Let's Pray Less So We Can Sing More

Baseball utility players are prized for their versatility even though they don’t have enough talent to crack the starting lineup. They are usually excellent players but not quite good enough to help carry the team from a starting position. A utility player is more supplemental than foundational to the success of each game. He waits on the bench until the manager needs him to fill any of a variety of positions in the lineup.

Prayer has been relegated to the role of a worship service utility player. It is often plugged into worship service holes when the starters (songs and sermons) need a break. Instead of a foundational conversation with God as an act of worship, prayer is often a supplemental extra used to fill in, transition, or connect. Consequently, it has been demoted to the role of a worship service starter, stuffer, and stopper. It serves as the seventh inning stretch before the sermon; it breaks up the song set when keys aren’t relative; it moves the worship band on the platform; and it allows the pastor to discreetly move to the back of the worship center to shake hands after the service.

Maybe we are singing more and praying less because our prayers are often not that deep. Hughes Oliphant Old wrote, “For many generations American Protestants have prized spontaneity in public prayer. One has to admit, however, that the spontaneous prayer one often hears in public worship is an embarrassment to the tradition. It all too often lacks content. It may be sincere, but sometimes it is not very profound.”[1]

Maybe we are singing more and praying less because prayer is such an easy language to fake. We can, in fact, pretend to pray, use the words of prayer, practice forms of prayer, assume postures of prayer, acquire a reputation for prayer, and never really pray.[2] Public praying needs to be supported by private praying. Those who publicly lead in prayer must be well experienced in prayer. It is difficult to lead others where you haven’t been yourself.[3]

Maybe we are singing more and praying less because our song texts have been parsed, prayed over, and practiced, while our prayers are often played by ear. So, if our worship service prayer preparations were as stringent as those of our musical offerings, we might consider singing a little less in order to pray more. Then maybe our worship service prayers would again be considered foundational instead of supplemental.

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[1] Hughes Oliphant Old, Leading in Prayer: A Workbook for Worship (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), 5.

[2] Harold M. Best, Dumbfounded Praying (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), xii.

[3] Old, Leading in Prayer, 5.