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For 13 years, I had the privilege of serving with pastor Kevin DeYoung as an elder, worship leader, and counseling director at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan. It didn’t take long to see that Kevin had a great interest in ensuring our worship was biblical, God-centered, and excellent. One of the things he encouraged was well-prepared congregational prayer every Sunday. So, in 2010 I began taking more time preparing and writing out the prayers I would lead in the congregation.
Over the next few years I only grew in my conviction that congregational prayer was truly an important element of corporate worship and that the Lord had graced us to take this seriously and to strive to do it well. Eventually, God helped me to put what I was learning into a book.
My prayer is that this article, based on the book, might help and encourage pastors, worship leaders, and others to glorify God and strengthen the church by devoting the same thought and preparation to leading in prayer as they do to preparing sermons or leading music. Here are four principles to guide this pursuit.
1. Public Prayer Should Include Adoration, Confession, and Supplication.
Because wholehearted admiration and love for God are foundational to our relationship with him as Creator and Redeemer, adoration is the first and most basic kind of prayer. Prayers of adoration should aim at affectionate wonder, as we remember that we were dead in sin and that God has graciously made us alive in Christ (Eph. 2:1–10). God is infinitely worthy of captivated hearts overflowing in passionate praise.
. . . a worship service has no real integrity without a time of confession.
Corporate confession is often neglected in worship services or even seen as damaging to our self-esteem. But given the universality and seriousness of sin, a worship service has no real integrity without a time of confession. Confession should aim at grateful sorrow as we contemplate the horror of dishonoring God and the staggering riches of his forgiveness in Christ.
Supplication is a natural part of corporate prayer but, because of the temptation to focus primarily on our felt needs, it should be balanced with adoration and confession. The mood of our corporate supplication should be urgent confidence as we lift up our concerns to our heavenly Father, trusting in his abundant mercies.
These three essential types of prayer can be prayed individually at different times throughout the service or combined in various ways.
2. Public Prayer Should Be Trinitarian.
Not every public prayer needs to mention the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but to be truly Christian, our prayers should consistently bear witness to the three-in-one. This is because, in Scripture, everything is Trinitarian. The three persons of the Godhead are equally yet distinctly involved in creation, providence, redemption, sanctification, and consummation.
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:14–19 is a good example of Trinitarian prayer. He prays to the Father that the Ephesians would be strengthened by the Spirit so that the Son would dwell in their hearts by faith. Here is a sample of what Trinitarian adoration might sound like:
We worship you, Father, for being the author of all things in heaven and on earth. . . . We praise you, Jesus, for being the perfect image and radiance of the Father. . . . We adore you, Holy Spirit, the giver of life, the Comforter and Helper. (87)
3. Public Prayer Should Be Thoughtful and Reverent.
The more public a prayer is the more thought-out it should be. This is especially true on Sunday morning. Without proper preparation, prayer can drift toward repetition and irreverence.
Repetition can be saying words like just, um, really, yeah, or the name of God or Jesus in every other sentence. We end up repeating themes already prayed about in slightly different words and endlessly circling the runway until people silently cry, “Land the plane!” The cure for repetition is thoughtful preparation and being willing to practice the prayer beforehand.
Irreverent prayer happens when God’s majestic transcendence is forgotten or swallowed up in his merciful immanence. Likewise, it overemphasizes intimacy with God and underemphasizes humble reverence, and this casual overfamiliarity can make God sound like our “homeboy” or “girlfriend” rather than the Holy One.
The cure for irreverence is remembering the infinite distance between sinful creature and holy God and the inseparability of God’s holiness from his love.
The cure for irreverence is remembering the infinite distance between sinful creature and holy God and the inseparability of God’s holiness from his love.
Ecclesiastes 5:1–2 captures the need to be thoughtful and reverent in prayer:
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.
4. Public Prayer Should Be Gospel-Centered.
D. A. Carson once remarked that his students learned not just what he taught, but what he was excited about. So what was the apostle Paul excited about? What did he think about, talk about, write about, pray about? Answer: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
Since the whole Bible points to Jesus’s redemptive work (Luke 24:44–47), the gospel should be central in all our worship, including our corporate prayers. Nothing will glorify God or encourage the saints more than singing, preaching, and praying the gospel of God’s grace. The following prayer of adoration exults in the manifold glories of the gospel:
Our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, how can we adequately praise you for the gift of gifts? In Christ your Son we see a wonderful condescension. He came down to earth to raise us up to heaven, and he was made like us so we could become like him. In Christ your Son we see amazing love. When we could not rise to him, he came down low to be near us and to draw us to himself.
. . . In Christ your Son we see glorious wisdom. When we were utterly lost with no desire to return and no wisdom to plan our recovery, he became God-with-us to save us to the uttermost. . . . Glory to you in the highest, Father! Together we praise you for your astounding, costly, redeeming love in Christ. (99–100)
A Closing Exercise
What could you do to improve the quality of your corporate prayers? Here’s one idea. Immerse yourself this week in Colossians 1:3–14. Mediate on this beautiful, balanced, reverent, Trinitarian, gospel-centered prayer. Then write a personal prayer of adoration, confession, and supplication, using “I” in your prayer. Finally, turn it into a corporate prayer, using “we” and use it to lead your family, Bible study, or church in prayer.