Case Study Application: Prayer, Indirect Communication, and the Classroom
Journal of Christian Teaching Practice, Volume 11, 2024 (January – December)
John T. Dunkle, Assistant Professor, Strategic and Personal Communication, Liberty University
Abstract: In Christian higher education, incorporating prayer at some point during a class is common and can become rote and ritualistic. The author suggests that public prayers—whether offered at the beginning or end of the class—can be a viable faith-learning integration strategy. Within a framework of indirect communication, prayers can function as a pedagogical strategy that benefits learning outcomes, sense of classroom community, and spiritual development.
Introduction
One of the unique privileges of teaching in a Christian higher education setting is the acceptability of public prayer. There are undoubtedly varying appetites regarding the incorporation of public prayer in the classroom, and individual approaches to the practice of public prayer in the classroom may vary based on a variety of factors. Who should pray, the professor or the students? Will there be time for specific prayer requests, or will the prayer be offered more generally? How long should one pray and in what style? Whatever the case may be, prayers offered in the classroom usually mark the official beginning or end of the class-time and tend to become a rote exercise, something just to get out of the way before the real instruction begins or has ended. In the interest of “making the best use of the time” with our students, however, the public prayers offered in our classrooms can serve a much more significant purpose.[1] When viewed through the lens of indirect communication, prayers offered in the classroom can fit both effectively and ethically within a pedagogical strategy intended to enhance focus, build community, establish or clarify expectations, and provide a spiritual orientation to course material.[2] Additionally, these prayers provide a powerful illustration to teach the very theoretical perspective upon which this perspective is established.
On Public Prayer
Prayer is an essential discipline of the Christian experience, expressed both privately and publicly for numerous reasons, such as worship, edification, supplication, repentance, and more. At a base level, the primary goals of prayer involve directly engaging God, most commonly for the purposes of praise or petition of some type. However, there is a far less talked-about set of secondary goals unique to the context of public prayer. To understand this secondary set of goals, it is important to recognize the presence of a second audience—those who are overhearing the prayer. When we pray publicly, we welcome others to the experience, not as participating interlocutors or as a direct audience, but as a secondary, observing audience. J.J. Makay and Paul Tuchardt have argued, “Often public prayer has become an educational approach used by a religious leader as an instructional device for the general needs of those attending a religious service. The words directed toward the deity are also for teaching the humans joined in prayer.”[3] While Makay and Tuchardt are referring specifically to religious services, the educational premise offers obvious connections for the classroom as well.
Ethical Issues
A few words of caution are necessary when discussing the practice of public prayer. In Matthew chapter six, Jesus offers two stern warnings on the topic. The first warning is against praying so that we may be “seen by others.”[4] The second warning is against “[heaping] up empty phrases.”[5] Both of these warnings involve issues of authenticity. The former deals with praying with a focus on others, what Fred Craddock refers to as “…sad pseudoprayers that were clearly addressed to the [audience], not to God.”[6] The latter deals with the offering of prayers that are empty and meaningless. As C.S. Lewis argues, “Simply to say prayers is not to pray…”[7] Herein lies an ethical dilemma. How can we offer prayers that are both intentional and authentic? Charles H. Spurgeon wrestled with this dilemma in a lecture on public prayer, concluding that one ought to prepare their prayers or, rather, be prepared to pray.
…Not the preparation of the head, but of the heart, which consists in the solemn consideration beforehand of the importance of prayer, meditation upon the needs of men’s souls, and a remembrance of the promises which we are to plead; and thus coming before the Lord with a petition written upon the fleshy tables of the heart. This is surely better than coming to God at random, rushing before the throne at haphazard, without a definite errand or desire.[8]
Spurgeon’s approach involves immersion in both Scripture and private prayer, which gives the one praying spiritual resources from which to draw in their public prayers. But he also recommends identifying and focusing on a “definite errand,” that is having a purpose, thinking beforehand about the situation and the needs thereof.[9] Prayers of this nature, he contends, are “…fresh supplications, which will be as an ointment poured forth, filling the whole house of God with its fragrance, when you present your petitions in public before the Lord.”[10]
Public Prayer as Indirect Communication
Combining the multiple audience perspective of public prayer with Spurgeon’s plea for intentional, yet free prayers, the strongest theoretical orientation through which to view the practice of public prayer is indirect communication. According to Benson P. Fraser, indirect communication can be understood simply as “…[conveying] truth by way of story, narrative, and symbol.”[11] Inspired by the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Flannery O’Connor, Walter Fisher, and others, Fraser presents a collection of strategies unified by their common indirect nature.
While public prayers do not necessarily fit within the scope of story or narrative, their symbolic nature aligns well with the indirect strategy of “overhearing.”[12] This concept was proposed by Fred Craddock as a Kiergegaardian preaching strategy designed to disarm congregants of their typical guarded listening responses to direct rhetoric, allowing them to consider sermonic content from a safer rhetorical distance.[13] Fraser elaborates that overhearing, “…sidesteps any emotional resistance to the message and creates a distance between the communicator or message and the audience. In so doing it makes space for an individual or audience to reflect on the message presented.”[14] Inviting others to overhear one’s prayers welcomes them to a sacred moment of profound disclosure, revealing both the heart and mind of the one praying for the secondary audience’s consideration.
A Potential Model for Classroom Prayer
In the context of preaching, public prayer has been noted for its ability to indirectly clarify intentions, draw attention or give voice to desired focal points and outcomes, provide contextual connections, and establish an overall spiritual orientation for the sermonic act.[15] These benefits would seem to apply in the classroom as well. Praying about the goals of that particular class or lesson can enhance focus and clarify expectations. Lifting up individuals in the class and their needs builds community through a socio-emotional connection. And grounding prayers in Christian concerns for the task at hand provides an overall spiritual orientation and worldview lens for the class.
Prominent Old Testament professor and theologian, Walter Brueggemann, is well-known for classroom prayers, so much so that his former students published an edited collection of them for posterity.[16] Brueggemann describes his perspective on classroom prayers, contending, “Over time I have come to think that such prayers require great intentionality in order to situate in prayer the learning agenda of the day, to locate teacher and students in the ongoing life of the church in whose service we learn, and to ponder the condition of the world that is the proper though sometimes disregarded context of all evangelical learning.”[17] Applying Brueggemann’s perspective in the context of a communication classroom, authentic, intentional prayers invite students, not only to pray along, but to think spiritually about course content and to remember that, above all things, communication is from God and for God.
Case Study: Teaching Prayer in Leadership Communication
Each day in my Leadership Communication course begins with prayer. We briefly share specific requests, and then I lead the class in prayer, which typically involves a time of adoration and praise, followed by petitions for the students and for the specific trajectory of the content that day. The final lecture of the semester is titled “Praying for Your People” and frames public prayer as a best practice for leadership communication in Christian contexts. Over the course of the next hour, the lesson touches on the obvious spiritual benefits of prayer but grounds prayer as an act of communication through current theoretical perspectives on prayer, such as relational prayer theory, the direct divine communication model, and prayer as rhetoric. The concept of overhearing is then introduced, and students are asked to recall significant experiences they have had while overhearing prayers. The aforementioned approach to classroom prayers is offered as a model for prayer in leadership communication, and students are prompted to consider how our prayer time throughout the semester has influenced their experiences in the class. This could easily serve as a writing prompt for a reflection assignment as well, but the resulting discussion adds a summative punctuation to the semester, remembering and celebrating requests that have been answered, and grounding the parting thought of the course in a truly Christian perspective.
This case study explores a unique opportunity to connect communication theory with Christian teaching practice as an example of Leadership Communication. It works well within that specific course, but it could also be applied in Communication Theory or Indirect Communication classes with little to no modification. However, both the general practice of classroom prayer and the reflective discussion or assignment are applicable to the much wider spectrum of Christian teaching contexts.
Conclusion
The commitment to both authenticity and intentionality—in that order—in classroom prayer is essential. It is important to remember the primary benefits of prayer are spiritual in nature. Yes, the indirect audience of our prayers can benefit from what they overhear. But what would happen in our classrooms if God answered the prayers we offer? If we are convinced of the vital needs in our classrooms, and if we believe that God answers prayers, then it follows logically for us to pray big, audacious prayers in our classes, expecting that He will hear and attend to all. Classroom prayers then have both primary and significant secondary benefits for Christian teachers, particularly those who teach communication and whose first task is to embody or model the concepts being taught. Authentic, intentional prayer in the classroom enhances focus, clarifies expectations, builds community, provides a spiritual orientation to the material, and ultimately places the true act of life-changing instruction into the hands of the Lord.
Notes
[1] Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5 (ESV)
[2] John T. Dunkle, “Homiletical Prayers: Exploring the Rhetorical Value of Public Prayer in Preaching,” PhD diss., (Regent University, 2021). 128-129
[3] J.J. Makay and Paul Tuchardt, “Public Prayer: A Field for Research in Public Address,” Today’s Speech 17, no. 4 (1969). 69.
[4] Matt. 6:5 (ESV)
[5] Matt. 6:7 (ESV)
[6] Fred Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel (St. Louis: MO, Chalice Press, 2002), 94.
[7] C.S. Lewis, The Efficacy of Prayer, in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960), 6.
[8] Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2016), 71.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Benson P. Fraser, Hide and Seek: The Sacred Art of Indirect Communication (Eugene: OR, Cascade Books, 2020), 4.
[12] Dunkle, Homiletical Prayers, 11.
[13] Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel, 3-14.
[14] Fraser, Hide and Seek, 120.
[15] Dunkle, Homiletical Prayers, 129-131.
[16] Edwin Searcy, “Editor’s Foreword,” in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, ed. Edwin Searcy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), xiii.
[17] Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, ed. Edwin Searcy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), xv.
Bibliography
Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, ed. Edwin Searcy. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.
Fred Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel. St. Louis: MO, Chalice Press, 2002.
John T. Dunkle, “Homiletical Prayers: Exploring the Rhetorical Value of Public Prayer in Preaching,” PhD diss. Regent University, 2021.
Benson P. Fraser, Hide and Seek: The Sacred Art of Indirect Communication. Eugene: OR, Cascade Books, 2020.
C.S. Lewis, The Efficacy of Prayer, in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1960.
Makay, J. J. and Paul Tuchardt. “Public Prayer: A Field for Research in Public Address.” Today’s Speech 17, no 4 (1969): 69-70.
Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2016.