Thursday, September 24, 2009

The Right Way to Pray?

An interesting article...

The Right Way to Pray?
By ZEV CHAFETS, September 20, 2009 ~ NY Times

The Brooklyn Tabernacle, a 3,500-seat evangelical prayer palace in downtown Brooklyn, was built in 1918 as one of the largest and grandest vaudeville houses in North America. It is still a hot ticket. Its youngish, racially diverse congregation packs the pews each week to praise God and bask in the sounds of a Grammy-winning 250-voice gospel choir. But the tabernacle is more than just a popular church. It is also a destination for evangelicals from all around the United States and beyond, laymen and ministers alike, who come as acolytes to study prayer.

“Prayer is like other activities,” the Rev. Daniel Henderson told me when we met at the tabernacle the week before Easter. He was visiting Brooklyn with a group of seminary students from Virginia. “You learn from people who are already good at it,” he went on. “The people who pray at the Brooklyn Tabernacle are committed. Praying with them is an education.”

You can read the whole article here.

"Prayer is as essential to the soul and spirit of man as respiration is to the body." ~ the Rev. A. J. Worlledge


2 comments:

Tito Tinajero said...

I did love the article and made think about how we miss the direction of prayer. I fleshed it out my response.

Rev. Kurt Huber said...

Thanks Tito. I liked your article.

Let me add a poem:

Praying by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.