Episode 41: On Bringing Back the Prayer Service
How can churches implement prayer services? During this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss Dever’s experience with using prayer services at church and how to revive the tradition into something that is edifying for members. They share how it helps members get plugged in at church, the variety of events that may be included in a prayer service such as testimonies or elder candidacy announcements, and other ways to ensure your evening services mobilize the kingdom and encourage family formation. The conversation ends with a discussion on the length and content of church prayers.
- Dever’s Experience with Evening Prayer Services
- Why Prayer Services Benefit Members
- Content of Prayer Services
On Bringing Back the Prayer Service
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hi this is Jonathan Leeman.
Mark Dever:
And this is Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
And welcome to another episode of the 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to equip you with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches.
Mark Dever:
Where will they find those practical resources?
Jonathan Leeman:
Learn more at 9marks.org.
Mark Dever:
You seem like you’re doing that without a script, man.
Jonathan Leeman:
This time I did. Last time I messed it up, I re-recorded it. It was a little embarrassing.
Mark Dever:
Alberto made you recorded, didn’t you?
Jonathan Leeman:
I forget.
Mark Dever:
Well, listen. Johnathan, whatever we’re going to talk about, let me just say, I just read two of your books this week.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thank you for taking the time, brother.
Mark Dever:
And the one we won’t even talk about yet. Still top secret. But the other one, How the Nations Rage, that should be out in April of 2018, is not as important as your stuff on Church membership, butis even more smoothly written than Word Center Church, Reverberation.
It’s a wonderful book, incredibly well-illustrated, thought through so well. I recognize some of the thoughts, but extremely useful, I think, for Christians. And now I do regret that I was not able to be more forceful in getting it in at T4G. And I’m doing my best to maybe make up for that a little bit.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, thank you, brother.
Mark Dever:
It’s so good. It is going to be so useful for people.
Jonathan Leeman:
I hope so. I appreciate that you’re saying it’s less important than membership because one of the things I try to say in this book is like the most important thing is our membership in a church. But yeah, it’s about our overall engagement in the public square.
Mark Dever:
And you’ve done that because the 2016 year was so difficult politically and interpersonally for so many evangelicals.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, I think that’s why I hope it’s a timely book. I mean, it came out of my dissertation in some ways. So this stuff I’ve been thinking about for years on the one hand.
Mark Dever:
Your dissertation?
Jonathan Leeman:
Which became the book, Political Church. But we’re here to talk about something else, Mark. We’re here to talk about something many Christians kind of take for granted, don’t think about, in fact, maybe even a little put off by. Singing. A second service on Sunday. A Sunday night prayer service.
Mark Dever:
Do you mean like the 9 am service and the 11 am service?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, I mean like a second evening service where everybody comes back to it.
Mark Dever:
So you mean I can either go in the morning or the evening?
Jonathan Leeman:
No, you do both. It’s a second one all the morning people come back to in the evening. Or I guess if you meet in the evening, you do in the morning or you do some other time. But I want to get to that question with you in a second.
And specifically, brother, I want to think about prayer and prayer time. Where did you get the idea of using the Sunday evening service in our church as a prayer service? That’s the church’s history, what they did?
Mark Dever:
It was kind of a tactical retreat. Because when I got here, it was an elderly congregation. And there was this Sunday morning, there was a Sunday school at 9:30. It’s just like now there are things about 9:30 church service in the morning was 10:45 and they had an evening service and that may have been like at 7 or something. I can’t remember when it was. And then they had a Wednesday night prayer meeting.
The Wednesday night prayer meeting, like so many Baptist churches in the 20th century that I was aware of, was not that much prayer. It was more of a Bible study after a potluck or a kind of dinner that was provided for a small fee. Then you come upstairs and the pastor might speak on the travels of Paul or something.
And there would be one brief time for any prayer requests. And they would usually mention people in the hospital. And then they might say, and for any unspoken requests, everybody’s hands would go up.
Jonathan Leeman:
I love the unspoken requests. And then somebody would just leave. Why are we even doing that?
Dever’s Experience with Evening Prayer Services
Mark Dever:
Somebody would lead in a single prayer. And so I just thought, listen, our attendance on Sunday mornings is not large. Our attendance on Sunday evening is tiny. We’ve got that space. So why don’t I evacuate that service on Sunday night, which was kind of like a second morning service where about 10 percent of the members in the morning who came just came back in the evening and that was it.
So I evacuated that and grabbed the prayer meeting from Wednesday night and pulled it over to Sunday. And the thought was on Sunday, I can encourage people to come because it’s the Lord’s Day. And Wednesday, I don’t really feel midweek I can ask them to do something.
They’re certainly free to, but I didn’t feel the members would be obligated in the same way I felt they would on the Lord’s Day. And then I would just turn that into a kind of Bible study for anybody who wanted to come and induct a Bible study.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you sort of took an old jalopy of a car, you pulled it in the garage, stuck it on Sunday, retooled it and turned it into quite a vehicle. People love that service now. They often remark on how encouraging it is and how vital it is to the life of the church.
Church Attendance in the Morning vs. the Evening
Mark Dever:
Yeah. By God’s grace, I think just to be clear, what Jonathan is saying, about half the members of our church come back on Sunday evening, maybe a little more than half.
Jonathan Leeman:
So about a thousand people there in the morning, give or take?
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Mark Dever:
Yeah. And what we’ll say is when people are joining the church is, well, let me just check. Adam, you just had a membership interview. Did somebody tell you you needed to come to the evening service if you joined the church? Adam, it’s time to go to the table. And were you happy to agree to do that?
Adam:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
All right. So yeah, so we tell that in membership interviews. We actually ask, you know, are you happy to come along again on Sunday evenings? If somebody’s not, then we’re reluctant about encouraging them to join this church.
Jonathan Leeman:
So you require it.
Why Don’t People Come Back to Evening Prayer Services
Mark Dever:
That’s too strong. We don’t require it. But we it’s when we do our prayer together. And so there may be reasons why somebody can’t come back on Sunday evening. Those would be reasons then that we would employ with them to help them think maybe there’s another church they’d like to go to. I hear there’s going to be a great Baptist Church in Cheverly soon.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m going to get to that in a minute.
Mark Dever:
OK.
Jonathan Leeman:
So I love the way Jamie Dunlop describes it when he’s saying in a membership interview context like that. Yeah, we’ve just found that people who don’t come to that, they get a year or two into their membership and find that, hey, they’re not really connected to the church.
They don’t feel like they’re a part of it. And so we’re telling you upfront right now, hey, this is where you plug in, get involved, and participate with us in the family life.
Sunday Evening Services Are More than an Obligation
Mark Dever:
What I find is that folks will at first come to that Sunday evening service out of a sense of obligation. I mean, sometimes people will respond well to it imMark Deveriately, but generally, people are kind of like, I’m not sure why this is so important, but the people are nice enough, I’ll come.
And it might be like that for them in the first month or two. But after they’ve come for a month or two, then they really begin to know who the people are. They begin to understand how things work. It just gives them a feel.
So the mornings, the way our church works, it’s not how every church should work, it’s just how our church works. The morning is long and formal in our time together and heavy on the teaching.
The evening is very informal and it’s more of a time where there’ll be spontaneous things that happen and you get more of a sense of whoever’s up front. You’ve led an evening service here before.
Jonathan Leeman:
Sure. So it’s 15 minutes of singing and then a big share of what? And 20, 30, 40 minutes sometimes of sharing.
Who Comes to Evening Prayer Service?
Mark Dever:
It depends on what kind of interviews we have. We may have prospective elders sharing his testimony. We have a visiting pastor in. We have a missionary back that we want to hear from. There may just be a former member who’s back.
There may be somebody who’s a current member who’s doing something evangelistically they want to talk about for a minute. There are just all kinds of things that maybe, you know, a two, three, four, five-minute interview.
Jonathan Leeman:
Give me a few more. Let’s think for a second.
Mark Dever:
There may be somebody who’s starting a new ministry. There may be someone who is really having a big struggle in their life. There may be somebody who’s just had an extraordinary deliverance from God that they just want to share about.
There may be a young couple announcing their engagement or asking for prayer for the wedding coming up this coming weekend. There may be a women’s retreat coming up that we want to hear a little bit more about what are the themes, why those themes how we can be praying for you sisters, particularly in this. Maybe outreach events are coming up at various local university campuses. Now we can go on and on
Jonathan Leeman:
Elder testimonies or elder candidate testimonies?
Mark Dever:
Yes, when somebody’s been nominated as an elder, So for example, right now we’ve got two guys that I’ve emailed and we’ve got to get their testimonies in. They’ve been nominated to be elders and the church has not yet heard their testimonies.
Jonathan Leeman:
Introducing the pastoral interns, saying goodbye to pastoral interns.
Mark Dever:
Yep, we did that.
Jonathan Leeman:
I like the evidences of grace you’ve done at different times and you solicit those from the church. Hey, if you’ve got something, come tell me.
Mark Dever:
If the Lord has done something remarkable in your life that you think would encourage others to know about, let me know, email me. And I’ll kind of, you know, I’ll get more than I can use.
And I’ll kind of stack them up and, you know, I’ll use this one and this one and this one. I might not use yours, but I like knowing about it as your pastor anyway.
Jonathan Leeman:
Get to know a member?
Mark Dever:
Better know a member. Yep. Sometimes I’m leaning now more trying to, our eldership is so large, trying to get to know an elder. So that’s what I’m looking at more for 2018.
Our Congregation in Prayer Services
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. So back to that church plant in Cheverly, we’re doing. 60 of us are leaving this congregation. Well four of us who have served as elders here.
Mark Dever:
So there will only be 60 fewer humans here on Sunday morning?
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re not going to feel it. It’s going to feel just the same, I predict.
Mark Dever:
60 fewer humans?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, no, actually, probably 130 fewer humans.
Mark Dever:
The small ones.
Jonathan Leeman:
There’s going to be 70 small ones going.
Mark Dever:
OK, so for example, we’re going to lose two large Leemans.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s right.
Mark Dever:
But how many small Leemans?
Jonathan Leeman:
Four.
Mark Dever:
And two large Kitchens, but how many small Kitchens? And this kitchen is not a room. It’s the last name of a family in the church.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s exactly right. So we could keep going like that. And the twos out in Cheverly for some reason seem to have larger numbers of smaller humans around them.
And that’s what we’re dealing with right now. We’re dealing with the complexities of how are we going to do our children’s ministry. It’s going to threaten to be the tail that wagged the dog. But something else we’re thinking about, and this is my point in asking, is, OK, how are we going to do our services?
Because we’re going to have to meet in the evening. And how are we going to accomplish what’s accomplished at Capitol Hill in the evening? Right?
If we only can meet in one service, how do we accomplish it? And so that made me think, okay, what exactly is it that’s accomplished in that evening service? I’m gonna give you two phrases. These are really good. Are you ready? Two things we accomplished.
Kingdom Mobilization and Family Formation
Mark Dever:
I’ve got three ideas.
Jonathan Leeman:
But these are good. Number one, kingdom mobilization. Number two, family formation. Kingdom mobilization, you’re helping to mobilize the members of Capitol Hill Baptist in praying for this, going to that, participating in these. That’s what I think is accomplished uniquely in that evening time, in that sharing and praying time.
Mark Dever:
You’ve really got this religious speak down, don’t you? I mean, kingdom mobilization. I had specific things in mind, but I didn’t have the neat little NAMB-like phrases. I mean, kingdom mobilization. Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I do what I can to learn from NAMB.
Mark Dever:
Good.
Jonathan Leeman:
And family formation.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right? By the family church. Back to your idea. I’ve been here for a month. Is it really that important? now I’m beginning to feel the texture of this thing. These are my people. This is where our life as a family happens. How can I miss this?
Mark Dever:
Well, I remember when Lois shared about her mom’s funeral and how moving that was. Or even the story about, you know, one of the stories she shared about her mother and what her mother had done in the 1950s, I think, in Alexandria. Anyway, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I find that after an evening service, if I’m gone, if I miss it.
Mark Dever:
That’s what you want to know what went on. You can listen to the sermon online.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, no, that’s right. Yeah. So you ask around, how was it? What they talk about? And they’re like, I don’t know.
The Power of Public Prayer
Mark Dever:
And the other thing I would say that we accomplish, I don’t have it as nicely done as you did, but I would just say we get information shared. We spend a significant amount of time in prayer.
And I think simply the fact that we would come together to spend that much time in prayer and in the history of the church or churches I’ve been with in Africa, it’s not that much time.
But it’s more time than most American evangelical churches seem to spend publicly together in prayer. So we’ll spend a substantial amount of time in prayer. It could be 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, but somewhere there’ll be a significant amount of time in the middle of the service going to prayer.
Jonathan Leeman:
I want to get to the mechanics of that in a second, but go on.
Mark Dever:
And the third thing is we have a brief message brought, a 15-minute message from a text of Scripture that’s the opposite testament from what the morning was. And matches in theme, the morning text, but from the opposite testament.
And we do that in part in order to supplement the teaching ministry of the guys who give it in the evening so that a Klon Kitchen and one of our former elders who’s sitting here is going with you on the church plant or you, or Alberto, have you done one? But you’re about to do one coming up. Evening address. So yeah, and Jason, you’ve done one.
So yeah, so we have different guys in the church who are in ministry, in some sense, are moving to ministry, teach the Word. Matt Martens, a lawyer a couple weeks ago, did it.
Jonathan Leeman:
And brought some of his non-Christian colleagues from his office.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. So that’s how we try to use it. And it’s just good for the people to hear the other voices, I think. Yeah, so that’d be a third thing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Let’s get real, though.
Mark Dever:
So that’s not all about prayer. But it’s about our evening service.
Prayer Services Allow us to Listen & Think
Jonathan Leeman:
No, that’s right. But let’s get real here for a second, Mark. I think a lot of people are listening thinking, look, my people –
Mark Dever:
Now when you say, but let’s get real here, that suggests we haven’t been being real.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s been real for us.
Mark Dever:
So I don’t want us to devalue all the other words that we just spent time speaking.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s a good rebuke. Thank you.
Mark Dever:
Thanks, man. Well, you receive that very humbly. You have learned so much, Jonathan.
Jonathan Leeman:
I work hard at being humble, and I think I do a pretty good job. Where was I? A lot of guys are listening and they’re thinking, Mark, you don’t understand. There’s no way they’re going to come back for a second service.
Just here in Dubuque, here in, you know, what, at Greenwich, they’re just not going to come back. Or, hey, we, we meet it in the evening at 4 PM, Cheverly Baptist. How, if we’re meeting in the evening and people aren’t, and we don’t have another building to go to.
So the school that we rent from only lets us meet from these hours. I don’t have another time. So there’s going to be –
Mark Dever:
You are trying to get me a problem solved for your church.
Jonathan Leeman:
Maybe.
Mark Dever:
I see what you’re doing.
Jonathan Leeman:
But I’m also trying to sympathize and connect with the listener who’s thinking, how does this work?
Mark Dever:
All right. Well, I’m especially telling you brothers who have buildings. OK. Because a lot of you out there have buildings. So if you have a building, you can utilize it like this. It’s a really good way to use it.
Will People Come Back to Prayer Services?
Jonathan Leeman
But what if I don’t think my people will come back? There’s just not a culture of it. No. No.
Mark Dever:
There wasn’t a culture of it when I got here. Or rather, the culture that was was like for instead of 130 people, I had 15. So what I tried to do is just take those 15 and make it as good as I possibly could and then start, as new people join, pointing them to come to it. So I tried extra hard on the quality of the evening.
And I would say from ‘94 to 2000, we were improving the quality. And by 2000, it had become so much what it is now that we were able to get the elders to make a statement that if you’re not coming the evening, you really wouldn’t be eligible to serve in a visible way like, as an elder or a small group leader or core seminar teacher or the ensemble music scene.
Jonathan Leeman:
When did you make that transition?
Mark Dever:
About the year 2000, I think.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, that’s interesting. So you pretty much have to come if you’re going to be a leader, a visible.
Becoming Fully Involved in Church
Mark Dever:
Yeah, because that’s when we pray as a church. And if you want to say, well, I just don’t have time to, you may be making the right decision to not come, but then that’s part of that decision. You don’t have the time to be a leader in the church as well.
And we’re not holding you up as an example of what it means to be involved in the church. So it may be the right thing for a season for you to be a member and not come. Or maybe you should consider going to a church where you can be more fully involved.
Jonathan Leeman:
I was in an interim pastorate situation.
Mark Dever:
You’ve been in a couple of those.
Jonathan Leeman:
And I was at a Sunday evening service and a lot of the elders didn’t come. That’s hard. Yeah.
Mark Dever:
Then you got to ask why are you having the elders not even come. Right. Well, it’s been great having this conversation, Jonathan.
Content of Prayer Services
Jonathan Leeman:
Thanks. Hey, we have a few more minutes left because I have a few questions, especially about the praying. Are you getting bored?
Mark Dever:
Not at all. I love talking about it. Sunday evening services and praying
Jonathan Leeman:
Just trying to teach all the things we’ve learned from you.
Mark Dever:
Give me a shovel.
Jonathan Leeman:
True or false. Long-winded prayers can be discouraging to people sitting there and coming.
Mark Dever:
Well, that’s a yes, but only because you said can, you didn’t say are.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m careful with what I say.
Mark Dever:
Okay. Well, so yes, I can say more but yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’ve worked against it. You’ve worked against long winded praying.
Mark Dever:
I have worked to get some long-winded prayers. Can I tell the Dick Lucas story again?
Jonathan Leeman:
You’ve told it before. You’ve done that on a podcast. Yes, he has.
Mark Dever:
- Well, go ahead.
Jonathan Leeman:
What have you done to encourage people? What and why have you encouraged people to pray concisely?
Prayer Services Don’t Need to be Conscience
Mark Dever:
Well, I want to just be clear. I don’t always encourage people to pray concisely in the morning. Our prayers are long. They’re five to 10 minutes long.
Jonathan Leeman:
Good point.
Mark Dever:
Sunday evening service, however, every week. Those prayers of intercession every week because we’re trying to get a number of different things prayed about 10, 15, 20, sometimes 20 plus different discrete things prayed about.
And so it’s going to be more plausible for us to pray about it, a number of things like that, if the prayers are brief and to the point. And it also will help us to include having more people participate in praying out loud.
Jonathan Leeman:
So what do you say at the beginning of every prayer service?
Mark Dever:
So if you’ve agreed to lead us in prayer, please put up your hand so people holding, carrying microphones can see you and bring your microphone. Pray briefly. So we all have time to pray and pray loudly so we can all join you in prayer.
Jonathan Leeman:
And they’re in a pretty quick clip. Yeah, we’ll have two or three guys for 20 to 40 seconds.
Mark Dever:
When it goes well, there’s sometimes folks go longer and sometimes that’s okay and sometimes it’s not. But you know, it’s we make it through. That’s okay. I’m just trying to manage the number of requests that people have asked me for and plus something that I provoke, you know, that I want prayed about.
Jonathan Leeman:
So let’s get to that, people asking you. I think in my experience, another downer on church prayer meetings is they…
Mark Dever:
It’s just the hospitalist.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s hospitalist, it’s, you know, unmentioned requests or whatever. What have you done to change that culture?
Prayer Services do Not Always Look the Same
Mark Dever:
I tried to move things from being about physical illnesses to about spiritual matters and from being about other people to being about ourselves or us as a church, tried to move from the individual to the corporate, tried to move toward more evangelism or discipling ability, more deliberately spiritual stuff.
So those were some deliberate shifts that I’ve tried to make. So we pray about preaching of God’s word. We pray for small group leaders. We pray for our sisters to be encouraged. We pray for families to regularly unfold singles into their lives.
We may pray for a different elder if I do an elder interview. We pray for our witness of unity in diversity. We pray for our evangelism and for there to be faithfulness on our part and for us to see conversions from our evangelism. We pray for better care for our brothers and sisters, our brothers down at Central Union Mission.
We pray for more of our church members to give. We pray for our daily lives this week at work and at home that we will do good, honor God, and commend the gospel. We may pray for a supported worker or seminarian that we support. And then I have a couple of rotations of things. The first rotation has 11 things in it.
The second has six different things in it that are all similar. The six are about young people, the church teenagers, and the 11 are just about integrating the church into people’s lives.
So just for example, in that first one, that we would build good friendships with our neighbors and faithfully share the gospel with them. And for that second rotation, for example, pray that parents of teenagers in the church would wisely and purposefully encourage and choose discipling relationships for their sons and daughters with members of our church.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s remarkable to think about how much you’re teaching slash catechizing the church and what to value and what to care about as you’re doing that.
Mark Dever:
Well, you know, the praying, the most important one, I think, must be that praying regularly for the preaching.
Jonathan Leeman:
This is what we value here. Well, and you should too.
Mark Dever:
And let me tell you who told me this is if I can remember correctly, it was Terry Johnson. Okay. And then an Independent Pres down in Savannah, that dear brother was here with his family visiting one Sunday evening in the prayer meeting and he appreciated the prayer meeting. He was very encouraging afterward.
And he said it struck me that you didn’t pray for the preaching of God’s word. And I just felt cut to the quick. It was like that time Bill Behren saw me. I didn’t share the gospel of my sermon. Yeah. You know, I thought, Terry, that’s a good word. Thank you.
Jonathan Leeman:
When was that? What year was that?
Mark Dever:
I don’t know. A long time ago. But ever since Terry said that, boom. Terry, so if you’re listening, which I’m sure you’re not, but ever since he shared that with me, we’ve always made sure I’m prayed for the regular preaching of God’s word.
Jonathan Leeman:
Now, I think I’ve asked you this in a podcast before. I forget.
Mark Dever:
Well, we’re in the 30s in this podcast. It’s about time we start, you know. No, I mean the number of podcasts.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, that’s right. So let me, but let me, let me…
Mark Dever:
We should be doing some repeating.
We Pray Together
Jonathan Leeman:
Let me repeat the point here and make sure you give us a chance to hear. Somebody comes up to you and says, I want to pray for Aunt Lucy. What do you say to them?
Mark Dever:
Essentially, I say no.
Jonathan Leeman:
How do you do that?
Mark Dever:
It depends on who the person is and how well I know them, but it’ll be something very similar to no. I’ll happily pray right now with you for Aunt Lucy. Or talk to your small group. That’d be a great thing to pray. Please share it with your small group. But I get a lot of health requests. What we try to do here is things that do more with the direct gospel ministry of the church. During this one time we have together to do intercessory prayer.
So please don’t misunderstand. I care for Aunt Lucy. We just realized there are 600 people there. If we start praying for all the sick family members of everybody in this room, that’s all we’ll do.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you say no once a week, once a month? How often are you saying no to people?
Mark Dever:
Probably once a week on average.
Jonathan Leeman:
Is that hard to do?
Why Prayer Services Benefit Members
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I mean, it is again, it depends on how understanding the person is. But I’m confident that the prayer meeting on Sunday night benefits from me tending it like that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
I think people feel the excitement of the things that we’re inforMark Dever about and get to pray about.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think it’s been huge. Your willingness to say no and to shepherd us towards these kinds of things, not those kinds of things, I think is dramatic. And what makes that such a lively…
Mark Dever:
To me it’s something that almost feels like BBC World Service on Sunday night. You’re just seeing kind of what’s going on. Yeah. You know. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
One more nuts and bolts question here.
Mark Dever:
So if Deepak is going to go speak at a counseling conference or when Tripp Lee was here, if Tripp was about to go out and do something, I would charge them, look, share that on Sunday night. Help that ministry become our church’s ministry.
So when you share something you individually are doing, you help it become our church. So if Matthew Freeman is doing a Bible study at his workplace, Matthew, share that with us on Sunday night. Let us be praying for you because that helps make your ministry our ministry as a church.
Humility in Prayer Service
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, right there is a kind of a strange sort of humility that’s required because I just in my personal experience, I know if I might go out and preach or teach something somewhere and you’ll say to me, you should share.
And I’ll think, I don’t want to like, you know, promote myself. I don’t want to do that. And actually it requires me to humble myself and say, no, let them join me in doing this for us to be doing this in prayer.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. You’re welcoming other people into it. It’s not grabbing the spotlight. It’s welcoming others into it.
Jonathan Leeman:
And if the senior pastor is doing something somewhere else, he should share that as well. Yeah.
Mark Dever:
There may be exceptions, but generally, yeah. Sure.
Jonathan Leeman:
You update us. One more mechanics question. How do the microphone runners work to keep this thing going?
Mark Dever:
Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think they just learn to do it. I mean, so we have guys who have microphones. I’ve told the people they’ve agreed to lead. Are there three or four of them running around? Yeah, two or three or four.
To lift up their hand and make sure they can catch the eye of the person with the microphone. I think they just feel the natural pressure of time, so they’re just out there trying to make sure they’re ready to micro with somebody else whenever somebody has finished praying.
Jonathan Leeman:
Listen to this, totally random. William Faulkner, the novelist, one of his characters talks about their Sunday evening prayer meeting in his book, Light in August. Sunday evening prayer meeting. It see Mark Denver to him always that at that hour man approaches nearest of all to God, near that in any other hour of all the seven days.
Then alone of all the church gatherings. Is there something of that peace which is the promise and the end of the church? The mind and the heart purged then if it is ever to be. The week and its whatever disasters finished and sum Mark Dever up and expiated by the stern and formal fury of the morning service. The next week and its whatever disasters not yet born. The heart quiet now for a little while beneath the cool soft blowing of faith and hope.
I’m not even sure what that means, but it’s beautiful.
Mark Dever:
It’s an eerily good description of…
Jonathan Leeman:
It is.
Mark Dever:
That’s strange.
Jonathan Leeman:
Isn’t that funny? And I don’t think Faulkner is a Christian. Oops, second page there. From one of the characters in Light in August, there’s nominal non-Christian William Faulkner on the Sunday evening prayer service. Anything else on this topic, brother?
Mark Dever:
I’m just so thankful that Alex Duke reads widely and he gives his quotes.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know, right? Anything else for real?
We Teach People to Pray Together
Mark Dever:
Well, if you’re listening to this as a pastor, I would just encourage you to realize that you have a need to teach your people to pray together. So, there’s nothing in the Bible about a second service on Sunday. You may find another way to do it. But you really don’t want to jettison corporate prayer. You really want to yoke people up in prayer.
And if you say, well, we pray in our homes and our small groups. We pray in our prayer triplets. None of that is bad. All of that is good. But I think there’s just something that is appropriate about the people of God together praying, unitedly.
And whether that’s in the fashion of some and all praying out loud at the same time or our fashion where, you know, one prays leading us in prayer and forming the words that we’re all giving it sent to when we all then say amen or amen after it. However we do it, we do as a church want to follow that example. We see the book of Acts and elsewhere about coming together to pray.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah. I would say that the experience of the Sunday night prayer service is if many churches don’t have it, what we experience there and not having it feels like, okay, I’m going to get rid of all of my bread and pasta from my dad.
Meats are great, fruits and vegetables great, but I’m going to get rid of all of my bread and all of my pastas and all of that wonderful, delicious stuff. And it’s like, why would you deprive yourself of all of that? I feel like there’s this whole other experience that we have together, corporately afforded by that service.
Mark Dever:
Heaven is coming. Get a foretaste of it.
Jonathan Leeman:
There we go. Thanks, brother.
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Pastors Talk
A weekly conversation between Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever about practical aspects of the Christian life and pastoral ministry.
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