Without a Flock: Pastoral Prayers

By William Flewelling

In the free church tradition, the pastoral prayer has long assumed an important place in the worship of the congregation. It is expected that the pastor will have a more or less extended prayer pertinent to the day and/or to the run of the service in general. Under the circumstances of normal practice, these would involve awareness of a congregation, or a "flock" for a pastor to tend. After ending a normal pastorate and entering retirement and the far more occasional happenstance of entering a pulpit as a guest, the regular preparation for a worship-leading practice became desirable, personally. As a part of that preparation, most often without entering the leadership of worship, least of all as pastor, the pastoral prayer was prepared. This book collects eleven years worth of pastoral prayers, linked to the preaching text of the day by way of the sermon prepared. As there is no flock as reference point, these are, indeed, "Without A Flock".

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781665503471

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

Book preview

© 2020 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/05/2020

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0312-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0347-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Also By This Author

Poetry

Time Grown Lively

From My Corner Seat

Enticing My Delight

The Arthur Poems

From Recurrent Yesterdays

In Silhouette

To Silent Disappearance

Teasing The Soul

Allowing The Heart To Contemplate

As Lace Along The Wood

To Trace Familiarity

The Matt Poems

Elaborating Life

The Buoyancy of Unsuspected Joy

To Haunt The Clever Sheer Of Grace

The Christmas Poems

Life Is Employed

Adrift On Seas Of Strangeness

Composure In Constraint

An Elegance That Dawdles

The Ash Wind Sigh

Unplanned Obsolescence

Savored Once And Once Again

The Simple Curvature Of Words

Weave Tapestries Of Naught At All

On Inscape’s Curve

Inn-By-The-Bye Stories

vols. 1, 2 ,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,

17, 18, 19, 20. 21

Devotional

Some Reflective Prayers

Reflective Prayers: A Second Collection

A Third Collection Of Reflective Prayers

For Your Quiet Meditation

A Fourth Collection Of Reflective Prayers

Cantica Sacra

A Fifth Collection Of Reflective Prayers

A Sixth Collection Of Reflective Prayers

A Second For Your Quiet Meditation

A Second Cantica Sacra

Directions Of A Pastoral Lifetime

Part I: Pastoral Notes, Letters To Anna, Occasional Pamphlets

Part II: Psalm Meditations, Regula Vitae

Part III: Elders’ Studies

Part IV: Studies

Part V: The Song Of Songs: An Attraction

Exegetical Works

From The Catholic Epistles: Bible Studies

Paul’s Letter To The Romans: A Bible Study

The Book Of Hebrews: A Bible Study

Letters Pauline and Pastoral: Bible Studies

The First Letter Of Paul To The Corinthians: A Bible Study

The Gospel According To Luke 1:1 Through 9:50: A Bible Study

The Gospel According To Luke 9:51 Through 19:27: A Bible Study

The Gospel According to Luke 19:28 Through 24:53: A Bible Study

all published by AuthorHouse.com

Foreword

Thinking over the years gone by, remembering that decision in February of 2009 that ‘writing a sermon is more satisfying than not writing one’ had begun a sequence of Sermons NOT-Preached to which the long customary pastoral prayer was added as the next October began, the thought to share these prayers, built on the sermon of the day, based ultimately on the text behind the sermon of the day, the one Not-Preached, came to mind. In due time, I began to draw on that background and begin to put them together.

By this time, I had been writing pastoral prayers – I call them pre-prayed, free from the scramble of mind that comes to me in the confluence of so many things in the course of a Sunday Morning worship – for over thirty six years. I have them all, from the first on 21 January 1973 until today, including all the bulletins that guided worship on all the Sundays when I was involved in that business of leading worship. As a result, the materials are all at hand. And the convenient ones come easily at a season when it is easy to tell that I have had time to mature in my pattern of what I was doing with these prayers.

All public prayers are theological statements, based thoroughly on the theological growth and awareness of the person doing the public prayer. Each theological statement is based in experience, life and spiritual. These are no different. They go along with my pattern of basing the worship on the texts of the day. I had decided that it would be to my strength to pick one of the texts for background to my sermon, and then I ended up migrating into using the themes of the text, developed in the sermon to inform the prayer. Obviously, with this in mind, it came to my interests to see that the lessons came early in the service, that the sermon followed them, and that the pastoral prayer comes yet later in the service. I did that from an early time.

So, I present these prayers, beginning from 4 October 2009, as a testament to what I did and still do in the allowing these to emerge. They do that, they flood like an artesian well, a spring that bursts free and yields what it is that comes from the encounter with God as that has taken on tone quality in the concentration on the text involved. They are theology: they are about God and me and the community I serve under the impress of the scripture and the urgency of the people.

With that in mind, I hope that you find them prayerful and lively. I include the dates and the text involved, the former for my idiosyncrasy and the latter to mark the rooting of the prayer for the benefit of the interests of the reader.

Thank you.

William Flewelling

Gracious God, in your enticing love you lure us to a deeper love, a caring that sustains us, that frees us in innocent wonder, in the rapt delight of blithe childlike joy. You know, Lord God, that we find hardness of heart near at hand; we even discover it of ourselves. Mistakenly, we take it for tough mindedness in the necessary workings of our worried world. We always find the softening that makes us more content with what we are told is so necessary in our day by day affairs. And allowance is ever sought for the convenience of that hardness of heart we deplore in principle while accepting in practice. Bring up in us that innocence and wonder that reaches to receive the gift of your kingdom as the style of our hearts, the way of our delight, the sharing in the bliss and sublime wonder of your love among those whose unwitting lives come within the extended reach of your own, even as you have called it up for us in Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we pray. Amen.

In our darkness, O God, we cry out. We seek to stand and make our case. We struggle to hold our integrity true in spite of the throes of our experience day by day. In the covering gloom, we find our fears exaggerated, our terrors amplified, and distorted as in a side show hall of mirrors. Yet in our anxiety, in our dread, we dare to stand firm, to hold onto boldness before you in our lostness and in our uncertainty. For within the whole whirlwind of our distress we dare to affirm your abiding care; we dare to believe in your constant and impartial sustaining grace. We do so against all appearances, Lord God. We do so in the throes that would consume us, the miseries that would undo us, overwhelming our worn capacities to hope. Yet hope is our foundation as faithfulness is our structure, that which gives form and function to our souls. Be thou our vision, O Lord of our life: in Jesus Christ our Lord do we pray. Amen.

Gracious, gift-giving God, in Jesus Christ you open to us the bounty of your heart that we might discover here your graciousness in the giving of gifts, the offering of self, the yielding of our heart in all its bounty for one another, for others, for you, even in the way of Jesus. In these our hours, Lord God, you immerse us in your presence, in the claim you exercise upon our hearts, our lives, our joys and our abandon. Even as we stand, wrapped in exertion, transformed in the satisfaction of your calling upon our lives, we stumble for so much of your giving, of your accepting, of this flux of gift and heart and soul and self rattles the habits of our lives, ground into us by the habits of our age. Encounter us afresh with the gifts of Jesus, the oblation of his life and now of our own, for the life of giving gifts that is our own because we owe by the love of Jesus our selves to you, and to one another, and to others, in the way of Jesus in whom we pray. Amen.

So certain are we, Lord God, of what it is we long to see and that we see it with startling clarity … and yet we dally in the morass, lacking insight into the midst of the many things that appear to us, happy enough with what we imagine we see, all according to the instructions of our settled sureties and dreads. We claim the nearness of Jesus our Lord, even in the pit of our hearts, the center of our lives; yet as he comes near, we are dazed by the wonder of his presence startled to find desire so rampant in our hearts, obsessed with the instinct of the proper and the fair while encountering the bold and the daring and the loving. Come Lord Jesus; come and lead us on the steep road to Jerusalem and to the hour of the cross, for we pray in longing, pray in you. Amen.

Gracious God, our deep unreadiness confronts us daily, our lack of preparation to abandon ourselves to the strangely marvelous wonders you breed in us. For we learn early to wonder what is our advantage. We learn thoroughly to concern ourselves with profit and help. And we grow weary until we find again that unfathomable commitment we see in Jesus, that we learn in those who have discovered love that yields in stubborn faithful care precisely in those places where the broken fail repair except the care be layered steadily and persistently at heart. Grant us, Lord God, the way of the cross that we might in sturdy joy abandon our ways unto your ways and learn of the welling depths of soul that ever, ever surprise us in your goodness. Rise up in us as we rise up in faithfulness, in the way of Jesus in whom we pray. Amen.

Looking, O God, to the intimate presence of Christ Jesus with you, entering ever into the sanctuary not made with hands, we lift our eyes and our hearts unto you. For his offering, his intercession on our behalf, his eagerly anticipated appearing for those who love him: these have entwined us with your great and intimate, desiring love. You have transformed us already, leading us incredibly into the vanguard of your goodness, the revealing of ourselves in the offering we share in Jesus. Grant us patience and delight that we might savor well the sublime bliss that renders our attention at the trace of your revealing in us, through us, with us the coming of your great salvation, our sheer shalom, our blessing by which we bless in the Lord Jesus, in whom we pray. Amen.

Our God, you know us in our swagger, our boldness, our established securities and the confidence we have in the works of our hands, and the works of the hands of so many of your people over so many centuries. We find the beauty and our breath is taken away in wonder. And we hear Jesus say it will all be torn down, not a stone left atop a stone as it ought to be. In our sudden anxiety, Lord God, we look for something sure, something firm, something we can count upon as personal assurance. We want to know what is coming, what it is for which we are to prepare. And Jesus passes us along, reminding us in the birth pangs of a new creation, the pangs seen at the cross, and known in the throes of faithfulness. Grant us, O God, the release that leaves us concerned with you and your new creation, alone, in the way of Jesus Christ our Lord in whom we pray. Amen.

Our God, your goodness measures us daily; your mercy reaps of our lives the gentleness that we too easily hide. You abide with us in our anxiety and lure us to the bliss of sheer abandon. Your righteousness and the awe you provide in presence attend us, reign in us freely, granting us the medium of your delight within this awkward world of ours. You have been gracious, and we find we count on your consistency in our unknown, unknowing days, our themes of darkness that folds around us. You open to us your heart and lead us into the presence of Jesus as to the face of a King that we might find ourselves led out for him. Grant us the lure of your delight, the bliss of your enticement, the standard of the heart of Jesus and the wonder of abandon unto you in Christ Jesus, in whom we pray. Amen.

With thanksgiving for faith and love and community, our brazen hope in the Lord Jesus and in the anticipation of his presence in glory in our midst, O God, we come in joy. For there is in this moment a ferment of joy, a seething in our bones and a gushing spring in our hearts for the unspeakable goodness you induce in us by your word. Blessing steeps us: let us be blessing in kind. Love percolates our depths; let this love in us be more than enough for the loving of one another and of all. Complete in us your goodness and prepare in us a place, blameless in holiness, for the abundance of the presence of the Lord Jesus for whom we await in joyous anticipation, in whom we pray with sublime awe. Amen.

Your word, O God, presses upon our souls – the word in scripture and, more to the point, your word fresh spoken in the silence of the depths of our souls, there to seethe and to become as fire in the bones, to become the substance of our lives, so wed with our unique personalities and our stumbling, bumbling humanity as to create of us the place of your exposing abode. In your coming upon us, you ready us to prepare the way of our Lord, to make straight the way of Jesus our Lord and our Delight, the gift of Love in our immediate, aspiring hopes. By your infesting Spirit, by your word pressed as a minting stamp upon our souls, upon our deepest and most lively substance, your word becomes the witness to the deep ways of your heart as you have engrafted it upon us as upon John, son of Zechariah, that in the wilderness of our unknowing, we might cry out and prepare your way, the way of Jesus in whom we pray. Amen.

God in our midst, the ringing shout in our throats, the gladness that bathes our hearts, the freedom that strips from our tightened souls that anxiety that would engulf us in angst and righteous dread, be full in your stirring here. For here we are, we and those whose anxiety drags them in hope against hope to seek the relief we desire. Give in our midst the relief that you are, the relief of your unbounded joy, your rejoicing and your victory, the resettlement of our hearts in the austerity of your delight, the wild and free land of your intense delight. For, Lord our God, we would be at home in your fullness, at home in the abundance of your transfiguring desire, your enticing remolding of our lives in the vibrant release you bear for us. Bring us to that intimate embrace that transforms us into utter delight in Christ Jesus, in whom we pray. Amen.

God, our Transforming Delight, bring to our stumbling awareness the fundamental sanctification that you work in us by the body of Jesus Christ. Complete in us the shift from our old and long-besetting anxieties, our fundamental dreads and deepest isolation – from all that which mires us in loss to the embodiment in us of your presence, that the heart made holy well up with the gentleness and lowliness, the meekness of your will in the face of the austerity of our anxious world a place that abides upon the detritus of abject fear. For we would be wholly yours, part and partakers of your mercies, your abiding graciousness, your free and lively intensity of joy in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we pray. Amen.

Your Spirit moves within us, O God, and we are compelled to you. You claim us and we are yours; you endow us, and we are overwhelmed with your presence and the demand of your heart upon our hearts and our lives. And we rejoice: it is necessary that we be about the business of your delight. Lead us deeply, O God, for the satiety, the satisfaction and fullness of your calling, that this all may bear fruit in us and be a living urgency and a dwelling satisfaction for us. Draw us to the maturing in your ways, to the growing into a fullness of heart and wisdom, of life and longing, of delight and desire in your poignant presence. Lead us to be as Jesus in the calling of your love; we pray in him you called to reveal you against the tide of an anxious age, even Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Gracious God, while we were looking elsewhere, practicing our intense anxiety over this and that, you caught our eye, engaged our insight, caught us in a freshened focus and drew us in a rare abandon unto you, unto your sight, unto your hands. Gathered in your caress, O God, we bound in joy, surprised at the abundance of your mercies, the overflowing wonder of your love for us. Although we would be in command; although we would strive to grasp for ourselves the matter of our concern, you invite us, you gather us in the moment of our unwilling inability to master whatever it is that might impinge on our wants, the time when we threaten ourselves with despair until we come to you and discover in your caress the unbounded joy of your sublime love, ours in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we pray. Amen.

Lord God, your Spirit comes upon us, fills us, yields to us an identity that satisfies us beyond our knowing. We clamor after gifts: the seal, the presence, the hope, the joy, the mechanics most of all … of what we want of the Spirit, your Holy Spirit. As you give the Spirit, as you breathe upon us, as you cause this creating Spirit to hover over us, to encompass us, to bond us and unite us in the fellowship of the common life of the body of Christ, open our surly depths to the gentleness of your ways that the Spirit may indeed be received so as to fill us and saturate us beyond our knowing, in Christ Jesus our Lord we pray. Amen.

We are so reticent to find your abundance surprising us that there is in our way more and better than we have ever even imagined. Yet you insistently combine our worries with your eager overflowing will to satisfy us on your goodness. You influence us in the most offhanded ways, and we are so earnestly blind to the touch of your hand upon our souls. Yet we find Jesus, the true vine, providing the best of wine at the last of times for those whose options have run out. We find him bidding the workers draw water when wine is needed; we find them unquestioning and doing his bidding. Draw us to the sublime surprise of your bounty, Lord God, in the beauty of Jesus our commanding Lord, in whom we pray. Amen.

Your word, O God, encounters us as somehow deeply embedded in who we are and how we have come to be and what it means to be your people, the servants of Christ Jesus our Lord. Yet the words run together; we seek them in little bits, saving our longer energies for other aspects of our social life, our being in our land and among the friends and styles and habits that attract us dearly. We come, though, to hear and to celebrate; we attend to find your word resonant in our hearts, establishing us afresh in your ways, welling in us the depths of joy, the exuberance of sheer delight. We come to find your echoing in our deepest reaches and to know ourselves afresh int eh way of Jesus Christ in whom we pray. Amen.

Your love, O God, lures us to be found of you, to discover our souls open to your patient kindness, your steadfast persistence with us through the multiplicity of days and moods and needs and fears and anxieties and eagerness, the wonder of your thoroughgoing presence in our midst. You leave us educated in the tremendous openness of love, the constancy of its giving, the relentlessness of its joy and care and provision for us, as we are the other before you. Teach us, Lord God, the particularity and the consistency of love given, poured out, exhilarating to the life which is given as we love as you have loved in Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we pray. Amen.

Encountering us beyond our recognition, far beyond our knowing, Lord, you bring us into he real of your Kingdom with clarity and imperative suddenness. We would hold aside your abiding coming, but there is no withholding your coming to us, your meeting us face to face with the welling suddenness of your delight. Our world is changed; we encounter everything from the perspective of your kingdom; there is no other way. And yet we stammer, stagger, dread the change; in awe, we stand agape as you bid us fear not, as you overwhelm our expectations and we are left with the inner compulsion to follow you, to follow Jesus in whom we pray as we stumble our way in his presence. Amen.

In Christ, O God, you encounter us with glory unto glory, from one degree to degrees beyond our imagining that the face be struck by glory unto beauty. As you met Moses and saturated him with awe and wonder, converting his countenance into a beaming light, signaling the glory your press upon him face to face, so you encounter us with glory beyond our thoughts, with beauty beyond our suspicion, with your abiding presence, your transfiguring grace that brightens our faces, our hearts, our souls with your impetuous goodness, your intensity and marvel. So hold back from our faces the timid veils we suppose are ours for what we believe are the ordinary times of life, a life that is ever pregnant with the naked and unabated sweep of your divine and holy and glorious shalom that we might raise our hearts as our prayers in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Your kingdom, O God, comes announced in the ministry and the person of Jesus. Lead us in the style and in the substance of your impending fulfillment, the way of the Lord who moves by temptation to satisfaction, by the appearance of failure to the moment of victory upon the cross. For the obvious wiles of the Devil, so knowing of he ways of our distraction and the slight innuendoes of our presupposed ways of living and achieving, encounters the catastrophe so readily predicted and is stunned by the sight of unsuspected victory, the final victory of your way. the way of your kingdom into which we take our lengthened path once again, answering in our stunned hearts the bidding of Jesus our Lord, in whom we pray. Amen.

Accosting us with your plea to fear not, O God, you strike our awareness with a dimension of life and hope and faith and love that ever startles us. You never fail to startle us with your boldness and your grace, uncalculated and excessive in every situation we have ever endured. Yet you come to us in the darkness and in the dread of our souls, in the quandary that finds your airy Fear Not a brash indirection to what is known to us as reality. You come to us in the deeper regions of our unknowing, in the dryness of the desert, in the challenges of what exceeds our comfort and our