A Choir's Moment with God: Prayers for Church Choirs Entering Worship

A Choir's Moment with God comes from 14 years of a solo pastor singing in the church choir and wanting to offer prayers that were meaningful to the moment when the choir has finished their Sunday morning rehearsal and simply needs some words that focus their efforts on the goal of faithfully leading worship. Early in my seminary experience, my theology professor and Dean of Union Presbyterian Seminary at Charlotte, N.C., Dr. Thomas W. Currie, partnered with me in leading the noon worship at the seminary. Tom had many years in pastoral ministry before he joined the faculty and organized the seminary. I looked forward to the experience of serving alongside someone who was so experienced and also steeped in the academic disciplines of the church. What I took from him was there is no level of care and preparation that may be considered sufficient when planning worship. Crafting a worship experience is the area of church work in which a minister is supposed to be the expert in residence. Therefore "winging it" just isn't appropriate. So, as part of the preparations for the worship service I would come with a prayer written for the choir when our director was finished rehearsing us.
One day the choir director mentioned in rehearsal that she appreciated the prayers I offered and would love to have a book of those prayers. It had never occurred to me that the prayers I composed would ever be more use than the moment for which they were intended. Realizing that not all church choir directors have the comfort level with offering a prayer for the choir, I set out to gather the prayers I had written over the years. Then as I looked at the prayers, I thought it may be useful to group them by the church season for which they were written, to include the scripture passages for worship that they accompanied, and the type of prayer that they were (Intercession, Praise, Thanksgiving, and/or Offering). What has resulted is (I hope) a resource that a choir director can carry with a music folder and hymnal, quickly pull out and read for the benefit of preparing the choir's hearts and minds for the work of worship. Even though I chose to organize the prayers in this manner, sometimes the correlation to the church season or the scripture passages is loose to non-existent, so the user should feel free to use a particular prayer for anytime she or he feels is appropriate. Many of the prayers grouped under the category "General" come from the periods in the church year labelled "Ordinary Time." In many instances the scripture passages used for those Sundays did not correlate to the thoughts contained in the prayers at all, so the passages were omitted. I hope that both choirs and choir directors who encounter these prayers and thus give them an extended life find themselves more faithfully aware that they have a partner in the Spirit of God as they undertake the task of leading worship.