PRESENTATION ON FAMILY PRAYER
By Nancy Phillips
Given at the Annual Meeting of the
ANGLICAN FELLOWSHIP OF PRAYER, May 21, 2002
PAGE 2

As our children grow, family prayer can develop and expand with them. At every age in our children's development, there will be opportunities for them to engage in prayer and they are never too young (or too old) to pray with you. One of the ways we incorporated prayer into our family life was our use of table graces. Our children seemed to enjoy learning new and different graces at a young age, had a fair repertoire of both sung and said graces. The sung graces were the most popular, and sung with such gusto that we had rules about not singing grace in restaurants! Later, as they reached an age where they had grown beyond the favourite sung graces, table prayers became an opportunity to begin to speak prayers extemporaneously, perhaps beginning with a familiar form and then adding new words and new petitions.

Prayer with our children begins with the authenticity of our own prayer life. If we feel genuine love and affection for God, we can express that love in a genuine way. We can model effective prayer: children and teens have to see you praying and to know the importance that prayer plays in your own life. Your desire for your children or grandchildren to pray has to be a natural extension of your own desire to pray. Their prayers, in turn, must be genuine and unique expressions of their love relationship with God.
I spoke earlier about inviting our children into our love relationship with God when we pray. When we pray together with our children, we are entering into their love relationship with God. It's important that we respect the integrity of our child's relationship with God. We can't assume that we know everything there is to know about the child's love relationship/prayer life with God and we don't have to create God's response for them. We have to trust that when our children pray, God will be there for them and answer them. When Don was elected Bishop of Rupert's Land, our children, at that time 14 and 16, were, understandably, not entirely happy about it - in fact, downright cranky about it. What we were able to say to them was: "We believe God has called your Dad to this new ministry. And we believe that God's plan for our family includes looking after you and your needs and that this will be a positive move for you, even though it doesn't look that way right now." We don't have to have all the answers, and we don't have to fabricate a response. But, allowing them to develop a unique and independent relationship and sense of intimacy with God, which can tolerate even the most intense feeling, is an important part of the development of their prayer life. Fostering a sense of mystery helps them to understand the transcendent nature of God.

What if the theology our children express in prayer is not quite spot on? What if we find their prayers vulgar or distorted? I think it's fair game to share our discomfort with the form of
prayer they've expressed. We should never suggest that their prayer was wrong, but we can say that the prayer they used wouldn't work for you and explain why.
        Godparents can play a very important role in family prayer. Grandparents can reinforce the parent's modeling of prayer and assist in developing a habit and understanding of prayer in the child.

Go to PAGE 3 of this article