Ancient Prayers, Present Peace : Jay Fowler

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another insightful episode of FrontStage BackStage. I’m your host, Jason Daye. Each and every week, I have the privilege of sitting down with a trusted ministry leader, and we tackle a topic to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you really thrive in both life and leadership. I’m really excited about today’s conversation. I’m going to be joined by Jay Fowler. Jay serves here at PastorServe and walks alongside pastors and ministry leaders. He serves as the Executive Director for our Midwest Region and is very engaged and involved in really helping our entire team serve pastors and ministry leaders better. At this time, I’d like to welcome Jay to the show. Jay, welcome, brother.

Jay Fowler
Hey, good to be with you today, Jason.

Jason Daye
Yeah, good to be with you. Super excited about today’s conversation. We are going to dive in and talk about something that is of great value to us as pastors and ministry leaders. We’re going to be talking about prayer, but we’re going to be a little more specific, because prayer is such a huge topic. It’s something that we all know that we need to embrace. It should be a part of all of our ministries, all of our lives. But we’re going to look at this idea of liturgical prayers. This is one of those topics, Jay, that some people are huge champions of liturgical prayers, right? They use them in their daily practice. They use them in their ministry. Others might think liturgical prayers are, some things I’ve heard, maybe outdated, or maybe it’s like strange to be praying a prayer that someone else wrote. So, I would like for us to kind of start off, Jay, if you could just share with us a little bit about liturgical prayer, the idea behind it, and why it can be valuable in our lives and in our ministries.

Jay Fowler
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Jason. Well, you know, I grew up in a liturgical church. I was born into the Episcopal Church, and attended an Episcopal Church most of the time, most weeks, with my mom, dad, and my sister. I would probably be one of those people who said, on the front end, I don’t like these prayers since I was little. I was a little kid, and the prayers were very formal. They were long. They used big words. In fact, when I was really young, we used Elizabethan words like thee’s and thou’s. So there really were words, like beseecheth. I didn’t know what it meant to beseecheth, and so I was pretty lost most of the time. I do remember when we got this new prayer book. It must have been in the 70s, early 70s, sometime that had more modern language and thinking, like, okay, now I at least understand some of the words. But honestly, spiritually, I was adrift and kind of drifted into not believing by my teenage years. So, liturgy for me as a kid, like I just had a hard time connecting to it. Actually, I think it made God feel more distant from me somehow. I wasn’t really taught how to pray from my heart until later. So I get the idea that liturgy may feel too ornate, not my words, or complicated, more wordy than it needs to be to get to the point with God. So, I get that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, so in your life, obviously, you have come to a point where not only do you embrace liturgical prayer in both ministry and in your own spiritual formation, but you have invested time. I mean, you have written books, collected liturgical prayers for different times of life. You’ve leaned into them, you’ve kind of helped make them maybe more accessible, Jay. So, share with us a little bit what the shift was for you, and how did you begin to see God using these types of prayers in your own life?

Jay Fowler
Yeah, hey, thanks for asking. Well, the huge shift for me was that I became a Christian in my teenage years, when I was around 16. In fact, 50 years, as we’re doing this right now. It was 50 years ago that I became a Christian. So that happened at that church. There was a woman there in that church, and she had been touched by the Holy Spirit through the Charismatic Renewal in the Episcopal church back in the 70s, and she just loved Jesus, and she shared about him, she was excited about the Bible, and I was invited to the youth group that she led at my church. I always say she kind of broke all the rules. She wasn’t cool and hip. She was a mom of three kids, and she would make us stand in a circle and hold hands and pray. I never prayed at that point. I didn’t really believe anything. I just went because they invited me, and my mom begged me. My mom begged me to go. I was kind of headed in the wrong direction, and I liked my parents. I said, Okay, I’ll go. I saw in this woman this love and this joy, and then I saw it in the other kids in the group, that I just hadn’t really experienced, and they loved me and answered my questions. Over the course of about a year, I became a Christian, which is a whole other story, and wonderful. But what I noticed was, when I went to church, all of a sudden, the words and the liturgy just came alive to me, just like the words in the Bible did. Same thing. So I started praying these prayers and thinking, Gosh, this is exactly what I believe. In fact, it’s helping me believe. I’m even learning as I’m praying what I believe, you know? It had this resonance in my soul that was so rich, and communion, like taking communion, had this deep, personal feeling for me, because in the liturgical prayer that we pray in the Anglican Communion, that’s what I’m a part of now, the Anglican Church in North America. But in most liturgical churches, there’s quite a bit said before you receive Communion, and it usually is the gospel. It usually presents the gospel. So I started growing in my faith and going to other non-liturgical churches, and grew a lot and learned the Bible, and it was great, but I just kept being drawn back to my home church and really resonating with those liturgical prayers. It wasn’t popular when I was doing that. My friends are all in non-denominational churches, or Baptist churches, or good, strong biblical churches, which I also love. So I was a little bit of the weirdo that kept going back to my Episcopal Church and finding the Lord really in worship through the liturgy and meeting him in the sacraments.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s fascinating. Jay, as you mentioned, at that time, it wasn’t really popular. We have seen a resurgence in interest in liturgical prayer. In your opinion, your thoughts and conversations you’re having, obviously, with tons of different pastors and ministry leaders, why do you think there has been a growing interest in some of these liturgical prayers?

Jay Fowler
Yeah, that is a great question. Well, the church, it kind of swings, right? Going back and forth. So, in America, many, many churches were liturgical, the Lutheran church, the Episcopal church, the Catholic Church, even Presbyterian churches had more liturgy in them. Honestly, I think that there was a time when there was some spiritual deadness that crept in, as it can in any movement. One of the ways that I think got expressed sometimes was that the liturgy was just sort of said very rote, very like, people didn’t mean it, and maybe they didn’t, I don’t know. I can’t judge their hearts, but I think there was this desire to have this intimacy with God, a personal connection with God, and that that would be expressed in my own personal prayers, not someone else’s prayers, and that was wonderful. Jesus prayed extemporaneous prayers, but he also gave a formed prayer to be said. You know, it’s interesting, in Matthew, when Jesus is talking about prayer, He says, When you pray, this is how you should pray, and then he gives the Lord’s Prayer. So it might be like, well, this is a form. Start with praise and include confession of sin and basic needs. But in Luke, He says, When you pray, say this. It’s not a form. It’s not like a guideline. It is these words. I want you guys to say these words, and I think that people are coming back around to a place of saying, extemporaneous prayer, praying for my heart, that’s a good thing. But there’s also this value in being able to pray rich, broad prayers that even instruct me as I pray, as I said, which was happening to me as a teenager. There’s a desire, I think, by many Christians, to be connected with other Christians around the world and even through the ages. You know, many of these prayers are hundreds of years old, and there is a biblical truth there and a richness about Jesus that broadens us. I think people are starting to say, I can enter this kind of prayer with my heart. It doesn’t have to be rote. It doesn’t have to be disconnected from God. In fact, it helps me connect with God.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find it for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network,

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s spot on there, Jay, in this idea of a desire for rootedness, especially in a world that seems chaotic, that’s moving so rapidly. I think that the more rapidly the world moves and the more things we’re inundated with, I think the more we want to have some rootedness. So the beauty of liturgical prayers is that rootedness factor. As you said, not only are we connecting with Christ followers around the world differently, all praying in their own language, but praying the same prayers, right? There’s that commonality, which is a beautiful thing, different cultures, but then across the ages, going back centuries, century, centuries, connecting. Oftentimes, we lean into Scripture. We pray prayers from scripture, right? That are 1000s of years old. And blessings, we use a lot of blessings from Scripture, and people might be a lot more comfortable with that, but that is a liturgy in and of itself, right? So, those are liturgical prayers when we pray the blessings from scripture. This rootedness factor, Jay. How is it that the liturgical prayers and maybe your own personal experience or experience of others that you’ve talked with, how do those prayers kind of ground you, not just theoretically, but when you’re thinking about the daily practice of praying these prayers? What are you experiencing in that time?

Jay Fowler
Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I am an Anglican priest. I work full time with PastorServe, and love my job at PastorServe, but I’m still an active Anglican priest. I serve regularly at my home parish, and have been ordained, first ordained in the Episcopal Church, and then joined the Anglican Communion. I’ve been ordained since 1988. So a long time, and leading liturgy publicly. But it’s interesting, I didn’t start doing it in my own personal, daily life until about, let me see here, probably about seven years ago, I guess, or eight years ago. The reason I didn’t do it was because I did like praying my own prayers. I journal and kind of trained to pray out of my heart and write those down. So that’s what I’ve done for a long time. About, I guess, eight years ago or something, somebody gave me a book that was like a simplified version of morning prayer, which I really like, because the Book of Common prayers, like 900 pages and it’s huge and I am a priest, I know how to navigate the book, but I even find it awkward as I turn these pages. So I had done some forms of morning prayer where the redundancy does start to wear on me a bit. So it wasn’t till about eight years ago that I found this little book. It was simpler, and I started using it. What I found there was that I did enjoy some of the repetition, actually. I did like kind of leaning into certain prayers. I did like the breadth of the prayer. Like, Jay has his world, and I have some perspective, but it’s limited. I also have a theology, and I think it’s pretty broad, but I can kind of get in my rut with what I’m thinking about, and so praying on a daily basis, the morning office, as some people call it. It helps me and kind of broadens me out of my little world and my needs. It helps me think more about God. It really has helped the praise part of my prayer life, to really think about who God is, and then bring my request to him. I had tried to do that in my journaling over the years, but there’s something about praying these prayers I didn’t make up that stretches me in a way I’m finding very valuable right now.

Jason Daye
I love that, Jay. Now you’ve kind of taken this a step further. It’s become so valuable for you personally that you said, Okay, how can I share and encourage others to embrace this as part of the rhythm of their lives. So, talk to us a little bit about that journey, what you’ve learned through that, and what you are doing to help resource others.

Jay Fowler
Yeah, well, so the little book I got was actually put together by a friend of mine named Dave Roseberry. It was called Pray Daily, and I used it for, I don’t know, a couple of years at least. It’s short, and I got tired of the prayers, okay, I’m just gonna say it, because I just did them every day. I thought, like, gosh, you know, I’m gonna take the prayer book and kind of do what he did, and I’m gonna change out the prayers. At first, I was just doing them as PDFs, sharing them with friends through PDFs and stuff. Then, I don’t know, a couple of years ago, I put one together for Advent for some folks, and then I put one together this year, a new one called Praying Daily in Ordinary Time. So, again, it’s a simplified version of morning prayer. It starts with a little opening scripture, and then there’s a confession of sin, there’s a little assurance of salvation or forgiveness, like an absolution, and then it moves into a psalm. This particular book is going to take you all the way to the fourth book of Psalms, like it starts around Psalm 90, and that’s called the fourth book of the Psalms. So, it takes you all the way through that in 28 days. Some prayers change every day for 28 days. Some of them swap out about every two weeks. So there is some repetition, and there is some freshness to it over a 28-day period.

Jason Daye
Yeah. Excellent. So, Jay, what was behind this? Obviously, you’re wanting to prepare this, and you’re leaning into this for your own spiritual formation, right? But then you’ve taken it a step further in publishing these, putting them out there, making them available to others. What kind of was the impetus for you to lean in that direction?

Jay Fowler
Yeah, thanks. Well, I work with pastors and leaders of a lot of different denominations, and I see the value and really love that. I love what I pick up from other groups. Their ethos, their heart, and their passions. But one of the things I have heard when people find out that I’m an Anglican priest is that people do often ask me about liturgical things, or they say we’re trying these things at our church, or I’m trying these things in my own devotional life. So I just started thinking, well, if I can give people a tool that helps them onboard that’s not as complicated as the 900-page book, then maybe that would help them in their journey with the Lord. So it really is about my heart to help, well, everybody, but pastors and leaders in particular, continue to deepen their relationships with Jesus, experience His grace, His love, and His presence. Since I found that doing the morning office has helped me experience Jesus in that way, I want to help people who also would like that.

Jason Daye
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely love that. Appreciate that so much, Jay. One of the things that you have done, because you’re a man of many gifts, many talents, brother, is you have kind of helped complement the prayers, liturgical prayers, with music as well. So, talk to us a little bit about that journey. Because I remember even, I don’t know, a year ago or so, whatever, we were at a Soul Care retreat with our team at PastorServe, and you pulled out your guitar and you shared with us. But one of the things you said is that you love to play, but a lot of your playing has been for kind of yourself. You don’t so much as play for others, but God has been kind of working in your life as part of your journey as well. So, talk to us a little bit about how the element of music has kind of come alongside these liturgical prayers.

Jay Fowler
Yeah, thanks. Well, when I was younger, I used to lead a lot of worship in a lot of different contexts, and then, when I became a pastor, I didn’t want to do everything. I didn’t want it to be the Jay show up there, so I just focused more on preaching and pastoring and less on public worship. But music has always been such a really important part of my relationship with the Lord and even an expression of my soul. So I play my guitar pretty much every day, mostly like finger picking, instrumental things, sometimes hymns and stuff, I do that. But mostly it just started coming out, almost like it was a language to God from my heart that would come out musically. For a long time, I just would come home after a long day at church and sit down with my guitar and just start playing, and I would just be done. I’d set it aside and go, that was pretty or whatever, and I’d just move on. One time, Janine, my wife, said to me, Oh, that was really pretty. I said, Well, you will never hear it again, because I just play it and I forget it and move on. It was just almost like a sort of ecstatic utterance or something. It would come out, and then it’s gone. I feel better and moving on. So I started thinking, like, I should try to remember some of these things I’m playing. Eventually, I started recording some of them, mainly just to remember them. Then I put them on a CD for one of my daughters who said, Hey, I’d like your music. Could you ever, I know you’re recording some, could you just give it to me so I could listen to it while I study? So I said, Sure. Then she told me that friends would hear it and say, Hey, what’s that? And she would say, Oh, that’s my dad. It was just instrumental, kind of pretty music. So I really kind of kept it to myself and my family, and that was it, until I played at the retreat with the PastorServe team. That was the first time I’d ever played any of my music ever for anyone, and it was scary.

Jason Daye
It was beautiful, though, brother.

Jay Fowler
But, what my heart is for my music, on a personal level, is it’s an expression somehow of my soul to the Lord, and it feels good. It writes me, it roots me somehow with the Lord in a wonderful way that’s hard to explain. Secondly, I would love for my music to just sort of be a backdrop for people to do other stuff in. So the first EP is called Acoustic Landscapes. It’s like it’s a landscape to play in. You don’t have to listen to the music directly, just put it back there and enjoy making dinner or whatever. Then I heard some people saying, hey, you know, Jay, what I’m finding myself doing is turning on your music while I do my devotional in the morning. It’s just sort of back there. It’s sort of peaceful. I like it, and I read and pray, then I finish, and turn off your music. So I got a little more intentional this time, and I’m putting out an EP probably around June 1. The first song actually dropped today, and it’s just really there to accompany this new devotional, which is called Praying Daily in Ordinary Time, which is a collection of prayers. There’s no reflections on my part there. It’s just a collection of prayers. This music will be called Sound Companion for Ordinary Time. So it’s really designed to be a backdrop to your reflection, meditation, and prayers.

Jason Daye
At PastorServe, we love walking alongside pastors and ministry leaders just like you. If you want to learn more about how you can qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches, please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. That’s PastorServe.org/freesession.

Jason Daye
I love it. Absolutely love it. I know our family appreciated that you did some around Advent, the Advent season, and some of the music that you recorded and shared. I know our family during Advent season, we were doing our Advent readings and listening to the music, and it’s such a beautiful thing. What’s fascinating, Jay, is in all of this, we talk about the time is a prayer. We talk about you expressing your soul and your relationship with Christ through music. All of this revolves around this idea that you and I, and our team at PastorServe, really lean into, and that’s the idea of soul care, right? Ultimately. It’s one of those things that we do a lot of work with, with pastors and ministry leaders, around caring for your soul. So share with us a little bit, Jay, about these different elements you’ve shared from your own life. How have these helped enrich your soul and your relationship with Christ? Talk to us a bit about our roles as pastors and ministry leaders, and the idea of caring for our souls, and sometimes that it can be challenging. But, there’s so much need for that, for us to really lean into that. So, talk to us a bit about how these things kind of come together and different ways for us to care for our soul, right?

Jay Fowler
Yeah. Gosh, I’ve thought a lot about that. For most pastors, I really don’t know any pastors who don’t work hard. There are probably some out there. I just don’t know who they are, right? Every pastor that I talked to loves Jesus, loves their family, loves their people, and is trying as hard as they can. You’ve probably seen my mug. I have this mug. God loves a Trier. It’s sort of a joke mug, because there was a time in my ministry when I felt like I was trying so hard and it just wasn’t working right. I think that’s great that we do that. But the Bible says we love because he first loved us, and our ability to do the most important thing, which is to love God and love other people, is reliant completely on us receiving that love from him first. So when we slow down at the beginning of the day and allow the Lord to meet us, and allow ourselves to meet him, and hopefully walk away with some glimmer of His grace and His. Love for us, then we have that love to hand off to the people that we’re trying to serve, or that we’re trying to share the gospel with, or that we’re trying to lead and guide and shape. You know, the best thing that a pastor has to give his people is a Jesus-filled person themselves, right? Man or woman filled with Jesus, that’s their best offering. Everything else, what they teach and what they do, that’s important, too. But the best offering is the Jesus-filled self, and we have to keep going back to Him, the Lord, and ask him to refill us each day. That’s an important thing. It’s maybe the most important thing we do.

Jason Daye
Absolutely, brother, absolutely. Kind of tacking onto that, this idea of rhythms, spiritual rhythms, in our lives. Obviously, we’re talking about these prayers, daily prayers, and these types of things. Talking about going back to God each day. Share with us a bit about how spiritual rhythms have impacted your life, in ministry, and the value that you see in really establishing, because, again, sometimes people push back. They’re like, well, I like it to be a little more spontaneous, right? Understandable. But talk to us about the value of those rhythms.

Jay Fowler
Well, I used to like to be spontaneous all the time, too, and then it finally just got really tiring, right? My capacity for spontaneity seems to be dwindling. So it’s nice to just come with the book, a Book of Common Prayer, some accessible way where it does a little bit of the work for me, you know? And always after I’ve had my liturgical time, I have my personal time, too. But I don’t know. I think in some ways, it’s helped me to not feel like I’m constantly having to create. I get to join in someone else’s journey with Jesus, and it’s nice to be along for the ride sometimes, instead of having to create it all from myself every single day, from whatever time I get up and get going. So I like that. That rhythm of like, there’s a comfort there. I take the prayers, they linger in my head throughout the day, and they become my prayer throughout the day. So the repetition is helpful. It’s grounding, I think, as you said earlier, and again, it’s sort of like a gift that I get to join someone instead of having to create it all from scratch all the time.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. That ongoing cadence provides the, I don’t know. Our lives get chaotic, right? Our days can get so busy and so filled, and we can be pulled in so many different directions in ministry, because you never know what’s going to happen next, right? That’s the life of a minister. I have found that having that rhythm and that cadence helps put a little bit of order, helps pull us out of the chaos that we can get swept up into. That’s God, right? So, as we’re kind of wrapping up this conversation. Fantastic conversation, Jay. What words of encouragement would you have for pastors and ministry leaders, wherever they might be, whomever they might be, whatever they’re experiencing when it comes to this idea of soul care, spiritual formation, this rootedness, and this groundedness that we’ve talked about?

Jay Fowler
Yeah, I would just say, man, I’ve had times when it’s just hard to find a minute to be with God, especially like when we had little kids running around, and I wanted it, but it was just hard to get it on the regular basis that I wanted. So I understand that there are times in our lives where, man, we wish we had it, and we don’t have it. But to the degree that we can make it a regular rhythm, it blesses me. It blesses my life to have that regular time with the Lord. When I don’t have it, I’m a much grumpier version of myself. I can remember one of my little kids, when they’re little, saying to me, Daddy, did you have your quiet time today? And I said no, and they go, I can tell you’re grumpy. There’s the fruit of that. So I think there’s grace, right? There’s grace. We live under a God who loves us dearly and graciously. So that’s a good thing. But I’ve just found that when I can have that daily time, and honestly, the longer, the better for me these days, it helps me in the day. It helps me to encounter things, see things differently, to bear the weight of pain that I experience or that others bring to me, to be a little less judgey, and a little more grace-y. But I don’t do that in my nature. I need the Lord to help me with that, and I need it every day.

Jason Daye
Yep. Amen, brother. So good. Appreciate that. Jay. If people want to learn more about your books, these liturgical prayers that you’ve put together, and your music, both of those things. What’s the best way for them to kind of connect with those resources?

Jay Fowler
Yeah, you can go on Amazon. They’re just self-published. There’s a workbook for sabbaticals that’s on there if you ever think about taking sabbatical, and that’s been really helpful to lots of folks. Then there’s an Advent daily prayer guide, and there’s this one now that’s going to be called, it just came out this week, called Praying Daily in Ordinary Time. So just type in my name. Type in Jay Fowler as author, and it’ll take you to those books. Same thing on Spotify, or on Apple Music, or Amazon. Just type in my name as an artist, and it’ll take you to the instrumental guitar stuff.

Jason Daye
Awesome, excellent. For those of you who are watching or listening along, we will have links to Jay’s books and to his music as well. So you can find those in the toolkit for this episode. You can find the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network, that way you can get linked directly to those resources. So if you’re driving down the road or you’re jogging or something, you can always come back to PastorServe.org/network, get the toolkit, and get the links. So, Jay, I imagine, and I don’t want to put any expectations or pressure on you, but I imagine there are probably some more of these books, these collected prayers coming, so we can maybe finish out the church year, right?

Jay Fowler
Yeah. So I do have one for Easter season, which we’re in now, and I just didn’t think I could pull it together fast enough. Then there’s one for Lent. As I said, there is one for Advent. I think I want to do one for Christmas, which is, there are 12 Days of Christmas in the church year. So I want to put one together for that as well. So I’ll probably put out some other versions of Ordinary Time, because ordinary times is a long time. It’s Pentecost Sunday all the way to Advent. So it’s like months. So I’d like to have something for myself, even, that keeps the prayers fresh, so I don’t get bogged down, and can keep my heart engaged. I’d love to share those with other folks.

Jason Daye
Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. Keep them fresh, keep us in that rhythm, and take us all the way through the church year. Beautiful experience. I so appreciate you, brother, as a friend and Co-laborer. Appreciate all that you do for pastors, for ministry leaders, and for the church. Thank you for sharing, again, the way that God has uniquely gifted you, shaped you, and crafted you, Jay, and for sharing that with the church. Your music, the collections of prayers, and just the encouragement for us to lean into these healthy rhythms for our souls. So very important. So thank you for all you do, my friend.

Jay Fowler
Thank you, Jason. Thanks for the time today. You’re a great interviewer, great questioner. Thank you.

Jason Daye
Thank you, brother. God bless you, my friend.

Jay Fowler
All right. Bye, bye.

Jason Daye
Here at PastorServe, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend, and don’t forget our free Toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.