Ready-to-use prayers for community and civic occasions.

The Just In Time! series offers brief, practical resources of immediate help for pastors at an affordable price.

Part of a pastor's role in the community is to pray publicly. The pastor is often the official "pray-er" at all kinds of community events--the high school football game, the opening of the new grocery store, the county school board meeting, kindergarten graduation--to name a few. But the pastor must also pray knowing that there are believers (of many persuasions) and non-believers present. In addition to the prayers in this book, there are brief setting descriptions and Scripture references. These prayers can be used with little or no adaptation.

Sample prayers:

Graduation: "O God, Author of all wisdom, Giver of all truth, Seeker of all servants, we thank You for the times of life that mark Your continuing goodness. We are grateful for these believers, young in their faith and early in their journey, who have been open to study and learning and who now gain graduation toward tomorrows which will take them in many direction, but never from Your presence."

Suicide: "O God, if we knew why, we would name it before You! Hear our plea for help; hear our plea for hope. We confess that we do not grasp the depths which drive one of Your children to end the life You began. We confess that faint stirrings of guilt, soft wondering about our own inattentions, and a simple unease all groan within us. Grant us a grace which will be sufficient for our own broken and breaking places."

Citizenship: "O God, The Giver of beginnings, we praise You for giving to Your servants fresh possibilities, extended hopes, and a new nation. You have given them life and now You give them calls to new loyalties, new responsibilities, and new opportunities. We make no claim for the perfection of this nations, but we do make full claim upon Your presence in its work for justice, its care for the poor, and its openness to those who seek to be its people."

F. Belton Joyner, Jr. is retired after forty-two years under appointment in the North Carolina Conference of The United Methodist Church (including churches in rural, suburban, and urban settings). Currently, he is a visiting lecturer at Duke Divinity School and he teaches regularly in the Duke Divinity School Course of Study.