MattGlover.com

Every so often with our youth group, we have a night called Equipped. These nights are designed to equip those young people who are serious about faith to better live out the Christian life in their own context. Sometimes we run seminar type things. Other times we go places. On Saturday night we prayed.

The aim was to teach our young people about some different ways to pray. We’re all pretty familiar with the eyes closed, heads bowed thing, but there are centuries of experience and learning that we can draw on when it comes to prayer. But rather than simply ‘tell’ our young people how to pray in these ways, we did it. And it took the form of a symphony in four movements that told the story of ‘The Light.’

We gathered around a table draped in black. The room was dimly lit and Celtic worship music played softly in the background. This was the introduction to the symphony - a time to stop and prepare for the hour or so that was to come.

The large single candle in the centre of the table was lit. This candle represented God. We also lit some incense to represent the ‘fragrant offerings’ of prayer we were to present to God.

For our first movement, we prayed prayers of confession, reading Psalm 51 aloud before writing our prayers on a piece of paper. The paper was then set alight by the flame of the large candle and placed in a large container to burn.

For our second movement, twelve smaller candles were lit. The light of God was passed to twelve disciples who were charged to take the light to the very ends of the earth. We used this time to pray for the leaders of our different ministries.

For our third movement, we lit a number of candles that were on stands. Like in the book of Revelation, the candle stands were used to represent the churches established by the disciples. In small groups, we took a candle stand and spead throughout the building and prayed prayers of intercession for the people that were struggling with all sorts of things.

Our final movement involved the lighting of individual taper candles for people and places of the world that desperately need God’s peace to prevail.

By this time, the table was now bathed in candle light and the smoke from the incense danced through the columns of wax. For our conclusion, we simply sat in silence and prayed, lit some more candes if we felt a need to, before moving out into the foyer.

Afterwards we spoke about our experiences. One of the most surprising (and encouraging) responses was, “it felt just like Youth Alive!”. Now Youth Alive is your big, loud, lots of people type event. This was small and silent. But the young person went on to explain how he felt the same sense of awe and wonder in the presence of God at the prayer gathering as they did at the big youth rally.

If all our young poeple can learn to pray in this way and experience God in the process, then I’ll sleep a happy youth pastor. 

I’m happy to email out a copy of the Prayer Symphony material if anybody wants it. Just let me know!