What is Prayer? (S13 Episode2)

Seems like a pointless question…we know what prayer is…that thing you do where you talk to an invisible God. Yet, many of us have inherited what I think are unhelpful notions about prayer and so I want to help us reimagine what prayer is and what it is supposed to do.

To that end, I want to start the morning with a little game I am calling, “Would you, or would you not, pray for that?” It will be a fun little exercise, no need to keep score or publicize your results, but it will be a fun little way for us to get a sense of what we honestly think about prayer. For instance, if I asked you to pray for the Blue Jays to win tonight, would you do it? I will take us through that before drawing upon the wisdom of Jesus and those within our tradition to help us craft a better understanding of prayer. We will need to explore why pragmatism ruins prayer, what I learned when Glenn Pascoe took me clothes shopping this summer, and what wrestling with my kids has helped me understand about the nature of prayer. I hope it will be an enjoyable and thoughtful morning for us all.