Daily Prayer. A Way of Being.

Since we launched City Parish in 2018, our calling has been to be a ‘gospel-centered community practicing the way of Jesus for the renewal of our cities.’ All of the components of that mission are interrelated to one another: Gospel-centered community will encourage us toward daily practicing the way of Jesus, practicing the way of Jesus draws us further into gospel-centered community, and both lead us into the being the community of Christ that participate with the Holy Spirit to renew our cities spiritually, socially, and culturally.

We live in a culture that increasingly and constantly demands not only our attention, but also our affection and allegiance. And many of us — if not most of us — if not all of us — have obliged either willingly or by other less obvious means. We are enslaved to consumption, media, devices, and so many other things that demand more and more of us but habitually give less and less in return. And the result is angst, frustration, helplessness, and so on.

The only means of combatting this onslaught of competing affections and allegiances is to continue to press forward in our journey of discipleship — the process of increasingly submitting every area of our lives to the empowering presence and lordship of Jesus Christ and teaching others to do the same. One of the foundational ways in which we do that is through prayer. David Brenner writes that “prayer is not simply what we do. It is a way of being. More specifically, it is resting in the reality of our being-in-God. This is our fundamental identity. It is the hidden but deepest truth of our existence.” With that in mind, we are calling the City Parish family into a new rhythm: Daily Prayer. We’ll be gleaning from a few ancient rhythms from saints long before us similar to Lectio Divina, Daily Examen, etc. But the primary impetus is to commit to coming to the Lord together throughout our days.

This Daily Prayer Guide (see below) contains a call to prayer three times a day — Morning, Noon, and Night. In the Morning, we’ve included a link to The Daily Liturgy podcast. The Daily Liturgy offer daily Scripture meditations that help you grow in your love for God and your understanding of His word. Meditating on and praying through the Scriptures are practices that allows us to not only be good students of the Word — approaching it with intellect, cognition, and obedience — but also with the fullness of our personhood — meditating, contemplating, and considering it as we commune with God. Around Noon, we’ll pray meditatively and intentionally through The Lord’s Prayer. And in the Evening we will pray through a Daily Examen, utilizing a familiar ‘rubric’ — the True Story of God. The hope is that it will help us really reflect on three important things as we close each day: the presence of God with us, the work of God in us, and the mission of God around us.

We hope and pray that as we engage in this rhythm and practice together as a church, our love, affection, and obedience towards Christ Jesus will grow. We’re praying with and for you all.