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The Early Schwenkfelders: An Extraordinary Culture of Prayer · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the Central Schwenfelder Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Centrally Speaking Podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: My name is David McKinley.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the senior pastor at Central Schwenckfelder Church, and it's my pleasure to be interviewing Reverend Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: H.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Drake Williams, who grew up at Central and then went off into the mission field, was ordained in 1999, and then after a 13-year stint in the Netherlands, came back to become our Minister of Missions and Theology.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure to welcome Drake today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Pleasure to be here with you, David.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Drake has written extensively on Schwenkfeld's writings.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: He edited a volume by the name of Eight Writings on Christian Belief that was published from Pandora Press in Canada in 2006.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's my pleasure to interview him about prayer in the Schwankfelders today.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: We could actually call this Schwenckfelder's An Extraordinary Culture of Prayer.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh thank you, Drake, for joining us.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure, and uh look forward to speaking with you about this good topic.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just for starters, Drake, Caspar Schwankfeld was a lesser-known reformer from the 15th and 16th centuries.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And now all Christians believe in prayer.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, it's been said that prayer is the number one devotional practice among all Christians everywhere.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: But did Caspar Schwankfeld display any particular interest in prayer that would distinguish him from others at his time?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh, he does.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's the short answer.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: Kasper Schweinfeld is a reformer who followed along with Martin Luther for a number of years, and then the two had a falling out, particularly over the Eucharist.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: But Schwankfeld was always interested more in the inner life than other reformers were.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Some were more interested in doctrine and theology, and of course that's important.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: But Schweinfeld reacted against perhaps too much intellectualism, and as a result, focused in on the inner life, the inner as opposed to the outer.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a frequent theme in his writings.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: But as we make our way through some of the writings that have been collected in the Corpus Schweinfeldianorum, he has a number of devotional prayer booklets that he's composed that we have in our possession, such as From the Prayer of Consolation to Those Who Stand Under the Cross of Christ, then an exposition on the imitation of Christ, which has a number of places where he breaks his uh argumentation and then has uh writes out prayers, then another one on Christian warfare and the knighthood of God, and then another one on the edification of the conscience.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: And once again, these are expositions, but then just have prayers inserted along the way, setting him apart from other reformers who might just give the theological explanation, but Schwenckfeld is written in prayers along the way.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Did he compile these prayers in any such volume?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: Most of his these uh treatises, I mean, he'd write to individuals or maybe to some of his followers, and he never put together a volume.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, it was a large project that the Schwankfelder did between the first and second world wars, getting all these documents back together in what we now call the Corpus Schwankfeldianorum.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, I remember a small book that was printed many years ago that now we've turned into subject matter for our Good Friday prayer service.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us about that particular volume?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great question because uh Kaspar Schwankfeld did write out a passional uh uh prayer book, Deutsche Passionale.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: And in this book, which has been translated, in fact, by John Joseph Stout in 1961 on the 400 years since Schweinfeld's death, he writes out this passion narratives and then has several prayers with it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, for example, he'll take scripture texts out of the gospels during the time of Jesus' suffering and death, and then he will have a prayer after each writing of record of words in the gospels.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: And he has uh 60 of these to correspond with the 60 hours that Christ was suffering.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Drake, could you read one of the prayers from the Passional Prayer Book?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that our listeners would love to uh get a sampling of that.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh certainly, and I should uh say that we are modernizing this so that it's uh more readable, and we should have this being published in the year 2025 so that someone could use this for their own devotions, particularly around Lent and Good Friday.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: So here's the uh scripture text that he's commenting on.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: And when he rose from prayer, that's Jesus, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: And he said to them, Why do you sleep?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then Schwankfeld provides this prayer O Lord Jesus Christ, you are the true light which shines forever and can never be put out.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: You have commanded us to watch and to pray that we enter not into temptation.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: The spirit is willing, but the flesh is quite weak.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_03: I beg you to shake out of my soul the deep sleep, yes, even the gross lethargy itself, so that I may ever be on the alert before evil spirits who never sleep, and that I, with prayerful heart, may be always awake, may seek you out and call upon you, so that by your grace I may not be overcome by them, and in face of their evilness I may be found ever more steadfast.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Powerful words.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's tremendous.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I never heard the backstory on that volume.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's tremendous.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: What about the most common prayer known to all Christians, what we call the Lord's Prayer?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: We repeat the Lord's Prayer each Sunday here at Central Schweinfelder Church.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Many churches do that as well.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Did Schweinfeld have anything to say about the Lord's Prayer?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: Certainly did.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: This was a very important part of his understanding about prayer.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: From the the project that you were involved with, David, with eight writings on Christian beliefs.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you'll remember that at the end of his theology for God-fearing laity, he has the Lord's Prayer as integrated with what a person in the church, a common person in the church, ought to know and appreciate for coming close to the Lord.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: He repeats this Lord's Prayer in many different places, uh, including in his Passional and Prayer Book, where uh the Lord's Prayer is also uh attached to his prayers to Jesus during the time of Jesus' suffering.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Too often, maybe we think of the Lord's Prayer as something that we just do by rote, but rather it is uh a blueprint for prayer.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Pray in this way.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's good to say it on a Sunday morning, but it's also good to fill in what those headings mean to us personally.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so it sounds like that Schweinfeld was an advocate of that.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, very much so.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Another question: as the Schweinfelders migrated from Silesia on the way to Holland, then to England, and then their history is one that speaks of a lot of suffering and a lot of adversity.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: There came a time when they spent in Hernhut, which was Count Ludwig van Zinzendorf's estate, property there.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Zinzendorf and the brethren influenced the Schwankfelders during the 1730s.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can you share anything that was taking place regarding prayer there at Hernhut?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I certainly can.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's interesting the way that the Lord moves around his people as uh Schwankfelders are fleeing from Silesia, they end up at Hernhut and Zinzendorf, in just a few years before they arrived, had started a round-the-clock prayer watch.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: And he found 24 men and 24 women who took an hour each day at a regimented time.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: So one person for one o'clock in the morning, another for two o'clock in the morning.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: And this prayer vigil continued for a hundred years, and the Schweinfelders just happened to be there as it was starting off.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: For my knowledge, I don't have any records as to what happened, but how could that not leave an impression when a community is praying around the clock for several years?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, it would go on for some 90 other years after the Schweinfelders left.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: How could that not leave some type of impression if you're migrating through a community?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: If there's anything that assists you in drawing closer to the Lord as you're going through a difficult time, certainly it would be prayer.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: So as the Schwenkfelders were migrating across Europe and then onto the colonies, of course, there were leaders in their midst, and one man in particular, a Reverend George Weiss.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: There has been a committee that has been looking at Weiss's catechism.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us about something about George Weiss and his interest in prayer?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, uh, certainly can, and I just want to thank you for being a part of this committee too, as we're transliterating from German cursive script in the 1700s and then translating to make it accessible to people.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad for your involvement with it.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: George Weiss is not uh someone who was a university man, he is a self-learned man.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: His education largely came from reading from his father's library, and he went on to become rather well read in doctrine and Christian theology, as well as uh the writings on Caspar Schwenkfeld.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: He learned uh Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: And by the time he was 13 years old, if you can believe this, he was already copying over sermons and circulating that among uh the Schwenkfelders.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: So he was uh someone who was self-learned, uh, but uh also wanting to pass along the faith uh to Schwenckfelders and led them through the time of the exile.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: And Schwenckfelders migrated to America.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: He was there when the Schwenckfelders landed in 1734 and was involved with the establishment of the Day of Remembrance, which is the longest continuous running Thanksgiving service in America, which we just celebrated this last year at Central.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great story, and uh many of our listeners might be familiar with Adolph Panish's uh painting of the landing of the Schwenfelders, and in that painting, uh it's my understanding that it depicts uh Reverend George Weiss shaking hands with a prominent Quaker figure in the Philadelphia area.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I believe it's William Penn uh from that uh that painting.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, who knows what uh it's a little bit idealized, yeah, but it's it's Vice and Penn, yeah.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us about the 12 points that Vice said about prayer?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, George Weiss has wrote out a number of questions that he was helping lead the band of Schwenkfelders through at the time of the migration, and we've got his catechism uh with some uh 1600, 1700 or so uh questions.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's interesting the way that this catechism has been broken down.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the sections uh are on, let's say, creation, the Ten Commandments, the church, confessing Jesus Christ, baptism, Lord's Supper, and and marriage.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: And you would think, okay, well, that's th those things make sense.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but he also has 278 questions on prayer and 259 questions on the Lord's Prayer, making the percentage of the discussion about prayer about one-third of the catechism.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, as we talk about an extraordinary culture of prayer, here's the leader of the Schwenkfelders who's taking one-third of the time, possibly speaking about prayer.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's important.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh, I think that's a statement in itself.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, but you asked about the 12 points.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: I should I should tell you about some of these uh these points uh that are uh that we're working with here.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: When he calls these points necessary points of prayer that are useful to know, believe, and reckon with.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: And then some of the prayer points are like this.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: I won't read all 12 of them.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: Point one, one should prepare oneself beforehand for prayer.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, as in mind, uh taking uh seriously what uh the Christian believer, how he's interacting with uh the Heavenly Father.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: This point two is uh it's a wonderful, wonderfully useful, necessary, and very pleasing work to God, so not only for the Christian, but also uh for the God to whom he or she worships.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: Point three, we should know with certainty that God has promised certain hearing to those who pray to him.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: So a certain hearing, not uh as if there are words bouncing off uh the ceiling or whatever, but uh there's a certainty of what's going on here, and that uh the prayer should be made uh in in and through the name of Jesus Christ.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: So those are just four out of the 12, but he has a lot of sub-questions where he he uh digs down deeper as to what this means and how this is a help for the Christian when Christians uh deal with uh unanswered prayer or um lack of uh direction.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Weiss is trying to answer that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to me that he was pastoral in his approach.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, very in your presentation at the Schweinfelder Library and Heritage Center in September, which I attended, I was immensely blessed by Dr.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Drake, you said that these prayer points correspond with the pietist Philip Jacob Spainer.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: How so?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, Spain was a he was a pietist, and uh he's uh well known in uh the the movement of of pietism, and a lot of Vice's prayer points seem to correspond.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: And just reading uh now from his um book, Pia Desideria, meaning uh heart's devotion.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just gonna read a quote from it, uh, but you can sense uh how things line up.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: Spanner writes, one should therefore emphasize that the divine means of word and sacrament are concerned with the inner man.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds like Schwankfeld, doesn't it?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: Hence it's not enough that we hear the word with our outward ear, but we must let it penetrate to our heart.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's again uh heart's uh desire, what's going on in the heart, um so that we may hear the Holy Spirit speak there, that is with vibrant emotion and comfort, feeling the sealing of the spirit and the and the power of the word.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: Nor is it enough to be baptized, but the inner man, you see, it keeps coming back to inner, it's just it sounds like Schwenkfeld, uh, where we have put on Christ in baptism, but must also keep Christ on and bear a witness to him in our outward life.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: Nor is it is it enough to have received the Lord's Supper externally, but the inner man must truly be fed with that blessed food.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you can see the interest in the inner man, and when Spader goes on to write about God-pleasing prayer, he points out uh several things like prayer must come from a repentant heart, which fits in line with Vice.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Prayer must also occur in faith, which is also one of uh Vice's uh points.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: Prayer must occur with great humility and a heart inclined to reverence to God, prayer must uh occur with reflection, it must recur with uh zeal and true desire and with modesty and discretion and in a fitting order.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, these all can be found in uh Vice's prayer points, or or it's not too much of a stretch to see it fitting in line with George Vice.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: It strikes me, Drake, that you emphasizing these points from Spain or and from Weiss, that uh it goes along with what I've heard said of Schweinfeld that he was a man that was after the reformation of the person, whereas other reformers were after the reformation of the church.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Schweinfeld was after the reformation of the individual.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, would you agree with that?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's right on.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think we see this really strongly in Schweinfeld.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Not that he's not concerned about the church.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he's he's certainly concerned about the church, but but the individual, he he really drills down deep on this one.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, after the Schweinfelders landed in Pennsylvania, they composed many hymns that were sung in the home.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in their 1762 prayer book, there are hymns about every aspect of life.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: What does this hymn book tell us about prayer?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: It tells us a lot.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: And I I want to thank Dr.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Alan Vimeyer from the Schwenckfelder Library and Heritage Center who alerted me to this and has also been guiding uh uh some of my thoughts here with uh George Weiss um uh over these uh last uh number of years.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but he passed along just to me the other day uh the Schweckfelder hymnal from 1762.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: When it comes to prayer, there are pages upon pages of prayers that were to be sung in the home or prayed before the meal.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, some of these sections you can see uh there's uh prayers to have to be had at uh the table prayer right before the meal is had, then after the table prayer, so before, then after, and then some for breakfast, dinner, and supper, suggesting that if you're just looking for a prayer, one that's common, uh the Schwenkfelders were varying it.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: So there wasn't going to be any boredom with this.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: That dad's just saying this again, uh, but we're we're swapping in different hymns and prayers so that the whole experience is about prayer.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: And if I can add a little bit further, uh uh when the Schwankfelders were gathering in house churches, their services were just were were filled with prayers.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they'd stand to pray when they take a break in the service.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they uh would pray before the meal.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: And if somebody were to go home, they would all stop the service and get down on their knees and pray, I guess, for safe travel and for blessing on the brother and sister who would go home.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's really something.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly, prayer was at the center of Schweckfelder's life.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, Drake, you've pointed out some great things about how prayer was at the center of uh the lives of the Schweinfelders.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: But certainly the Schweinfelders are known uh for the Stillstand.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I remember sitting in a church history course at Westminster, and Dr.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Claire Davis uh said uh when we were going around the room introducing ourselves, and I said that I was on pastoral staff at Central Schwankfelder Church, and he said, Oh, the Stillstand.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what Schwankfelder are known for on the landscape of church history.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when they began to take communion after several hundred years of abstaining, of course, prayer was important.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, can you share some things about how prayer took place ahead of partaking of communion?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yes.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you you rightly pull out the point out the still stone as if Schwankfelder's not taking of communion because they're they're worried about it uh not being taken, uh having it being taken in improperly.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: So to finally, after several hundred years, start taking communion again, something very serious to go uh in prayer before the Lord in in preparation for that time.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: And we read of uh uh in the Schwankfelder history of uh Schwankfelder's gathering uh a week beforehand for prayer, preparation services, uh the week ahead, uh sometimes the Saturday night uh ahead of taking communion uh on a Sunday.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then, of course, um prayer is an examination of uh one's heart uh as one takes on the Sunday morning gathering.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's tremendous.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that there is a caution in the body of Christ to make sure that uh the communion service means something.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like Schwankfelder's they took that to heart and they believe that the way that you prepare for communion is by spending time in prayer.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's not just the time we show up and have uh a small piece of bread and juice, so as we we use uh here at Central.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's not that time.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's a time to get one's heart right and then also receive a spiritual blessing from taking the of the elements.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, currently we have a renewed focus on the importance of prayer at Central Schwenfelder Church.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Pastor Julian Scavetti has uh started a campaign known as Ask Me to Pray for You.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: We have banners, t-shirts, and the like.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so this has generated a renewed interest in praying together and praying in ministry.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do you see Schweinfelder tradition from the past agreeing with these current activities?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's a it's a fresh day for the church in a secular culture and a secular society.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if we ever would have thought about uh printing, well, Schweinfelder's wouldn't have thought about printing t-shirts in the 1700s.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they they had t-shirts, uh they uh certainly wouldn't have had it with writing on it.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: But all this comes out of an outflow of the importance of prayer and uh to uh be known as a praying community or to be welcoming uh people that are in need of prayer to the Heavenly Father and to be encouraging that all fits in, I think, very well.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: So if people go by the church and they say, uh, ask us to pray for you, that fits in line very well.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would agree.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we occasionally have opportunity to have a outreach booth at different things that take place on our campus or off our campus, and we offer prayer at those outreach events, and it seems to be have been received very well.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: People want prayer.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, uh at a recent event, we were giving out coffee, donuts, and free prayer, and more people asked for prayer than they did the refreshments.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I think that that says something about uh our culture today.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people want prayer for peace, for the election, for different personal things that they're going through, family issues, health crises.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so prayer is certainly needed.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I so I think that the Schweinfelder's emphasis on prayer is uh kind of a breath of fresh air in our world today, would you say?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I think so.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a group, a small group in in Christendom has been so devoted to personal prayer when um at times when people are turning to uh secular ideas, or if they're wondering if there's uh power in Christian prayer.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh is there other religions that you know have prayer, but they're they're about other things, whether it's personal peace or helping one calm down inside.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: And and Christian prayer does that too, but not to the same way that uh Christians talk about asking God to intervene in the world.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's a different thing.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: And and this is an ongoing witness uh to uh the power of uh God's uh strength.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Dr.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Drake, thank you for your time today.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've uh covered a lot regarding prayer and the Schweinfelders.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: We just want to encourage our listeners that um, you know, prayer is as necessary as the air that we breathe.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we have regular prayer meetings here at Central.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: We certainly pray on Tuesdays at noon.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Zoom uh prayer meeting, and anyone is invited to partake in that.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to have more prayer gatherings in the future at different times of the year.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have 24-hour prayer vigils.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: When you mention about the uh 100-year-long prayer vigil uh by the German Pietists and the brethren, that I think really says something.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but we do uh do a 24-hour prayer vigil from time to time throughout the years.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: People are certainly invited to pray with us here at Central.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again, Dr.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Drake.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um may the Lord bless you and may the Lord bless you as listeners as you think about prayer more often.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, David.