Study Group Aids for “Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers” by Gary Neal Hansen

A church I served recently struggled with prayer. Many of our leaders were not accustomed to regular prayer and were uncomfortable praying publicly. To address this issue, I first started a daily prayer program during a weekday evening. An appreciable number of members came to pray together using a daily prayer liturgy with daily scripture readings. For this part of the program, I copied liturgy from the PC(USA) Daily Prayer App, which includes opening scriptural sentences, evening Psalms, an Old Testament reading, an epistle reading, a gospel reading, petitions for a prayer of thanksgiving and intercession, a collect, the Lord’s Prayer, and a dismissal. Very quickly, our church secretary took over the work of preparing the sheets for everyone for which I am very thankful. Most of our members were older and paper was much easier for them to engage than the app. Initially, we had to retype the liturgy and pull scripture passages from software or online. Part way through the program, the Daily Prayer app added the ability to copy material from the app making this much easier. Scripture passages are based on that available on the Presbyterian Mission Agency website. We, also, used a few other methods of Bible study including a modern re-envisioning of Lectio Divina and reading scripture followed by answering three questions a colleague shared with me when I was serving in Bahrain:

• What does the passage teach us about God?
• What does the passage teach us about humans?
• What is one thing I intend to change in the next week in response to this passage?

I was surprised that during this pandemic period, we continued to sustain a good number of participants often eager to engage the scriptures and prayer. We started this even before we re-opened for in-person worship in 2020. In total, we did this for about 8 months.

In time, I wanted to introduce our members to additional methods of prayer using a book written by a professor I had in seminary, Rev. Dr. Gary Neal Hansen. Gary, a church historian, studied the prayer techniques of various leaders through the history of the church and wrote a chapter on each of several prominent leaders. Many are likely recognizable names from across the Christian Church: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and various Protestant leaders. His book is titled Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers and is published by InterVarsity Press (available through many bookstores) under ISBN: 978-0-8308-3562-1. You might strongly consider the eBook (Christianbook, IVPress, Kindle, and others) version as most contain an appendix with source material from the church leaders referenced.

Many of these practices would be new to members of our congregation, and I wanted to remove as many barriers from engaging the material as possible. Each week (or sometimes 2-3 weeks dependent on holidays), we read a chapter from the book and attempted to daily practice that prayer approach. For most (though no all) weeks, I provided materials to aid their engagement at the beginning of the week. When we would gather together on Wednesday evenings, we would usually practice the prayer technique — often in the context of daily prayer. Where we incorporated it into daily prayer, I might remove a section or more of daily prayer to adjust for time. Where the technique couldn’t be practiced well in the time we had available, we would talk about our experience with the practice from the prior week (e.g. Praying with the Puritans).

Most participants really engaged the material and some continue some of the practices to this day, which testifies well to the variety of options Gary provides. I think many times in the church, we provide a study such as this and engagement ends as soon as the study ends with little lasting, productive results. This was not such a case.

In case others would like to lead a similar experience, I wanted to provide the materials I developed for wider use and include those below chapter-by-chapter. At the end of the program, we also had an online conversation with the author, which our members really appreciated. While it was hard to get them to start asking questions, they eventually did, and I think we could have consumed more time than we had allotted.

Chapter 1: Praying with St. Benedict: The Divine Office

We had practiced this for several months by this point using the PC(USA) Daily Prayer App. Some had already made this a daily practice — in some cases multiple times a day. The app provides liturgy for four different periods during each day including a very short liturgy before bed, which is an easy place to start. A few options you might consider are

• PC(USA) Daily Prayer App
• PC(USA) Daily Lectionary (but without the liturgy)
• PC(USA) Book of Common Worship (1993), ISBN: 0-664-22032-0 (includes the liturgy and a table of the same readings as above)
• Daily Prayer App or Podcast by Church House Publishing (Church of England)
• Time to Pray App or Podcast by Church House Publishing (Church of England)
• Daily Prayer (website) by Church of England (includes typed and audio version)
• Church of England Common Worship – Daily Prayer, ISBN: 978-0-7050-2199-3 or in downloadable PDF.

Chapter 2: Praying with Martin Luther: The Lord’s Prayer

For this chapter, I merely printed the Lord’s Prayer double-spaced so that they could mark the prayer with the fingers as they went through the prayer each day.

Lord’s Prayer 2UP

Chapter 3: Praying with the Pilgrim: The Jesus Prayer

This prayer was simple enough it didn’t require any resources, and many found this method of prayer fit them very well. It generally requires reciting the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” or “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” repetitively. I purchased an Orthodox prayer rope or Chotki from eBay. There are many options available, also, on Etsy. You might, also, consider reciting the Jesus Prayer while making your own prayer rope.

Chapter 4: Praying with John Calvin: Studious Meditation on the Psalms

In this case, I provided some guidance for the week including some study Bible recommendations and some online resources. At the end, I included several Psalms printed double-spaced for them to read and mark. I include the study sheet here without the Psalms due to copyright limitations. I included one Psalm for each day and from a variety of genres.

• Psalm 92 (Day 1, Psalm of Praise)
• Psalm 32 (Day 2, Psalm of Thanksgiving)
• Psalm 112 (Day 3, Psalm of Wisdom)
• Psalm 3 (Day 4, Psalm of Lament)
• Psalm 124 (Day 5, Hymn)
• Psalm 51 (Day 6, Psalm of Lament)
• Psalm 27 (Day 7, Psalm of Lament and the Psalm for that day from the PC(USA) Daily Lectionary)
• Psalm 51 (the Wednesday we gathered in-person and during the season of Lent)

Chapter 4; John Calvin Study Aid

Chapter 5: Praying with Ignatius of Loyola: The Prayer of the Senses

We spent two weeks on this study.

Week 1. In this case, I summarized the different options from the book including the General Examination of the Conscience (with Ten Commandments, seven capital sins, and seven virtues), the original Daily Particular Examination of the Conscience (with form), the modern Daily Particular Examination of the Conscience, and the Prayer of the Senses. For the last of these, I included a few scripture passages they could use including John 2:1-12 (the Wedding at Cana), Matthew 14:13-21 (Feeding of the Five Thousand), Matthew 14:22-33 (Jesus Walks on Water), Matthew 17:14-20 (Jesus Cures a Boy with a Demon), and John 11:1-16, 38-44 (The Death and Raising of Lazarus). I include the study sheet here again without passages due to copyrights.

Chapter 5; Ignatius of Loyola Study Aid

Week 2. During week 2, we focused on the Examen: Listening to your life section. I put together a form with questions, reflections, and Bible verses. You can find two different versions: one in portrait format and one in booklet format. Each has both a beginning of day section and and end of day section. These are questions I’ve developed from a number of sources and on my own for quite some time. They could be printed and used or handwritten in an app such as Good Notes, Notability, or PDF Expert on a tablet.

Chapter 5; Ignatius of Loyola Examen Portrait Form

Chapter 5; Ignatius of Loyola Examen Book Form

Chapter 6: Praying with St. Teresa of Avila: Recollection of the Presence of God

In this chapter, we explored two of the practices described. In one, we engaged God in various roles or metaphors God has for our lives. In the second, we took a few concerns to God in these various roles or metaphors.

Chapter 6; St. Teresa of Avila Study Aid

Chapter 7: Praying with the Puritans: Meditation in Writing

We spent three weeks on this chapter, and I assigned quite a substantial task. I think many are reluctant to share what their faith means to them because they haven’t contemplated their own faith journey deeply, so I developed a long set of questions on which I asked them to send time writing. I then asked they summarize them chronologically and contemplate how they might answer someone who asked why they follow a man who lived 2000 years ago. When we met, I invited them to further develop their answer so that they might be able to share a 5-10 minute version as well as an elevator speech (30-60 seconds). My hope was this might enable them to more readily and comfortably share their faith. A number of people expressed surprising insights they realized while completing this exercise.

Chapter 7; Puritans Study Aid

Chapter 8: Praying with the Cloud of Unknowing

This was a difficult chapter for nearly all of us, which I expected. I felt entirely unprepared and far too inexperienced to provide my own guide. A guide in this case can, also, be too descriptive. I did find an article online that aided some that I share for you below.

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING summarized in modern english

Chapter 9 (Praying with Agnes Sanford; The Healing Light) and Chapter 10 (Praying with Andrew Murray: The Ministry of Intercession)

These two chapters were relatively self-explanatory, and I did not develop a guide on either. I leave the description to the book.