Terry J. Stokes - Prayers for the People : Things We Didnt Know We Could Say to God

TERRY J. STOKES is the associate pastor of youth and community engagement at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, in New Jersey. He weaves together his experience in several church contexts with his theological education, his knowledge of pop culture, and his devotional life to write prayers that encourage the heart of todays church.

SPACE FOR YOUR OWN WRITTEN COLLECTS

THIS COLLECT RECIPE has enriched my prayer life; I hope this will encourage and prompt you to try the spiritual practice of prayer-writing for yourself in these pages:

1. Pick a titlewhat or who the prayer is for.

2. Begin the prayer with an address to God.

3. Continue with an attribute or action of God.

4. Craft some contentwhat do you want to say to God about this?

5. End with a Trinitarian doxology.

THE BASIC UNIT of the church is not the family but the friendship. What is radical about the church is not the binding of people who are already tied by blood or marriage, but people who would otherwise have no tie at all.

I wrote those words in my journal while reading Wesley Hills Spiritual Friendship, which was not only a significant stepping-stone along my journey to affirming theology during seminary, but also an occasion for me to participate in the larger resurgence of attentiveness to friendship (and a corresponding de-emphasis of the nuclear family) that Ive seen over the past few years in the church circles that Im a part of.

Ive struggled to find deep, consistent, present friendships in my short adult life. No doubt, Ive found great friends in individual chapters of life, but Ive often struggled to carry those relationships over to the next chapter. From college to a yearlong intentional community program, to seminary, to my current chapter as a youth pastor living alone in a new town, Ive moved around quite a bit, and the answer to the question Who are my people? has gotten redefined, if not undefined, each time.

One thing Ive learned is that when I say, Hey so-and-so, Im struggling with loneliness right now and could really use a chat with you because I love youas opposed to What up, fam! Miss you! Would love to chat sometime soon!I almost always get a quick and tender response. I used to loath to be so obviously needy, but Im really about that kind of assertiveness now. The inhibition-lowering and general emotional amnesty of the pandemic definitely helped.

So I cry for help more often now. And the prayers in this section have that same energythey are my cry to God for help, and a reminder for me to be open with my friends about how much I need them.

Do you ever feel like youre almost always the more heavily invested one in friendships? We got you in this chapter. Is passive-aggressiveness a temptation for you (Oh, now you can text me back? Let me take exactly as long to reply to you)? We got you. (Where are my Enneagram 9s at, by the way?) Are you desperate for new friends but not excited about that initial banter (I blame the pandemic for my own plummeting conversation skills)? We got you.

This chapter is first in the book because, in my mind, it is the most important, and the one I most want to emphasize. If repeated, fervent prayer in this area can be a means of grace by which God makes us better friends and blesses us with better friendships, which nourishes every other area of life represented in the later chapters.