh (John 1:14) and even after his resurrection he claims to be body saying “a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”(Luke 24:53) Likewise the Nicean Creed confirms Jesus the Word’s very unity with God as well as his human incarnation.6 If we truly took the bodily incarnation of God seriously, we might also take our own bodies seriously, especially in the communication with him, which is lived theology to thought formation. But we do not, because our prayer has determined how we actively are oriented toward God.From the stage of church comes prayer that orients us towards a god of the technological gap, almost a magical genie. Two parts of the practice of prayer have formed this god for us. (1) From the stage issues the prayer of the twenty-first-century magician, emotionally exciting the audience with words intended to be to God, backed by music that makes the heart race. (2) If this prayer can even be construed as directed in reality to God, it seems always to be that false intercession, a litany of requests (Church Online | Hillsong 20:00). The congregant takes in the implicit emotion manipulation, and perceives the form of intercession, words that bring god to do what you plead for. The combination brings a type of prayer that at best makes God a wish granter and at worst leads to the pray-er attempting to manipulate God with just the right words. This is particularly the case when what is being asked for from God is something that man cannot achieve by himself with the use of various techniques or machines. This is an extremely dangerous prayer because it flies in the face of who we theoretically believe God to be. We theoretically believe “God is infinite in respect to space, time, knowledge, and power. He is immovable and does not change.”7 Again and again the Holy Scriptures confirm this, as in when Isaiah has a vision of the Lord in his Glory, or the throne in Revelation four and five. He has spoken saying “my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”(Isaiah 55) And yet our prayer makes him a being we can, through unhealthy intercession, too easily implicitly say too, “not your will but mine be done.” This is bad enough but the prayer intentioned to manipulate God communicates to God this and more, making him our magical servant, and as we pray this way, it communicates back to us about who he is that we have made him. Our lived theology changes the character and perceived-ontology of God from the greatest conceivable being to a wish granter, even making us out to be wiser than God.We have also too often forgotten the part of prayer that is penitence or repentance. We theoretically believe Jesus Christ died that we might be given grace and have life in his name (John 20:31), But with out confession we have what Bonhoeffer calls Cheap Grace. “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”[3] Without prayers of repentance—which is more than words, including the contrition or sorrow of the heart over the offence against the holiness of God—we make God one who is unjust and does not seem to require his promises (1st john 5-10) to be followed in order to be kept.Thus, our practice of prayer has created a whole structure of religion, a lived theology, which is not in line with what we theoretically believe. It is no wonder we have such a hard time following the command to pray without ceasing. We have created a whole different god in our lived theology, a whole different salvation, and this god does not seem to care if we pray without ceasing, or if we only ever pray with silent words in our heads. This lived theology closes the loop; by informing the way we pray again—it has become a self-perpetuating loop of nominalism in evangelical Christianity. Our extemporaneous prayer, rather than a being well defined liturgy, determines how we are oriented to God; how we are oriented to God determines our lived theology, and our lived theology loops back around and shapes our prayer. We need prayer that orients us to the God we theoretically believe in.
Part 2: Toward the directing of our affections in Truth to God.
In order to break out of these dangerous loops, believers must learn to pray more holistically, mystically, and in accordance with what we theoretically believe, that we might make it also our lived theology. This section is not just seeking to develop a different theology of prayer, because our issue is not with theology, our issue is with practice, but because of what prayer is, practice becomes theology. So the question must be, how do we practice prayer more faithfully? The theory of this section will only be with practice in mind.This theory to practice is that prayer is much more than intercession and petition, much more than any of the seven types of prayer and much more than words. It seems that many of the problems arising out of our current practice are due to too narrow a view of prayer. The Book of Common Prayer defines prayer as, “responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words,” and that this response is, “to God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit.”8 This means that prayer is defined by whether it is a response to God, not by whether or not it is words, as our modern worship service implicitly defines. This principle alone is massive, allowing a great variety of things in life to be prayer. This means a dance, or piece of art can be prayer. And it means that even a feeling in the heart can be prayer.The Eastern Rite Catholic tradition of prayer is insightful here. In their book Byzantine Daily Worship there is outlined a very different practice of all encompassing prayer in three stages. The first stage is called “Active Prayer” or bodily prayer, which is the kneeling as if before the throne of God, responding to his presence with adoration and honor, just in the way the body is positioned. Along with active prayer is also a steady breathing habit, the surface level of reading the words of a prayer in a prayer book or the Bible, and attending church worship. The second level is “Prayer of Attention.” In this the pray-er reads the words of a prayer book makes them their own, while concentrating on the sounds of their voice as the prayer is spoken aloud slowly. The third prayer is the “Prayer of Perception…What earlier had been a thought now becomes a feeling, after the trouble of words, there comes contrition; after petition the sentiment of need and hope. Whoever reaches this summit prays without words, for God is the God of the heart.”[4] This book is inviting a practice of prayer that seeks to move past words, to a perception of the presence, knowledge, love, fear, and adoration of God. It seeks to move past words of a prayer of penitence to true contrition. To move past words of a prayer of thanksgiving to a state of continual thanksgiving welling up as a feeling in the soul. If prayer is approached in this way, all prayer is released from its narrow constrains we have put it in, and becomes an embodied process that directs our hearts to God.Likewise certain prescribed prayers should be prayed in the form mentioned above to counter act the problems noted in part one. Not every church needs to become high liturgical, that is not what I am arguing for, just that perhaps even for a time, churches and individuals should be formed by written prayers designed to break out of the dangerous practices mentioned in part one. That the pray-er might, after being formed by the practice of written prayers, return to praying extemporaneous prayers, which will naturally be formed by the import of the written prayer. Namely because we have unintentionally created a pseudo-genie god through associated manipulation and over emphasis on word-intercession type prayer, it is vital to pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, making it your own. There is no way to try to manipulate God in the Lord’s prayer, because of the words of this prayer: “Thy will be done.” Indeed when praying the Lord’s prayer and moving past the words into the perception stage, each type of prayer is active; these words given by Christ lead the heart of the pray-er into adoration, petition, thanksgiving, praise, oblation, petition, and intercession. In this prayer we truly learn to bring our lives and our needs before the Lord with out a trace of manipulation.This is similarly true in another redeeming prayer: the Kyrie Elieison. This prayer should be translated simply as “Lord have mercy” but mercy does not really sum up all that Kyrie means. Again the Byzantine Daily Worship is helpful is explaining this. It says “The mercy of God is the transforming presence of God Himself; it is this awesome presence made conscious, respected and loved…The Kyrie Eleison asks that God may make Himself recognized, respected and loved as the master and King of the whole universe.”[5] In praying that God’s presence would be known and loved in all the world, and by every person, the prayer is implicitly answered in your own heart, for only out of a love for God and a love for his known presence can you truly plead that this be for others. It is a prayer that leads us to God, in knowledge, presence, and love.Finally also the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds should be prayed, spoken in response to God. It is written in Romans that the one who believes in his heart and confesses with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, will be saved. When one prays the creeds, he is confessing with his mouth that Jesus is Lord, and the repeated speaking of these words forms in the pray-er a heart that believes what the mouth is saying. As we pray, so we also believe.Through continued prayer in this practice we who have unhealthy practices of prayer will come to experience God’s presence and learn to pray in ways that will truly intention our hearts to God. By praying for his will to be done, his presence to be known and loved and that we believe in him as tradition has passed down to us, we come to know God, not just know about God. We come to embrace a God who embraces physicality and so we prayerfully kneel before him in adoration, delighting in his simple and glorious presence.Thus evangelical local church worship seems to communicate a God and a salvation—a lived theology—that is very different than our theoretical belief. We have come to this conclusion in the following way. First we analyzed the practice of prayer in various evangelical local churches, then we looked at how this practice in turn prescribes the way we pray alone, and how these first two create in our denomination a lived theology that is in great disparity with our theoretical belief. Having made these first three observations, we turned toward part two, in which we outlined a more faithful practice of prayer that will reunify our theoretical and lived theology. It is then true that the current practice of evangelical local church prayer can be practiced more faithfully by praying in ways that are intentioned toward the directing of our affections in truth to God. Lord have Mercy, That this paper would be an exercise to “remember also [my] Creator in the days of [my] youth before…the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it. Death of Death, says the preacher; all is vanity. Even death. Kyrie Elieison Along with this piece, there is in progress a prayer room designed to address our bodies through our senses and be a quite place for the more faithful prayer described here. It is minimalistically based a kneeling bench, low light and prayer books. To see a preview of what will be one of the prayer rooms in the first floor of the Culbertson Residence hall of Moody Bible Institute in the Fall of 2018 see below.
Along with this there will be a one page description of the reason for the changes on the door.Photo Credit: Brennan McCarthy Works CitedActing Rather Than Being | The Moody Church. https://www.moodychurch.org/watch/acting-rather-than-being/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.“Be Immensely Patient.” Willow Creek TV, https://willowcreek.tv/sermons/south-barrington/2018/03/be-immensely-patient/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.The Book of Common Prayer: And Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church. Gift ed. edition, CHURCH PUBLISHING INC, 2001.Catechism of the Catholic Church - IntraText. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P32.HTM. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.Chapel, Harvest Bible. Latest Sermon | Harvest Bible Chapel. http://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/latestsermon/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.Church Online | Hillsong. https://hillsong.com/watch/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2018.Ellul, Jacques, and Robert K. Merton. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson, Extensive Underlining edition, Vintage Books, 1964.Firstfree. The Gathering Storm >> April 8, 2018 >> Will Hope | First Free Chicago. http://firstfree.com/the-gathering-storm-april-8-2018-will-hope/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.God Has a Need | Michael Petillo | 5.6.18 by Springs Church. livestream.com, https://livestream.com/springs-church/events/8193532?t=1525713615. Accessed 7 May 2018.Hillsong Church. Hillsong Church - All Things. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NvRr2GlK0s. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.Larsen, Dale, and Sandy Larsen. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace. InterVarsity Press, 2002.Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Underlining edition, Westminster John Knox Press, 1984.Millard Erickson, Christian theology (2nd ed.) Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House 2007.“Near North Sermons.” Park Community Church, https://parkcommunity.church/near-north/sermons/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.
Raya, Joseph and Jose de Vinck. Byzantine Daily Worship. Alleluia Press, 1969.“Sermons & Media.” Calvary Orlando Church, http://calvaryorlando.org/media/. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom : Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Baker Academic, c2009., 2009. Crowell BV 178, EBSCOhost, https://chilib.moody.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid&db=cat06690a&AN=mbi.87508&site=eds-live.
Your Dream Is Your Destiny. https://hillsong.com/watch/video/2015/09/your-dream-is-your-destiny-2/. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018.
[1] Lecture from Read Mercer Schuchardt, Psalm 115[2] Ellul, Jacques, and Robert K. Merton. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson, Extensive Underlining edition, Vintage Books, 1964 24.[3] Larsen, Dale, and Sandy Larsen. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace. InterVarsity Press, 2002. 29[4] Raya, Joseph and Jose de Vinck. Byzantine Daily Worship. Alleluia Press, 1969. 14-16[5] Ibid 14-16