CAROLE ADAMS reads Darren Cronshaw’s Dangerous Prayer...
Darren Cronshaw
Dangerous Prayer: Discovering a Missional Spirituality in the Lord’s Prayer
Paternoster Press, Milton Keynes, UK, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1842279762
“As you read and meditate through this book you will find, as the author says, that the Lord’s Prayer is a declaration of faith and hope in God. However, is not enough to pray and leave it at that. Our Amen indicates that we want to be part of the answer to this ‘Dangerous Prayer’. It leads us to fit in with what God is doing in our world. We all have a part to play if we take this prayer as Jesus meant it to be – prayed earnestly and acted upon.”
The basis of this book is known to us as The Lord’s Prayer. It is the prayer Jesus gave to His disciples when they asked Him to ‘teach us to pray’. I have read books before on this prayer and this approach, however, is very different. The author Darren Cronshaw gives us a wide-ranging, radical look at this prayer which he calls ‘Dangerous Prayer’. It is not for the faint hearted.
Most of us are fairly familiar with this prayer but this book explores it at a deeper level, bringing out its missional call and asking for our response. Karl Barth is quoted on the forward as writing “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world”. This is how Darren wants us to pray and experience the Lord’s Prayer in our lives and actions. It is not meant to be merely prayed and forgotten.
For the author this ‘Dangerous Prayer’ has become the most important framework for his own prayer and a framework for his broader spirituality and mission. He responds to God by responding to the mission call in the prayer. Darren also feels it is more a pattern for prayer than the exact words we need to say – we need to flesh it out ourselves.
The chapter headings break the prayer into segments, and each part is thoroughly looked at, often with a few surprises for the reader. The chapter headings include a plea for the Lord to teach is to pray “globally”, and various focuses on aspects of the prayer, such as the radical nature of “Our Father”, the subversive justice of “Your Kingdom Come” and the integral mission of “Our daily bread”.
The chapter headings will give the reader the idea that this is serious stuff and, as such, this is not a book to read straight through, cover to cover as it were. I found that I needed a break after each chapter to think about and process what I had read. Fortunately, each chapter comes with journaling and discussion opportunities at the end. The author suggests that this book and the questions would be suitable for small group discussion and, personally, I think this is a good idea. There is a lot of information in each chapter and it would be good to talk about it.
As you read and meditate through this book you will find, as the author says, that the Lord’s Prayer is a declaration of faith and hope in God. However, it is not enough to pray and leave it at that. Our Amen indicates that we want to be part of the answer to this ‘Dangerous Prayer’. It leads us to fit in with what God is doing in our world. We all have a part to play if we take this prayer as Jesus meant it to be – prayed earnestly and acted upon.
At the end of the book there are versions of the Lord’s prayer written by different people and communities. Well worth a read through and an inspirational call for us to write our version in our own words. The prayer described in this book is dangerous, in the sense that we can’t ignore the call to mission – locally and globally. Well worth not just reading but working through.
Darren Cronshaw is a Sight contributor.
