A Wesleyan Prayer

A big thanks to Rev. Ken Carter of Providence United Methodist Church in North Carolina for creating this prayer. This prayer captures the Wesleyan spirit at its core.

A Wesleyan Prayer

O God, you are high and lifted up,
and yet yours is the still, small voice within us.
We pray as the church evangelical and catholic,
whose one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord.
We pause to acknowledge the tensions within this body:
between who we have been, in your providence,
and who we might become, in your grace;
between the personal holiness that is our conversion,
and the social holiness that is our compassion;
between a preference for order and tradition,
and an anticipation of recreation and new birth;
between an appreciation for who we are, as Methodists,
and an awareness that in your house there are many mansions.

Remind us, O God, that these tensions give us our very life
as your body:
If we are catholic and not evangelical,
we become ritualistic and rule-oriented,
having the form without the power of your presence.
If we are evangelical and not catholic,
we plant ourselves at some distance
from the streams of living water
that have carried us forward until this moment.
For the gift that is your church, O God,
the earthen vessel that nevertheless
contains the treasure of the good news,
we give you thanks and praise.
In the name of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

(A Prayer written by Ken Carter for the Committee on Faith and Order
of the United Methodist Church, June, 2009)