Forgotten Songs by Ray Van Neste

Author:Ray Van Neste
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Rituals & Practice, Worship & Liturgy
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

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Reclaiming the Psalms in Pastoral Prayer

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A True Story

C. Richard Wells

Back into the Ministry

Most of my professional life I have spent in the artificial world of academia. However, for five and a half years in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I had the privilege of serving a wonderful congregation as pastor. A sneering pastor friend congratulated me at the time for “finally going back into the ministry.” He was partly right. For one thing, I had to learn how to “shepherd the flock of God” (1 Pet 5:2 ESV)1 again, and the congregational ministry I had known as a young just-starting-out pastor had changed radically in two decades. To put it in perspective, when I was ordained, a computer filled an entire room, and nobody had ever heard of worship wars, seeker-sensitive churches, or millennials.

But at that point I had to put up or shut up. For 21 years I had lectured students on pastoral ministry, armed with long bibliographies, the latest research, a professionally critical spirit, and an answer for every question. Only now it mattered. One could almost hear God laughing.

A Growing Conviction

Still, some good came from those years in the academic bubble. Indeed, the more I had reflected on pastoral ministry, the more convinced I had become (among other things) of the need for serious prayer in public worship, with the pastor leading the way. Such prayer was fairly common until modern times, and so I arrived in Rapid City as a new pastor determined to go “back to the future,” intent on reviving public prayer at least in one part of the body.

Before I tell you what we did and how we did it, let me tell you why. That story begins with four distinct influences. The first one forces me to drop a name—J. I. Packer. Long story short, soon after my conversion (as a pastor—another story!), Packer’s just-published Knowing God fell into my hands, with incalculable effect on my new Christian life. When later I became president of Criswell College in Dallas, Packer graciously agreed to speak at the inauguration, and the next day I had a chance to sit down with him for a while before he left town. You should know that I would leave Dallas later that day myself to attend the funeral of my own mother. In one of those remarkable providences of God, I had held her hand in the wee hours of the day before as she slipped into eternity. So Packer and I talked quite naturally about the dark nights of life, and the subject turned to the psalms. Somewhat in passing I mentioned to him that the more life experiences I had, the more I appreciated the psalms. Packer almost repeated the words. “I’ve had the same experience,” he said. “The older I get, the more the psalms mean to me.” Then he said, “You know, the psalms teach us how to feel.” Those words sailed straight into my heart, and from that moment I began to look at the psalms in a whole new way.

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