Presbyterian pastor leads initiative to pray for the community, inviting others to join him
by Tammy Warren | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Duke Dixon, pastor of Presbyterian Church of Easton in Easton, Maryland, has a free downloadable Lenten guide to help Presbyterians and others pray for their community. (Contributed photo)
LOUISVILLE — The Rev. Duke Dixon, pastor of Presbyterian Church of Easton in Easton, Md., part of New Castle Presbytery, returned from a sabbatical last summer feeling his congregation needed to pray — really pray — for its community.
Dixon created a “40 Days of Prayer for Advent” guide, which was well received by his congregation. The week-by-week, day-by-day focused prayer effort has now evolved into 40 Days of Prayer for Lent: Our Faith Community Praying Together for Our Community. Although written for the community of Easton and for Talbot County, Maryland, Dixon said other congregations and individuals are welcome to adapt the prayer guide for their own communities.
Since Dixon felt strongly the prayers needed to focus outside the church walls and into the community, he shared the idea with his lectionary group, which includes two Lutheran pastors. Both Lutheran congregations have agreed to join the Presbyterian Church of Easton to pray for their community during the 40 days of Lent, which begins on March 6, Ash Wednesday. The 40 Days of Prayer guide also has been distributed to all attendees of the New Castle Presbytery’s annual beach retreat and made available through its newsletter.
The Rev. Duke Dixon of First Presbyterian Church of Easton in Easton, Maryland, wants churches to use Lent as a time to pray for their community.
In the introduction to the prayer guide, Dixon writes, “Lent is the season of the church calendar when Christians focus on Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. It is intended to be a time of repentance, thankfulness and prayer. People often choose to honor Jesus and the sacrifice of His life for us by sacrificing something from their own life … Someone may fast one day a week or abstain from meat, sweets or alcohol. The approach of our 40 Days of Prayer during Lent is not to give up something but rather add focused prayer. We will be joining together as communities of faith in prayer for our community for whom Christ died.”
The foundational Scripture selected for this year’s 40 Days of Prayer during Lent is taken from the prophet Jeremiah’s letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon in which he urges them to pray for the shalom of their new city: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). Shalom, a Hebrew word translated as welfare or often as peace, means much more than the absence of violence or war, Dixon said. “It speaks to the well-being and wholeness of the person, the community and society.”
The prayer theme of each of the seven weeks focuses on an entity of the community: religious organizations (churches, mosques, temples); government (mayor, town and county councils); education (administrators, teachers, students, cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, school safety); health care (people who are sick, suffering from mental illness and addictions, doctors, nurses, technicians, a local hospice facility); helping agencies (mentors of young people, a homeless shelter, food pantries, senior centers); and the economy (farmers, homebuilders, watermen of the Chesapeake Bay). Week seven focuses prayers on the least, the forgotten and the ignored, such as elderly or unemployed people, immigrants, all who are being abused physically or emotionally and those who are suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease.
“I just thought it would be great if we prayed for our community, but the hope is that we will do more than just pray,” Dixon said. “We will try to reach out in some way to the various aspects of our community and maybe say ‘thank you’ or let them know we are praying for them or somehow get involved, or maybe even ask them, ‘How can we be praying for you?’”
The prayer guide is self-directed, Dixon said. “We’re leaving it up to people to pray in their own words and respond in their own way.”
The Rev. Jessica MacMillan, connectional presbyter, New Castle Presbytery, said, “I think what Duke and the other pastors have done fits in with the direction of our presbytery in becoming outwardly focused on the community, not personally focused. That doesn’t happen overnight. We have to pray our way into that.”
MacMillan hopes the whole presbytery will model an outward focus in prayer as congregations and individuals adapt and use the 40 Days of Prayer in their own prayer life during Lent.
“It’s so hard to get a church to focus outwardly,” MacMillan said. “To ask, where are we located? Who’s around us? Who is our neighbor?
“Prayer leads the way,” she said.
The guide “40 Days of Prayer for Lent: Our Faith Community Praying Together for Our Community and World” is available online or as a downloadable, printable booklet. To print the guide, use these printer settings: 14” x 8.5” custom paper size (legal, landscape orientation), select booklet, two-sided and flip on the short edge.
The 2019 Lenten Devotional from Presbyterians Today magazine, Awakening to God’s Beauty: A Lenten Invitation to Pray with Art, is rooted in poetry of the Psalms. It includes photography and reflections by the Rev. Krin Van Tatenhove.
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