Personal Prayer Resources
ELCA Prayer Center
The new ELCA website is collecting a number of prayer resources. Additional links will be added as they become available.
Daily Prayer
The services of Morning Prayer, Noon Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer (Compline) are part of an ancient way to pray and mark the passage of time. Each of these services weaves psalms, Bible readings, and prayers that change from day to day and season to season into a regular pattern of worship.
As Joan Huyser-Honig writes in “Uncovering the Blessing of Fixed-Hour Prayer” (Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 2006), “Common daily prayer provides a link between private prayer and corporate worship. Setting aside time each morning and evening to pray reminds us that all that we have, including our time, belongs to God.” Read the entire article.
Evangelical Lutheran Worship provides orders for daily prayer (beginning on p. 295), and a daily lectionary with readings organized in relationship to our three-year Sunday lectionary (beginning on p. 1121). Because of copyright restrictions, the services in the ELW are not available online. However, our Daily Prayer page, provides links to the full text of each day’s services of Morning Prayer, Noon Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline according to the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer with the psalms and lessons from the daily lectionary in the ELW.
Bible Resources
The Bible, the holy book of Christians, is very important to all Lutherans. Read what the ELCA website has to say about the Bible.
The ELCA has just launched a new initiative called Book of Faith to increase familiarity with the Bible across our denomination. Links to more Book of Faith resources will be added as they become available.
- Bible Studies—Short video Bible studies by ELCA leaders.
- Read the Bible in One Year—A plan for reading the Bible that can be started at any time.
- Dwelling in the Word—Short videos of Lutherans talking about how the Bible has touched their lives
- LCH’s Book of Faith Bible Study meets most Thursdays at 10:00 AM in the Boardroom.
Another way to become familiar with the Bible is by reading it in the context of Daily Prayer. For example, the services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer on our Daily Prayer section have Bible readings form the Daily Lectionary in Evangelical Lutheran Worship. These readings have been organized in relationship to the three-year Sunday lectionary. Readings for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday prepare for Sunday’s lessons, and the readings for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday reflect on them.