People Who Decline to Pray

Over the past few months I am been quietly working to recruit folks from our congregation to serve in partnership with our youth and adult missionaries to Belize.  The trip is coming up in June.  In fact, they leave the 16th of June.

Our youth director is leading a team of twenty-two!  Now that is a nice big number!  Wow.  Amazing to consider so many folks who are willing and able to travel to another country and help people they have never even met.  That sort of response and willingness to be generous inspires me.

At my previous appointment at Carmel UMC, I was the associate pastor who provided leadership for all our mission trips and mission events.  I have lead international, national and local efforts many times over.  Very quickly I learned that each experience of Christian action and service is done more fully and with more God-Divine power when it is bathed in prayer.

So, when I shared with Andrew that I wanted to recruit prayer partners for each of our Belize missionaries I did so with a great set of expectation and anticipation!  What a super neat way to connect even more folks with sharing the love of Jesus!  What a great way to grow faith in the missionaries AND the prayer partners!  It is a triple win- for the missionary, for the partner in prayer, and the folks who receive the care of our missionaries' efforts in Belize.  A win for Jesus!  (and by the way, all of the Mission team AND the Prayer team have been finalized.)

Many of the folks who happily agreed did so with great enthusiasm.  One lady was honored because she considers this "one of the few ways she can still contribute something to God's work"  (she lives in a nursing home).

But then, weird happened.

Some folks declined the invitation to serve as a prayer partner.  The first few folks who did not respond or politely declined did not seem weird.  I was not frustrated .. just kinda disappointed.  (I have blogged many times over about being turned down by potential mentors for our confirmands.)  My skin has toughened over the years.... so to speak.

But then as the days rolled into weeks of asking and being told "no thanks"... I started to wonder and worry.     I was not worried about getting enough people to pray for the Mission team... I got worried about the state of prayer in our congregation.  My mind has wondered, "why are church going people having a difficult time saying, 'yes' when asked to pray for someone else?  What does this mean about the current state of our spiritual health as a body of Christ?"

What does it mean when people decline to pray?  I do not think it is about a practical issue or an intellectual issue nor a time management issue.  No, the more I ponder this recent experience in the church the more convinced I am that this is a spiritual issue. And it worries me.  Greatly.

So, much so, that I am praying about it.  Fervently.  I'd ask you to join me, but then you'd probably decline.