What's Prayer?

SUMMER 2017 Summer 2017 • $8.95 Journal of Children, Youth & Family Ministry What’s Prayer? 1 BUILD KITS OF CARE! Assemble School Kits with your youth group or Vacation Bible School for children living in poverty around the world. Here’s what you’ll need to make the kits: 1 4 1 1 1 1 5 5 1 For complete project instructions, visit BuildKitsofCare.org/connect! #kitsofcare Members of New Hope Lutheran Church in Columbia,2 Md., assemble School Kits. SUMMER 2017 PUBLICATION INFORMATION Published by: CONTENTS ELCA Youth Ministry Network www.elcaymnet.org Welcome! 4 Todd Buegler Lord, Teach Us to Pray 5 Marilyn Sharpe Prayer Languages—An Interview with Bill and Carolyn Kees 8 Bunmi Ishola Prayer in Real (Lutheran) Life 10 Christopher Zumski Finke Interview with Janelle Hooper 12 Bunmi Ishola Prayer, Youth and Living a Vowed Life as a Benedictine Sister in 2017 14 Christopher Zumski Finke Subscription Information: call 866-ELCANET (352-2638) How Do You Teach Prayer to Young People? 16 or visit: Answers from the ELCA Youth Ministry Facebook Group www.elcaymnet.org [email protected] Corporate Prayer 18 George Baum Design and Layout: Michael Sladek Impression Media Group Calendar of Events 23 www.impressionmediagroup.com Managing Editor: UPCOMING CONNECT ISSUE THEMES: Erin Gibbons Scripture, Practice & Why Nobody Wants To Do Bible Study Anymore (Fall ‘17) Connect Editorial Board: Todd Buegler, Nate Frambach, Erin Gibbons, Dawn Rundman, ELCA YOUTH MINISTRY NETWORK BOARD Michael Sladek Becky Cole: Board Member Dr. Jeremy Myers, AIM: Board Member Rev. Regina Goodrich: Board Member Tom Schwolert: Board Chairperson Kinda Makini: Board Member Erik Ullestad: Board Member Cover Photo: Michael Sladek Sue Megrund: Board Member Rev. Todd Buegler: Executive Director www.msladekphoto.com The ELCA Youth Ministry Network exists to strengthen and empower adult youth ministry leaders in service to Christ as a part of God’s mission. 3 WELCOME! NEWS BITS Dear friends, NETWORK NEWS The question was both simple and profound: “Why do we pray?” It was a middle school student The Network continues to work on its who asked the question in a small group. He wanted to know why we needed to pray. After all, new strategic plan. The Network is a “If God knows everything, why do we need to pray? Why do we need to tell God? It’s not like I community of both leaders and learners. pray for my grandma who’s sick and God says ‘Really? I didn’t know that. Thanks for letting me And our goal is that every member of the know.’” Network works to create an individual development plan for vocation, skills and It is a both a simple and a profound question because prayer is perhaps the simplest and yet faith practices. The ELCA has committed most profound of our faith practices. to funding this strategic plan. Watch for more information coming soon on what this means for the Network and for you! Prayer is the expression of a relationship, and prayer manifests itself in a variety of ways: • When Abraham expressed obedience by answering God’s call with the words “Here I am.” • When Moses removed his sandals after God told him he was standing on Holy Ground. The Network will again be partnering • When Jesus prayed in the garden, asking: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, with the ELCA Youth Gathering at your will be done.” Extravaganza, 2018 in Houston. There • When I saw a group of young people, following a car accident involving their friends, will be an Intensive Care Course on hav- standing in a circle, holding hands and praying. ing a great youth gathering, as well as a • When my spouse hears a siren, and pauses to pray for those affected. gathering site tour and other ways to focus • When I’m alone in the car, thinking about those things in my life about which I feel on making sure your young people have a anxious, and I realize that at some point my thoughts have morphed into prayer. fantastic Gathering experience next summer. Watch for details coming soon! Prayer is both communication and presence. It is both being and doing. It is speaking and listening. Prayer is the channel in which our relationship with God flows. Extravaganza registration will open on July 1. This month in the Connect Journal, we are exploring prayer, both the “how” and the “why.” And we’ll wonder together about how we teach prayer both as something for us to understand, and as something for us to practice. The ELCA is in the interview process to fill their position of: Program Direc- God’s blessings! tor - Youth Ministries. Please keep their process in your prayers. Todd Buegler Executive Director – ELCA Youth Ministry Network Pastor – Trinity Lutheran Church; Owatonna, Minnesota [email protected] 4 SUMMER 2017 LORD TEACH US TO PRAY NEWS BITS by Marilyn Sharpe Forty years ago, I was invited to teach nant with me and stayed 25 years! My gram WHY PRAY?: God calls us to pray. God is seventh- grade confirmation. My answer? prayed all the time about everything in heavily listening. In praying, we practice the presence The easiest “NO!” of my life. I had only been Swedish-accented English. She couldn’t have of God, reminded that God is always with us. Lutheran for eight months. I’d fill their heads prayed in elegant Elizabethan English if the It reminds us to bring our needs to God and to with heresies. I had a horrible confirmation lives of her two grandchildren depended on remember to celebrate all of the ways God is experience. I promised myself I’d never teach it. She was a powerful role model for me for and has been and will be with us. anyone that age anything ever. I cried in the praying in my family, in confirmation, in parent- delivery room four years earlier, imagining our ing classes and adult Bible studies, with my WAYS AND OPPORTUNITIES TO beautiful baby would someday be a seventh friends and in all of the situations in life where TEACH PRAYER: It’s never too early or grader. I had two preschool children at home. we are moved to call on God. too late to start praying. When you know of a We only had one car, which my husband need- family that is adopting a child, giving birth to a ed 24/7. And, here is what I was sure would So, what does this have to do with your min- child, doing foster care or expanding by marry- seal the deal: I couldn’t pray in public! I was istry to children, youth and families? Parents ing a person with children, pray for them, pray certain that the confirmation director would often feel intimidated and ill-equipped to with them and teach them to pray. recoil in horror and run in the other direction, teach their children and youth to pray. They rescinding her invitation. She didn’t. And I fi- don’t model prayers aloud in the home. Per- At pre-baptism class, teach parents to pray for nally, grudgingly, said I would do it, but only for haps they didn’t grow up experiencing prayer and with their children. Give the gift of a book one year! You can guess what the Holy Spirit in their homes. They drive their kids to church, of prayers that parents can pray with children. did with that. I taught confirmation for 23 where they expect you to do the praying. In Give them a simple children’s Bible and show years, 13 of them as director of the program, worship, the pastors and trained lay lead- them how to read Bible stories to their chil- and I fell madly in love with middle school kids, ers lead the prayers. We’ve professionalized dren and pray with them. Lutheran theology and praying out loud. everything else—why not prayer? Andrea Fieldhouse Griner does a program The first year, it took me the entire week to Jesus’ disciples, having observed the regular- called Faith Families. Each family with young write a two-sentence prayer. The only reason I ity with which Jesus prayed, implored, “Lord, children sits at its own small table, set with a could pray it aloud in class was that I was sure teach us to pray.” (Luke 11:1). In response, family altar cloth, candle and symbols of sto- my kids weren’t listening! Don’t get me wrong: Jesus taught them the Lord’s Prayer. We, too, ries and topics they’ve done together previ- I have prayed all my life, silently in private and teach children, youth and families this prayer. ously. Families have time to sit in silence, pray reciting rote prayers with others in public. I But it wasn’t the only prayer Jesus prayed in a prayer in their own words, read a Bible story just didn’t feel I could speak to God in my own the Gospels. He prayed in every situation, with and bless one another. Family devotions—the voice, in conversational English, about all of all those with whom he found himself. full-meal deal—and they literally take it with the joys and sorrows, wants and needs of my them in a box to replicate in their home. life. Twenty-three years of teaching confirma- Let’s explore what we can learn from Jesus tion cured that. and teach God’s family about prayer. In VBS, Sunday school, Bible camp or any other setting, have the leader model simple I grew up in a three-generation family, and we WHAT PRAYER IS: Simply, prayer is liv- prayers from the heart.

Load more