become a yoda of prayer?

It is a habit to be cultivated. It is a discipline to be developed. It is a skill to be practiced. And while I don’t want to reduce praying hard to time logged, if you want to achieve mastery, it might take ten thousand hours. This I know for sure: the bigger the dream the harder you will have to pray.
Zondervan, (2011-12-13). The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears (Kindle Locations 1209-1211). Zondervan. Kindle Edition. Mark Batterson

In this section or subsection, as it looks to be only a couple or three pages if it were in print, Batterson writes some things about people mastering things like playing a musical instrument, writing, some athletic things, and so one. He writes that the thing the people who master these things have in common is that they have put in over ten thousand hours of practice.

So, to understand what Batterson is saying in the paragraph above, you have to keep that in mind--he is likening prayer to a natural endeavor, one that can be practiced and mastered.

Sickening, isn't it.

What, for example, constitutes prayer "mastery"? To look at Jesus' parable of the prayers of the Pharaisee and the publican, the Pharisee had no doubt logged in many hours of prayer. It was a part of the job. The publican, being rather a social outcast due to his occupation, likely didn't pray all that much, certainly not as much as the person whose job was religious leadership. Yet, it was the prayer of the publican, who simply begged God for mercy, that was acceptable, and the publican who left justified.

I'm not sure where the Bible says that God keeps some kind of a clock, and when we've reached 10,000 hours God levels up our prayers, and we get a "Prayer Master Jedi" plaque to put on the wall, or maybe a black belt in prayer. And we can look with kindly condescension on those who have only put in about, oh, 1,734 hours. They're trying, they'll get there, while we get busy going up to 50,000 hours and leveling up even further.

For most of my life, it seems I've heard about these people who have been called "prayer warriors". I've come to where I'm no longer convinced there are such people. Oh, there may be people whose prayer rhetoric gives the impression of being authoritative, that they come off like God is or should be listening especially closely to them. But simply because someone can sound like that doesn't mean that their prayers have a special line to God, that they can get God to answer their prayers when He doesn't seem to be listening to anyone else you ask for prayer.

Nor is there such a thing as prayer "mastery". All of us who believe begin in the same place, repenting of our sins, and we continue to do that until the time we die. We all thank God for His blessings, we all bring our petitions to Him.

anything-goes worship

In traditional worship forms, the congregation is often reduced to passivity or, at best, to orchestrated responses. Worship that results in suppression is a contradiction in terms.
Gibbs and Bolgar, Emerging Churches, p. 177

Is it?

The underlying assumption in the book, and among those it quotes from the emergent churches, is that chaos and creativity are in themselves good things. As is said later on the same page...

The creation of art directed toward God is in itself worship.

But is that so?

When we look at the Bible, we do not really see an "anything goes" type of idea; rather, God sets some pretty strict boundaries about how the people were to worship Him. And lest we think He was not serious, there were at least two times when men who were caught up in doing things improperly were killed--Aaron's two sons when they offered strange fires, and the man in King David's day who touched the Ark of the Covenant when it was being transported improperly.

One could point out, and rightly, that with Christ's death and the new covenant, things have changed in how we worship. We no longer sacrifice animals, we no longer have to rely on a human priest to go into the most holy place for us.

But can we honestly say that this freedom is license? That we have now entered a time when "anything goes"?

I must say "no", but I must do so with some caution. I have some experience with the other extreme, the one that does not want to change, and condemns things that do not need to be condemned. This is especially seen in controversies over music, where some seem to hold that there is a style of music that is acceptable for church worship, and styles that are not. Going into that controversy is beyond what I want to do here, but suffice it for now to say that I think such restrictions are wrong.

I have no doubt that artistic endeavors may have a place, but they are not the main thing, nor should they ever be. And chaos has no place at all in churches, not do I think it necessary for the creation of good art. I am a graphic designer myself, and I find that very often, ideas come from thought and reason and digging and technique and exploration and evaluation. It isn't an exercise in chaos. "Let all things be done decently and in order".

creative misplacing of priorities

Worship expressed both verbally and through a full range of artistic expression is a unique human activity on earth. Witness and mission are the outflow of that worship commitment. Consequently, it is given the highest priority.

Jonny Baker (Grace, London) highlights the central importance of creativity. "It's a core value for me and Grace. I would say that being made in the image of God, among other things, is about creativity. ...""The creativity of God is linked to the realization of the kingdom of God in our midst," says Doug Pagitt of Solomon's Porch (Minneapolis). "The phrase 'the kingdom of God as the creativity of God' I made up as tha way of explaining how God and humanity interact."

Art is our participation in God.
Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, p. 175-176, 177

One thing I've noticed in things I've read and listened to from various emergents, is how much they stress creativity, even to the point, as Pagitt does in the quotes above, of linking it to God's kingdom, making it almost synonamous with it.

While I do think that creativity is a good thing, I find a lot that keeps me from putting such emphasis on it, and making it such a great virtue or core value. Let me try to explain.

I am a single man, having never been married, but as it perhaps usual with some of my age in such a situation I have a bit of history of being 'in love' several times. Looking back on those instances and the women to whom I had feelings, I can say that in few if any cases were any of them very artistic women, and that I don't recall such creativity or lack thereof as being of much importance to me. Some of them may have been musician to a certain degree, or tried their hands at poetry, but those weren't the things that seemed to define them.

Rather, when I look back on them, it was other things about them and their character that were the things that drew me to them. Some of them I consider to be true saints in regards to the works they did, or things they overcame, or the sacrifices they made. Almost all were good and godly, who wanted to obey God and show Him to others. No doubt they were creative, but in what I would call a practice sense--using their creativity to help solve normal or even not-so-normal problems.

When I look at the New Testament, I see very little if anything said about creativity. None of the instances of the Great Commissions say anything about it; rather, they seem to presuppose that we already have the message, the Gospel, that we are to take to the world. We are told nothing about the Apostle's artisitc abilities, and since most were what would be considered 'common men', we may presume that they had very little. Nor do we have record of them ever encouraging their congregants to explore their artistic creativity.

In the list of spiritual gifts and fruits of the Spirit, artistry and creativity are notably lacking.

Even in what may be thought of as the more expressive spiritual gifts, like prophecy and tongues and interpretation, there is little room, if any, for personal creativity. A prophet was to share what had been given to him, a person speaking in tongues likely did not understand what he was saying and so had to rely on the interpretor to translate.

Finally, I'm not unfamiliar with the lives of some very creative people, and frankly while I may admire thier works, other parts of their lives would give me pause. Berlioz, Wagner, Lord Byron, Whitman, van Gogh, to some degree or another were not people who showed godly character traits. As a chess player, I can think of Alekhine and Fischer as examples of great players who were of very questionable character. And to play the extreme card, I could point out that Nero was a poet and Hitler an artist.

As someone who could maybe be labelled a 'creative', though in a very low-grade sense, I can appreciate creativity and the arts to some degree. But that also means I can appreciate the limits of artistic creativity, and I want to say quite clearly that I see no call to artistic creativity in the New Testament, that a person can be a Christian without ever picking up a paint brush or writing a line of verse.

So be at peace, you who have no desire to paint pictures or write poetry or who have little to no musical abilities, you are not second-class Christians in any sense. There is no biblical command for you to be any such thing; rather, consider well the things the Bible does command of us--to live pure and holy lives, to be Christ's witness to the world, to take the Gospel to the world, among other things--and see that one does not need special artistic abilities or special creativity in order to do those things.

And for those who are artists and musicians and such, beware if you think yourself somehow special and above those who are not. You may have your places, but those places are no higher or holier then anyone elses. And don't think that painting or writing puts you above the need to communicate the truth, or that you are above accountability because you are 'creative'. Be grateful to God for the gifts He's given to you, and use them for His glory.