quotes from Chapter 46 Prayering Together vs. Private Prayer by Bruce M. Hartung
"If we stay in our individual prayer modes, we, while we share with God, have little or no personal vulnerability to others in the community of Christ. Thus, our classically American individuality is preserved, as are both our exaggerated view of privacy and a sense of the preservation of our personal space."
"Praying together -- or at lest prayer together in some depth -- requires the presentation of myself as less than ideal, less than piously all toghter, less than whole.... It requires as much honesty before others as it requires before my God. This is a difficult task, possible... only by the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts."
"What place does authentic encounter, person-to-person, occur more clearly than when two or three are gathered together in the name of Christ with Christ present as promised, where they share their struggles realistically and personally together and where they pray together in the name of Christ, at the foot of His cross and with the power of His empty tomb?"
"...the question is more than praying together vs. private prayer.... It is the personal vulnerability and depth of individual sharing that takes praying together from pious soliloquies, surface chatter, and religiously correct formal language to the deeper areas of personal risk (and therefore deeper personal healing) made possible by personal vulnerability, openness, and authenticity."
