Lessons on prayer from the Indian church

2008 January 24
by Tim Chester

I’m speaking on prayer and the Trinity at the staff conference of Friends International this weekend. FI work with international students in the UK.

Preparing for it, I came across some notes on prayer I’d made after a conversation with Matthew Bennett. Matthew was working as research assistant at Tearfund and had made a visit to India to look at the church’s approach to prayer (among other things). Here are some lessons we identified through the conversation.

  1. Communal
    Prayer is communal. Matthew met one Indian pastor who met for prayer every day with ‘his disciples’ from 4.30-7.00am.
  2. Worship
    The context of prayer is worship. Significant time is giving to the praise and adoration of God.
  3. The Bible
    The content of prayer is the Bible. Prayer is centred around the Word of God with a lot of Bible readings used to shape people’s praying.
  4. Involvement
    Someone provides a clear focus for the praying, but at the same time the ‘leader’ is seen as one of the group. Everyone is a leader. Everyone actively works at identifying and developing ‘themes’ in the meeting.
  5. Functional
    The prayer is clearly functional. It is not vague, but rather specifies clear goals. One pastor told Matthew that in the West you do not have to pray. If you go on a journey you know how you will get there and that you will arrive safely. In India you cannot make those assumption. Pray is clearly related to the business of life.

from → Prayer, Spirituality

One Response
  1. 2008 February 6
    Adrian Reynolds permalink

    Thanks for this, Tim. Having been to India several times, I concur with some of the lessons. I would add that, unlike much prayer in the West, prayer is joyful. It is suffused with a immense sense of joy (even in very difficult circumstances) which our prayer times often lack – no doubt this would please Piper!

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