Offer to Pray OA
Today, I was returning a phone call to a stranger seeking to buy one of my items from craigslist. We had spoken a few days earlier to make arrangements to pick up the item but plans fell thru. During today’s conversation, I was told that her dad had a medical emergency and that our little transaction was the “furthest thing from her mind.” Here was a relational context — we were already conducting a business transaction. But with this crisis in her life, I offered to pray with her on the phone. I said, “I know you don’t know anything about me. Would you like me to pray with you about your Dad?” Her response: “I don’t do the religious thing. Thanks, but no.” With that, the conversation came to an abrupt and awkward end. Pastor Chris read more
March 30th, 2007 · 23 Comments
Categories: OA Stories
April Terry said
am March 30 2007 @ 7:53 am
I have offered prayer many, many times and only once was turned down. I have never offered to “pray with” anyone other than during my ministry services.
I think the reason that I have never done this is so that I can give the other person an “out” if they want it.
Therefore, I simply say, “I’m very sorry about your father. I will put him in my prayers.” To which, the only reply required is, “Thank you.”
However, I follow up on my promise.
Occasionally, I have asked people if they would mind if I added them to our prayer list, and usually the response is positive. Although, one co-worker told me she would rather I put her on the drinking list! I laughed and told her that I would try to have a beer in her honor sometime, but I still prayed for her personally.
I admire your courage, though. It is never easy to step forward and reach out to someone.
benjamin ady said
am March 30 2007 @ 8:23 am
Jim,
At first I thought it was you telling a story about yourself, and I was *very* surprised. Then I was relieved when I realized that it was this Pastor Chris, and not you =).
Helen said
am March 30 2007 @ 6:22 pm
I can see that April’s offer probably comes across as less intrusive.
Pastor Chris, do you know if things worked out ok with her father? Assuming they did then, if it’s not inappropriate, maybe you can send her a card saying you hope he’s recovering well and apologizing if your offer to pray with her was too intrusive.
Pastor Chris said
am March 30 2007 @ 7:25 pm
I don’t know anymore about the father, or about the lady.
An offer to pray is just that, an offer. She has a way out — yes, or no. No intrusion, just an offer. She can allow me to pray with her or not. The ball is in her court, so to speak.
If I had started praying with her on the phone without her permission, that’s instrusive. There is no way out, and I’d be stepping all over her boundaries.
Tone of voice can’t be found here in digital story telling, but asking the question with a tone of voice that communicates care, concern and compassion provides a way out and approaches a non-threatening manner.
Thanks for the comments. . .
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org
Helen said
am March 31 2007 @ 5:23 am
Pastor Chris, thanks for taking time to stop by and respond to comments.
Maybe I’m wrong that the lady found your request too intrusive. Why do you think the conversation ended awkwardly and abruptly? Do you think there’s anything you could have done to help it end better?
Have you considered a follow-up contact with her simply to find out how things turned out with her dad? People tend to be so wrapped up in their own lives that I’m always impressed when someone a) paid attention and remembers what was going on in my life b) goes to the trouble of a follow-up contact to ask me how things turned out.
Pastor Chris said
am March 31 2007 @ 10:09 am
I think it endedly abruptly because it was a unexpected question that created an awkward moment.
I didn’t get the sense from her that it was intrusive, just out of left field.
She was polite in declining the offer, we said one or two more lines to wrap up our conversation and business transaction.
I didn’t sense any hostility or defensiveness.
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org
benjamin ady said
am March 31 2007 @ 11:04 am
Chris,
wanted to thank you for sharing here. Your story engendered an interesting discussion between my wife Meg and I.
It also caused me to introspect a bit. I generally find it offputting when someone offers to pray for me. So I asked myself “why is that?” and thought about it for a bit.
I remember quite clearly the last time someone said this to me. It was about 6 months ago at an OM ships reunion here in seattle. I met a man there who had been involved with OM as the leader of OM Japan, and now he works with them as an OM contactish person here on the west coast. He really resonated with some of the things that I said, and shared with me some things that had happened to him, and we ended up in couple very connective, fascinating, longish conversations. It was really kewl. But at the end of our final conversation, he asked if he could pray for me. Not wanting to be rude–that is, wanting to be … cross-religionally sensitive to a christian, I decided, internally, that I could probably cope with that, and I said yes. so he did.
Looking back, the reason I found it off putting was that it somehow … cut off relationship, from my perspective. It was like either one of two things (from my perspective this is how it felt): 1.Either he couldn’t cope any longer with just being present with me–experiencing my reality and sharing his or 2. He wasn’t comfortable with actually terminating our conversation so “praying for me” was in some sense a way to gracefully move to the next thing.
I’m not saying that was what he was feeling or thinking, I’m just saying that was how it felt/seemed.
Meg shared with me a story about two nights ago when we were down hanging out with some homeless people at Seattle Mennonite. There was a lady there I’ll call Annie (not her real name!) who was just feeling really really sad and lonely, and crying quite a bit. Meg said she was really having to internally choose *not* to go with the evangelical training she grew up as she related to Annie. Her training said to her “Pray for her, pray with her, invite her to Jesus … etc etc. (you know the spiel).” But it was much harder, she said, to just be there and stay engaged *as* Meg–here I am, and here you are, and here we are together, and you are in pain, and I am with you as you experience that pain, and we are doing the relationship thing.
Hope all that makes some sense.
Helen said
am March 31 2007 @ 12:07 pm
Benjamin wrote:
Benjamin, wow, this is so like my own internal processing. Thanks for sharing it.
I love that you were cross-culturally sensitive to the Christian person.
At the same time, I see this as highlighting the problem – I don’t think Christians have any idea how often they are forcing other people to accommodate them and be cross-culturally sensitive to them. And it seems to me that’s the exact opposite of what Jesus would want – surely Jesus would want his followers to be cross-culturally sensitive to others, rather than his followers forcing others to be cross-culturally sensitive to them.
How did this reversal happen?
Anyway I see OAs as restoring things back to how they should be; someone who has been OAed by a follower of Jesus feels that they were given something that they wanted. Whereas someone subject to what is more typical from many Christians feels like “I did them a favor – I had to make the effort to be cross-culturally sensitive to them”.
It’s neat to hear about Meg making the choice to be real and not resort to ‘methods’.
Jim Henderson said
am March 31 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Benjamin
I agree that when we offer to pray with someone that we have little or no relational equity with we are throwing down a relational gauntlet of sorts. I expect Chis will disagree with this because of his evangelism paradigm but I think if he went back and asked the woman how she felt about his offer he would have a really interesting conversation.
April
I agree with your approach – given our cultural constraints I think this is about as intrusive as we can be while still attempting to commnunicate that we care. I do this sometimes and then of course am free to “check back” and see if the persons situation improved and continue the conversation depending upon whether any bridges of trust had been built between us.When it comes to change- it isn’t really who you know – it’s who trusts you.
Meg
I know the feeling of resisting the urge to fix people spiritually (something we are trained to do because it is a humany-ly unnnatrual actiivty – what you did what normalk human compassion- you were Immanuel – God with her (I know Meg is not god for anyone worried about my theoloigy and waiting to catch me making a theological mistake:) But Meg – you were participating in what Jesus said “If they recieve you they recieve me”
Helen
Yes OAs are designed to reconnect us with what it might feel like to try and follow Jesus in real life without fixing or manipulating people or circumstances
Chris
I admire your passion but don’t identify with your paradgim. And for the record I am completley into people accepting Jesus invitation to come into his heart and follow in his footsteps to the best of their ability for their whole I life. I do believe that Jesus is the one and only god we have available to us and that he likes people and is not insecure
April Terry said
am March 31 2007 @ 12:51 pm
I appreciate that Pastor Chris shared this story because it brings up a great discussion about intent.
However, I think that his offer to “pray with” this woman is inherently more problematic because it is asking her to partake in something that she might not be spiritually ready or willing to do. If I offer to pray for someone, their natural reaction can always be, “Hey, more power to ya!”
However, if I ask someone to take part in prayer when I don’t have a firm knowledge of what they believe, it creates a division that doesn’t need to be there.
I sincerely hope that this post doesn’t come off sounding like a criticism of Pastor Chris because I still think it takes more courage to speak than to remain quiet.
Helen said
am March 31 2007 @ 2:11 pm
When Christians spend most of their time with Christians they don’t realize how ‘weird’ some of the things they do seem to other people.
Praying on the phone with someone is, basically, ‘weird’, to anyone but Christians. (To some Christians too, perhaps)
Jim wrote:
Yes, I think that’s quite likely.
Asking someone “Would you like me to…” puts pressure on that person if he/she is a people-pleaser because then he/she will feel awkward about saying “no” – they will want to take care of your feelings. I think to be truly ‘otherly’ we need to take these sorts of things into consideration.
benjamin ady said
am March 31 2007 @ 7:04 pm
One of the kewl things about hanging around at off the map is that there are people here who understand that sense of “christians can be *so* wierd”. In fact … often when I tell people about off the map, I describe it as an organization that is trying to help christians not to be so wierd.
Helen said
am April 1 2007 @ 7:19 am
Benjamin wrote:
Benjamin, that’s my favorite way of explaining Off The Map too!
benjamin ady said
am April 1 2007 @ 8:13 am
=)
Jim Henderson said
am April 2 2007 @ 12:27 am
Our original explainer for OTM was
We help Christians learn how to not be jerks
Helen said
am April 2 2007 @ 10:56 am
By the way, Chris has posted about this on his own blog:
Take the Risk, Offer to Pray
Lindsay said
am April 3 2007 @ 5:46 pm
I think offering to pray with people is a wonderful idea though my natural inclination is to offer to pray for someone. More often than not, I forget. Offering to pray with rather than for someone might catch them off guard but I believe it demonstrates genuine caring and compassion in meeting them where they are with their need.
Helen said
am April 4 2007 @ 4:33 am
For research purposes I’m going to ask some people who aren’t Christians how they feel about Christians offering to pray with them:
“May I pray with you?”
benjamin ady said
am April 4 2007 @ 1:48 pm
Helen,
I’m afraid I rather loved the “ok, but first let’s sacrifice a goat or a chicken together” response over at IIDB.
Is it possible to be *too* empathetic? Agreeing to pray with someone and then gently probing about what happened or was supposed to happen is pretty freaking intense/cross cultural.
I really resonate with the quotes from Elizabeth Edwards.
April Terry said
am April 4 2007 @ 9:58 pm
I think offering to pray with people is a wonderful idea though my natural inclination is to offer to pray for someone.
Helen said
am April 5 2007 @ 4:26 am
Benjamin, yes, I think that response would be a great way of showing how weird the request “May I pray with you?” can seem – although I’m not sure the person it’s said to would ‘get it’.
I think it’s neat you actually went over to IIDB to read what people said.
I’ve been posting on IIDB for six years now (although I rarely post there now – I’m too busy with other things). The people on IIDB didn’t change my beliefs but they did significantly help me feel ok that they were changing. (Even though I didn’t tell them my beliefs had changed until a year ago)
Pastor Chris said
am April 5 2007 @ 2:42 pm
Jim:
Even though you don’t agree with my paradigm, thanks for posting the story. It’s created quite a discussion. I use alot of your stuff.
Helen:
I’ve spent some time reading over at the Internet Infidels board and commented at my blog article on what i observe.
I have also spent the last few days talking with people in person (of various faith or non-faith backgrounds) about the whole idea of offering to pray. It’s been a good source of conversation in my little corner of the world.
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org
Helen said
am April 5 2007 @ 3:42 pm
Chris, thanks for reading the comments on the IIDB board. Not all Christians are willing to go there. I appreciate those who are.
I’m glad this has turned out to be a good source of conversation for you.