A little book of prayers and worship for individuals, small groups and house churches.
By John Morgan and Andrew Brown.
We offer this little book of prayers as a way to deepen your faith and the faith of others who may meet together in small groups, house churches or even occasional informal gatherings. We believe that there is a great hunger among those who call themselves disciples of Jesus, and those who seek to know him, to understand his life and teachings more deeply and apply these lessons to their own lives.
We believe that just as Jesus sought disciples among those who were outside the mainstream — tax collectors, women and fishermen — so, too, would he welcome those today who seek him reverently and earnestly, no matter their religious or philosophical inclinations. His is a living presence which encounters us in our depths.
We believe it is vital to a living faith to adopt a disciplined practice of daily prayer. Indeed, if we were really living as Jesus taught, our lives would themselves be a prayer because we would be in harmony with the will of God. But each one of us misses the mark and falls short of God’s grace. That is why we need to be intentional about our devotional life, setting aside regular times for prayer and deep reflection, as we wake to a new day and as we prepare to rest for the night, as well as throughout all our waking moments. Our heartfelt desire is to help you to begin or deepen your spiritual life — your connections to the Divine, your soul, and to others.
The underlying inspiration for this prayer book has been the Socinian/Unitarian, Universalist, Anabaptist, Mystical and Pietist traditions of the Radical Reformation which were the wellsprings from which sprang our own group of churches in both Great Britain and the U.S.A.
Lying at the heart of this book is the creative encounter with Scripture which formed and shaped our forebears in every way imaginable. We need to meditate upon it and then, like them, take the lessons we discover there to heart and live them. However, it is important to understand that, in our daily devotional reading, we do not need to agree with every word we read for they are there as much to provoke us to critical thought as they are to calm and satisfy us. Like Jacob’s struggle with God by the river Jabbok (Gen. 32), we must wrestle with the text, bringing to it our personal experiences and reason as well as the gentle but powerful insights of the radical liberal Christian tradition to which we belong. And so, each day begins and ends with scripture and prayer. There is space around each prayer and some blank pages at the end of this book so that you may write down your own thoughts and prayers. It is not our intent to supplant your own language of the heart, but to encourage and enlarge its scope.
In the month of morning and evening prayers the quotations from scripture have all been taken from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible of 1611. We realise that some people may find the decision to use this text unduly conservative but we think there are three good reasons for this. The first is that it gave English speaking people their own religious vocabulary and we wish to maintain a real connection with this. The second is that we believe it is important to remember always that the Biblical text is not a modern one and that it speaks to us from ages different in many ways from our own. Of course there was a time when the KJV was itself a modern translation but the passing of four hundred years has given us the rich fruit of historical distance. Thirdly, we have become aware that modern translations all too often try to make the text ‘easier’ to understand by narrowing down the range of possible interpretations which can be drawn from it. This is always a dangerous move because one of the greatest gifts of the Biblical text is precisely the breadth of possible interpretations that can be drawn from it. It is not a one-dimensional book but one in which human beings have tried to do the impossible — to speak of the infinite and eternal in terms of the finite and transient. We can only continue to access these infinite and eternal meanings when we allow the text to remain open to further interpretation so that more of God’s light and truth may break forth from its words and the writers’ experiences. In the devotional context it is a book which should be read spiritually and not literally.
We also believe with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred German pastor, that the spiritual life requires both solitude and community, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community….Let him who is not in community beware of being alone….”.1 If people can be alone with themselves and with God, they are more likely to be at home with others because they already cherish the deeper life of the spirit. And if people are sensitive to their inner lives, they will be more in tune with the lives of others. For this reason, the book is divided into three sections: Part One contains a suggested pattern of daily private devotion (we also hope that this will be used as a pattern for community prayer); Part Two contains the Lord’s Prayer and morning and evening prayers for each day of the month; Part Three contains prayers and practices for small groups, house churches or other gatherings.
Every author writes with some audience in mind. We have certainly done so. Our intention has been to offer a spiritual resource for those who profess to be disciples of Jesus, and also for those who, as in days of old, wait around the fringe of the crowd, listening to his words and observing his behaviour. We hope that those who do not call themselves Christians may also find something of great value in the life and teachings of Jesus. Equally important, however, is that we have sought to create a resource that can be used by individuals for private devotions and for people gathered in small supportive groups, whether in house churches, prayer circles, or Bible study groups.
Lastly we wish to acknowledge two prayer books which have inspired and given us a format for this book: John Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer (London & Toronto: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1954); and The Way of Prayer (London: The Lindsey Press, 1960).
Andrew J. Brown
Cambridge, England
John C. Morgan
Reading, Pennsylvania
To purchase this book please send a cheque for £10.99 (£9.99 + £1 p&p) made payable to
THE UNITARIAN CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION
to Sandra Wilson, 1 Fairview Grove, Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire, CB25 0LB
