In early May I attended the Mount Zion Women’s retreat at Hidden Acres church camp near Shakespeare, Ontario. This year the theme was Prayer. Our retreat leader, Pastor Tanya Varner, currently serving the New Hamburg congregation, led us through many questions about prayer, including what we call God when we pray, and how it might affect the way we pray. Another consideration was whether our personal prayers are ones of gratitude, confession, intercession or supplication. They might be praise prayers.

The most common prayer people do on their own may be prayers at meal time or before sleep at night, which could be praise and supplication.

We were asked to create a pie chart showing the balance of our prayers. My chart was not so accurate mathematically, but it was rather a balance of the five.

I invite you to try it for yourself. What would yours look like? No one else has to see it.

For those who rely on the corporate prayers in worship, where someone else has the words, it may not be so easy to create a prayer on the spot. We’re used to following along with a response. That works in worship, but praying aloud individually when requested, requires spontaneity, bravery too for those who’ve never done it before. We get the words we need in that time.

In the final service, Pastor Tanya invited us to join in with a spontaneous prayer. It could be any of the prayer types or a combination. The women were brave and tried it out. For me it was not new.

We had excellent small group discussions and as a whole, as our retreat leader invited us to explore prayer more fully. Including extemporaneous prayer when someone asks for prayer when we’re with them. Years of Stone Croft Ministry Bible Studies helped me get past the fear of speaking prayers aloud for others.

If someone asks you to pray for them, would you do it on the spot?

I leave those questions for you to consider.

-Carolyn Wilker