"Personal Prayer, Wednesdays, Noon to One"

I saw this modest little sign outside the church across the street from my bank. As I waited for the light to change, the questions started coming:

Okay, on its face it's pretty clearly a way the church, Presbylutheranian or Bapmethodicist or some such, is reaching out to folks, trying in yet another way to get them into the pews, through the doors. It's another way the church is trying to increase the foot traffic, because every good salesman knows that if you can get them in the door, they're more likely to buy. Of course, the next corollary is you never let them out the door without buying something, but following through on this maxim of sales is outside the scope of this particular little rant.

So, they want folks through the doors. What business/enterprise doesn't? But I question the time, right in the middle of the day, right in the middle of the week. First, they're losing the entire working demographic. An early morning or evening time would play to the working portion of the populace, regardless of age. It also take out any kids who might go, or who would be taken by their parents--the kids are all in school. That leaves a pretty small slice of the populace, to my mind the idle rich, the idle poor, and the elderly/retired. That time is good for them, but I don't think you're going to get much turnout from the first two groups.

And if the time has been contemplated, actually thought through, and assumption that I am making, what does it say about those who will conduct it? I mean, they spent probably $100 or more on a big custom banner to hang from the steps out in front of the church, so there had to have been some kind of formal decison process involved. Is this because the elderly/retired will be running the show? Are they opening the doors, making the lemonade and putting the cookies on the plates? What kind of staff or execution team do you really need to conduct a "personal prayer" session, after all? I'd think it would just be the pastor himself, alone, or maybe a lay minister or two to ride backup.

So the pastor sat and thought this up, or approved its execution, and the time was set. Is this the only time the pastor is available for personal prayer, for organized and dedicated personal prayer? One day a week for an hour is all this guy can do; it's all he will do? Right there I have a problem with this--the message tells me that the pastor, the guy who's in charge of the God Stuff at the particular institution, just doesn't have a lot of time to invest in personal prayer. Sure, I'm guessing he's a pretty busy guy and all, but I'd think that he be able to do a lot better than just one hour out of the 168 available in a week. You know, that's 0.6% of the available time for the pastor to conduct communication with God and the folks Up There with his parishoners, and the folks they hope to just pull off the street with this bold offer. That's not a very positive number in favor of the church's dedication to personal prayer.

And say I go in, I actually note the date and the time, I make time for the event, and I go in to partake. What exactly is it all about? I haven't gone in, so I don't know, but imagine that there would be someone in there to help moderate my praying for me/with me. Does this mean I get a hand to hold as I pray, or that someone does it for me, on my behalf? Is a prayer more powerful if two people are there? Is there some kind of boost in the signal strength to God if there is more than one person involved? And do I get special prayer message handling and routing if I've got a lay minister or the pastor himself mumbling out my pleadings along with me? This is what seems to be communicated in this event: 1) Prayer is more powerful/more effective if more than one person is doing it, and; 2) You can't really do it alone, if you want to do it properly, with a chance at being heard.

So, what I'm hearing is that if I want to pray, just kneeling by my bed in my little bedroom at home is not as good as going to church and kneeling in the pew or at the altar, and doing it in the presence of an ordained man of the cloth. So what's the point of doing it at home? Prayer or any kind of communication with God isn't right or good enough if it comes from outside the church, eh? Is there a better signal from the church, some kind of divine dampers and signal modulators that get a better beam up/down/out to where God is waiting with his celestial ham set and his Radio Shack Realistic plastic headphones?

This setup also tells me that my prayers aren't good enough on my own; I've got to have a church-guy (or even gal, but that's a whole 'nother can of ecclesiastical worms) right there with me, holding my spiritial hand, yabbering the words along with me. This setup tells me that my own prayers aren't right, aren't in the right format or don't strike the right harmonic tone with God in order for them to make it into his Holy Input Queue. My prayers aren't of the proper tone or caliber unless I have the Church Guy chiming in, right? Is it really that way, that I can't get into heaven, or at least get my message into heaven, metaphorically or in reality, without the direct intervention of a human, mortal member of the clergy? I've got to have a fully trained and vetted arbiter and assistant to make my wishes and desires valid for consumption? What's the point of even praying at all, if the only place that works is the church? Do I save it all up, to let it all come hanging out when I get to the church? Do I have to keep notes to myself so that I can remember all of the things I have to address when I get to the right place to pray, at church?

What if I'm a troop deployed out in Hells Half Acre, Iraq, and the closest Christian church is in Damascus? What am I to do then, when I really, really need to be doing some praying, and some praying that I really, really need to have the Big Man Upstairs listen to and think about, on my behalf (but then again for close to 2100 troops, and the 15,000 or so wounded, it doesn't look like any prayers are getting through).

When I was a kid, before I started to ask questions, I did the ol' kneelin' by the bed thing, my hands clasped in a perfect Magic Moments (TM) pose of childlike innocence and uncomprehending reverence, and I mumbled my rote-memorized prayers every night, right down to the "...if I die before I wake, I pray The Lord my soul to take..." (yeah, even as a kid I was most definitely cowed and had questions about someone/something taking my soul if I were to just up n' die in my sleep--great stuff to teach to kids, eh?) So, as a child, I should've been doing my praying bid'ness in the church? But how would I know that? How would I be hip to that guidance, that requirement? Am I damned and unheard in heaven because my parents wouldn't take me to church so the properly ordained arbiter could perform his prayer expediting? Am I damned because of my parents' ignorance or bold selfishness of not taking me to church for the proper procedure? Or was it because I was so young and pure and innocent that my prayers could get through?

Let's explore that last one. It seems the best answer, addressing the purity and innocence of the child with all of the best qualities of the deity. I don't know, but it seems to be the correct answer. Why damn a child, or at least ignore his/her little pleadings because of things they know nothing about, and also have no control over? Now, that just wouldn't be fair, would it? But is God fair? We're told he is, but there's more than enough evidence to show he's ruthless, capricious, and downright cruel. But, I digress.

So, if you're truly pure and innocent, you can get through, or at least have a better chance of getting through with your prayers for peace and love and better Christmas presents and the soul of your dead doggie and all of the other stuff folks pray about and for. What about a 20-year-old virgin? That's innocence and purity, sure. There aren't many, I'm sure, but there's got to be a few. What about the truly virtuous, the lifelong tea-totalers and non-smokers, who never swear and who go to church and pray and worship and give to charity and help the poor and less-fortunate, the ones who do everything the right way, who live the truly Christian life. Again, there probably aren't too many genuine examples--plenty of false and hollow ones--but they are out there, if you can find them. Do their prayers carry more weight than those of a pickpocket, or or a cop who falsified evidence to put a known criminal in jail? The scales would seem to tip in any number of directions, depending on your interpretations. The thief needs the help, so you'd think he'd go to the front of the line, assuming his mumblings were genuine and honest. The cop might be a harder sell, doing a clearly wrong thing, but for all of the right reasons, a good person doing a bad thing. He might be at the bottom of the list. But what about the Pure Christian. His/Her prayers might carry weight because of the moral authority behind them, years or decades or uninterrupted service, servitude, and unadulterated good deeds and sincere worship. That seems to make sense. But those are also the folks who likely have the least need for what The Lord, for what God is offering, redemption and salvation and help and leadership and mentoring and comfort and spiritual sustenance. The super-believer needs it the least, so why should their prayers go to the front of the queue? The most wretched and wicked needs the help more, so I'd think they'd be heard first.

But then again, The Big G, as Frank Zappa once described him, is omnipotent and omnipresent. There is no head of the line with him, no line at all. All prayers go into the Holy Hopper and are instantly processed by God. No waiting, and no stratification, right? One would have to argue this is the case. And if so, then why again do I have to go to the church down the street on WEdnesdays at noon to let my prayers out?

Once again, I have so many questions, and no amount of logic makes it clear or helps me out. And no human offers concrete answers. I ask God to come on down and help me through it, but there's no reply at all.