It isn't just Hump Day
Anyone know why we call Wednesday night church services "prayer meetings"? OK, I know some folks call it Bible Study, maybe a few combine the titles, perhaps a few others even personalize it with something like the Pastor's Bible Study. But having driven all over this great state of ours and attending the mid-week service at several of our NC Baptist Churches, I can tell you that for the most part we still call it prayer meeting.
It is ironic to me, because in most of those places where we call it that, prayer takes up only a few minutes of the actual service.
Or does it?
What is prayer, and how do you know when someone is doing it and when they aren't? From my earliest memory I recall that I am "supposed to" bow my head and close my eyes when I pray. Katherine J. Keller is an oft quoted devotional writer who has done some extensive research on prayer. She says:
In my study of the gospels, I didn't find one reference where Jesus folded His hands or bowed His head when He prayed. He had open and free communication with the Father. Most of the time he looked up, not down.
Yes I get that He is God and we're not. I was well schooled that bowing my head is a sign of reverence not a necessary part of some formula for how to pray. But I think it is this "how to" issue that keeps so many people from praying more than they do. But I digress.
Ask someone who doesn't go to church why they don?t and more often that not, the answer will be "hypocrisy." Are we being hypocrites corporately as a church by calling a service in which we only pray for ten minutes a prayer meeting? Even if you disagree with my finding, concede my logic is good and hear me out. What we do, in most NC Baptist churches on Wednesday night isn't a
"prayer meeting."
And so what is it? Perhaps more precisely, what do we have wrong: the name or the substance? Should we change the content to match the name? Or give it a designation that better matches what actually goes on? Well it doesn't take X-ray vision to see that our churches need both prayer and Bible study. In fact, could you have "church" without having both? But we switch between the two and/or something else so often, maybe the most accurate moniker is just a Wednesday night service.
Or maybe we should spend less time trying to figure out what to call it and simply say "Ya'll come."
Posted at 09:29AM May 09, 2008 by Shane Nixon in General | Comments[0]