I’m sure you’ve seen it, heard it, and done it yourself too many times to remember.

Someone starts to pray… and after about 2 minutes you’re completely unsure what is going on. They’ve still got their eyes closed, and they’re using their ‘prayer voice’, so it seems like they’re still praying – but it kinda doesn’t sound like God is the intended recipient anymore. Are they trying to inspire the crowd? Are they trying to preach a sermon? Are they trying to announce a new church strategy? Who can tell?

Here’s some of the most common ways I think we start praying in the wrong direction…

1. The Gee-Up-The-Crowd prayer

Often found at the end of a really inspiring worship time, the gee-up-the-crowd prayer tries to whip the crowd into a frenzy of as many ‘Amens’ and ‘Hallelujahs’ as possible. Typically their prayers involve all the really great, inspirational Christian clichés strung together as closely as possible. Naturally, every cliche needs to be a little louder and a little more animated than the one before in order for the ‘prayer’ to ‘work’.

There’s nothing wrong with loud, animated prayer – as long as your focus is on God rather than your audience. If your prayers sound like audition tapes for gameshow announcers, then it’s possible that you’ve got a problem here.

2. The Counter-Pray prayer

What do you do if someone prays a prayer you don’t agree with? Well, you counter-pray of course!

Stealing a move right out of high school debating, the counter-prayer feels it’s not only their right but their responsibility to provide a rebuttal so that the dodgy theology of the previous prayer will be driven out of the minds of those who heard it. You can pick them out by the key phrases such as ‘God, please don’t let us forget that…’ and ‘God, we remember that…’ They can also often be found including extremely long Bible stories into their prayers to provide the theological backing for their rebuttals.

3. The Easier-To-Pray-It-Than-Confront-It prayer

Also known as the You-Really-Need-To-Hear-This prayer or the Hiding-Behind-The-Microphone prayer, this one is a favourite of people in leadership who aren’t sure how to handle difficult situations. Has old Mrs Jones been spreading gossip again? Don’t confront it, pray for unity! Think that Tim is a bit of lazy Christian and just needs to get off his butt and do something? Don’t come alongside him, pray that everyone would receive the fire of the Holy Spirit! Happened to hear that Johnny and Susy went a little too far in their relationship? Don’t catch up with them, just throw out a prayer for holiness at the next prayer meeting!

4. The Plant-It-In-Your-Subconscious prayer

If you’ve ever spent a good few minutes trying to figure out whether someone was still praying or not only to be met with an abrupt ‘Amen’, chances are you’ve just been hit with a Plant-It-In-The-Subconscious prayer. Sometimes also called the Sermon-Within-A-Prayer prayer, this one is all about using the prayer time for some good old-fashioned culture setting.

It gets heavy use just before big events to ‘remind’ people of their responsibilities (“God, please help us to make sure everyone who arrives is greeted with a big smile and a hi-5“), and also just after sermons to reinforce the key action step (“God, this week we want to be your hands and feet. We want to go out of our way to serve the people around us, and we want to do someone else’s chores. Please help us to really respect our parents. And we also want to…”)

I’m pretty sure I’ve been guilty of all these, multiple times over during my journey in Christian leadership. But I’m doing my best to make sure that my prayers from now on are always directed to God, rather than to those around me.

How about you… have you done any of these before? Or are there any you’d like to add?

Categorised: Personal Growth, Spirituality