And let me tell you, God …
Many corps still hold a Sunday morning prayer meeting – it was called ‘knee drill’ when I was a young fella – and these can be a great way to commence each Sunday as you prepare for worship and for whatever other activities might take place at your corps on a Sunday.
They can also, rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly), be a source of some mirth and amusement from time to time.
For example, many corps are blessed to have someone who knows more than everyone else, and they choose to show that during prayer time when they have a captive audience.
“And, Lord, we thank you for the rain last night, which was sorely needed. Last night’s 5mm of rain was the highest so far this month, exceeding the 4mm last Thursday but still lower than the average for April, which is 5.5mm. But, nevertheless, not a bad effort, God.”
Another is the gossip: “Father, we lift up in prayer Tom and Helen, who are still fighting, and she had to go to the doctor on Wednesday for some rash she has, and she had to leave the kids with Doris, her neighbour, who doesn’t even like Tom and Helen because they yell so much. But then, Lord, we all know about Doris’s drinking, so she can’t start.”
Some corps also have a snoozer. This is the person sitting next to you whose breathing you suddenly hear slow down; then they start to snuffle a little, and then – as sure as anything – the first little snore creeps out, and you feel them bump your shoulder as they lean to one side.
I was taught that if you’re ever the snoozer, the trick is that when you wake up you just have to say “Amen”, and all is good. However, you might have to convince some people that just as the Spirit intercedes for us with “groanings too deep for words”, well, so do you.
Some people pray too long. They have six things to pray for and can’t be bothered offering another prayer or two later, so they just shove all six topics into one prayer. It’s a 30-minute prayer meeting, and one person always takes 10 minutes to clear their backlog of requests.
I knew one officer who, if someone was going too long, he’d just interject. He’d start with short ones: “Hmm, yes, Lord” ... “Yes, amen” ... “Yes, Jesus”. And then he’d just make his move: “Hmm, yes, Lord, we do indeed pray for all homeless cats to be found and loved by you, but we also pray for …”, and he’d just talk over them and re-route the prayer to get us all back on track.
Once, at a corps, I had someone who regularly felt a movement of the Spirit and figured everyone else should feel it too. “I sense the Lord wants us to hold hands around the circle as we pray and call out the name of anyone we need to forgive or who has wronged us. Just call them out, go on, call them out loud, do it now.”
Well, no. I figure God knows who they are, but you don’t have to. Mind you, I wondered how that person would respond if everyone else called their name out loud!
Prayer is wonderful and should be encouraged and promoted at all corps, but let’s play nice when we do it. And you don’t need to tell God how much rain fell the night before – he sent it!
– Major Mal Davies and his wife Major Tracey are the Corps Officers at Adelaide City Salvos
