Together in Prayer: Coming to God in Community by Andrew Wheeler
is a great primer that explains what praying in community looks like. The book could probably be summed up in one sentence – pray to God, not to each other. If you want a good overview of everything this book has to offer, read the last chapter of the book. The appendix also has a neat assessment to determine how “prayer-friendly” your group is.
Wheeler is very systematic in unpacking what it looks like to pray in community – explaining both tips that will enhance group prayer as well as prayer practices that will actually hinder it. For example, he explains how we oftentimes direct our prayers at each other, instead of God by instructing, exhorting, sermonizing, counseling, and informing each other through our prayers. Here’s an example, “Father, may people who are far from you come to our church today. They need to hear your Word and realize their need for you, rather than pursuing their own selfish desires. They need to repent and receive Jesus as their Savior, to save them from a Christless eternity. Their lives need your touch; may they stop making excuses and come to meet you today.” Compare that prayer, which is directed more towards people than to God, with the following prayer. “Lord, please bring to our church today people who are far from you. Free them from anything thay may be keeping them from knowing you. Break down any barriers that are in their way, and draw them by your grace.”
Wheeler also heavily emphasizes the idea of flow and properly informing individuals of what the prayer time is going to look like, instead of assuming that everyone will just join in. For example, he advises the following: that we select an individual to open and close the prayer time, that we encourage individuals to pray shorter sentence prayers, instead of longer prayers, that we reassure people that it’s okay to pray more than one time.
Consequently, Wheeler doesn’t naively offer a one-size-fits-all approach to prayer, but he, self-admittedly, wrote the book from a western approach to community prayer. For me, I grew up in a Korean church all the way until high school, and community prayer looked a bit different than what Wheeler explains in his book. In Korean churches, community prayer is more of a time of prayer where we would all be given a topic, and then approach God individually with that topic in a shared space. Or we would even spend time praying with one another, but the idea of sitting in a circle and listening to each other pray isn’t the norm.
All in all, I give this book four stars out of five.