Praying Together: Hearing, Discussing, Practicing, and Applying the Lord's Prayer at First Evangelical Free Church of Sioux City Iowa

Kevin Miller

Etd

Praying Together: Hearing, Discussing, Practicing, and Applying the Lord's Prayer at First Evangelical Free Church of Sioux City Iowa

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MLA citation style (9th ed.)

Kevin Miller. Praying Together: Hearing, Discussing, Practicing, and Applying the Lord's Prayer At First Evangelical Free Church of Sioux City Iowa. rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/87fd824d-5983-47a8-8568-ebe176b8c494.

APA citation style (7th ed.)

K. Miller. Praying Together: Hearing, Discussing, Practicing, and Applying the Lord's Prayer at First Evangelical Free Church of Sioux City Iowa. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/87fd824d-5983-47a8-8568-ebe176b8c494

Chicago citation style (CMOS 17, author-date)

Kevin Miller. Praying Together: Hearing, Discussing, Practicing, and Applying the Lord's Prayer At First Evangelical Free Church of Sioux City Iowa. https://rim.ir.atla.com/concern/etds/87fd824d-5983-47a8-8568-ebe176b8c494.

Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.

Creator

Kevin Miller

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Abstract

Growing in prayer is a spiritual practice that Christians throughout the centuries have both aimed at and struggled in. Evangelical churches in the modern era are no exception: while we often have solid processes for growing in our knowledge of scripture or for fellowship with fellow believers, rarely do we focus on growth in prayer. On the rare times when we do, such growth is often individual in nature rather than congregational. This imbalance is highlighted all the more when we consider that many of the existing works and programs addressing prayer are often written to address individual–rather than congregational–practices. This project was primarily aimed at impacting the people of First Evangelical Free Church of Sioux City Iowa (Evangelical Free Church of America) in their practice of corporate prayer. This was done through two phases. The first consisted of an eight-week sermon series specifically focusing upon the Lord’s Prayer. The second phase of this intervention involved a nine-week workshop in which participants read and discussed selected prayers of the Bible alongside works from church history regarding prayer. These discussions then led into time spent praying in a group format, varying from 3-5 participants around a table to an entire workshop of 31 participants. The overall goal was to teach participants how the Lord’s Prayer provides both an example and a framework for biblical prayer in such a way that they could then apply that framework to other passages throughout the Bible in natural and contextually faithful ways. Evaluation surveys and interviews revealed that the interventions of this project were successful in their goals of making prayer part of how FEFC went about being and making disciples, and that growth was self-reported by participants in both individual and group contexts.

Year