New Ways With the Lord's Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer is an amazing pattern for our own prayers, but we can easily become too familiar with the words, and they can lose their special meaning for us. Here are a few ways for a Sabbath School class or Bible study group to inject some fresh thought and creativity into the prayer.

Prayer Paraphrase in Pairs 

Assign the class to work in twos to rewrite The Lord’s Prayer in their own words. Have them take each separate phrase and amplify it, using their own thoughts, illustrations, and words.

Suggest that they may choose to use the format to write a prayer letter to God.

Prayer Paraphrase as a Group 

Write each phrase of The Lord’s Prayer on a separate piece of flipchart paper and stick the separate pieces of paper around the wall. Give each class member a marker pen and invite them to wander around the room, writing their own interpretations of each phrase.

Allow time for them to read what others have written, discuss the different ideas, or use the different ideas to create a PowerPoint presentation for a worship service, using images and fading the different phrases in and out on the screen.

Have someone type up the ideas so that everyone in the group has a copy of everything that was written.

The Lord’s Prayer Display 

The week before using this activity, give each class member several individual phrases of The Lord’s Prayer and assign them to bring along objects or picture symbols that remind them of the their phrases, or illustrate them in some way. Encourage creativity.

On the day of the activity, place cards with different phrases of the prayer on tables around the room and have each member place their objects on the ta­bles. Walk around the room together, and have each member talk about what their symbols mean to them. Possible ideas (just to get you thinking):

  • Our Father (picture of father and baby)
  • Who is in heaven (something gold, picture of a beautiful scene)
  • Holy is Your name (calligraphy of one of the names of God)
  • Forgive us our sins (stain remover, eraser)
  • Kingdom (a crown)
  • Glory (a bright light)

The Lord’s Prayer With Actions 

Divide up portions of The Lord’s Prayer and give each portion to a pair of class members. Have each pair create some mime actions for their section of the prayer. Then, as a group, run through the whole prayer featuring the actions from each pair until the whole prayer can be acted smoothly.

The Lord’s Prayer Celebration 

Organize the class into groups, give each group a portion of The Lord’s Prayer and invite them to create anything they like that illustrates that part of the prayer.

It could be a tableau (still scene), poem, piece of art, song, mini-drama, etc. Then view or hear each interpretation in the order that they would come in the prayer. Perhaps this could be developed into a special program for a worship service or a Week of Prayer.

Karen Holford
© 2006 General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists