What Can I Pray for You Today?

“What can we pray for you this week?” In my recent experience, this is a simple question that has a powerful ability to build Christian community. 

In our Moderators and COM Basecamps, we have a weekly prompt that asks this simple question, and we have built a habit of answering the prompt and praying for one another. The key is that we don’t just ask, but we also pray – holding the community. Among COM members, the weekly prompt has become a place where we share our joys and concerns, hold one another in hope and love, and check in on one another’s progress and setbacks. In the Moderators Basecamp, our Moderator Elect, Cynta Butts, taught me how to pray by text. In response to a joy or concern, she writes a literal prayer into the comment box, holding you, me, and our colleagues in prayer in a form that endures as it remains written on the chat board, like a candle lit in a chapel and burning for days. Cynta also uses her phone to randomly send prayers by text or voicemail to friends, colleagues, and family whenever she thinks of it.

At church, of course, we ask this question weekly. “What joys and concerns do you have this week?” At my home church (and probably at yours), we have a group of people who receive these requests by email after the service each Sunday, and pray for the flock throughout the week. I recently joined this group of prayerful attention, and it has transformed my relationship to the people I worship with. Even as I travel for work, and often can’t be present in the sanctuary, I am connected to the hopes and anxieties of my loved ones at church. I am with them in prayer across space and time.

This summer, as I’ve experienced grief and anxiety in my own family, I have also experienced these moments of being held in prayer as a grounding influence in a restless sea. When I get a card or a text or an email that essentially says, “I heard your request for prayer, and I’m praying for you right now,” I feel connected and strengthened and grounded. In that moment, there is someone whose love and concern and hope I can lean on.

It’s an ancient question, and a practice we may not always think of as important, but asking, “What can I pray for you today?” and then actually praying is a powerful tool of Christian community. 

I invite you to lean into this practice this month, because this very old practice of inviting prayerful attention is one of the ways we remain the church for this time and this place.

Blessings,
Tyler

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash