. . . we need some irregular prayer meetings!

Not too long ago, I was trying to explain our upcoming midweek schedule to the congregation. We had just completed two months of “Free Lemonade/Free Prayer” prayer stations. In two weeks, an all-church prayer meeting would commemorate my final day as their interim pastor. Easy enough. But how to describe the week in between the prayer stations and the special “good bye” meeting?

I cringed as I heard myself say: “This coming Wednesday is just a regular prayer meeting.”

Regular? Since when should we ever consider two or three gathered in His name in His presence as regular? I only meant that we would be returning to our pre-prayer station format but the Holy Spirit would not let me forget my choice of words.

Sad to say, when I looked up the term, it all made sense: “Regular: Unvarying, predictable, normally expected, conforming.”  Hasn’t our week-to-week experience of corporate prayer become predictable? Don’t we walk into the room expecting a normal, ordinary, just-like-last-week-and-the weeks-before experience? Unvarying; isn’t it a virtue in many prayer circles? Would you agree we have conformed more to tradition that to what we read in scripture?

My slip of vocabulary spoke volumes. Too many gatherings of prayer are all too regular. It is time for some irregular prayer meetings!

With you for a prayed for planet,

Pastor Phil