5th Century Collect

Every Friday afternoon at 3 PM (about the time most of us are shutting down the work week), the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon met with pastors-in-training on some aspect of the craft. His presentations were not dry academic lectures but warm, candid, and sometimes humorous observations about preaching and leading prayers. Spurgeon cautioned his students about excessively long public prayers. “True prayer is measured in weight, not length,” he said, and added, “It is necessary in prayer to draw near to God, but it is not required of you to prolong your prayers till everyone is longing to hear the word, ‘Amen.'” In the 5th century AD, the church instituted a practice of brief prayers to aid in public worship. They were called collects (pronounced kahl-lekt) to pull together and collect people’s thoughts in prayer. These collects were brief, often single-sentence prayers that followed a four-fold design: an address to God, an attributive phrase to express something about God, a petition, and a closing. Allow me to illustrate using the Lord’s Prayer. First, the prayer begins with an address to God: “Our Father.” Second, it follows with an attribute of God: “who art in heaven.” Third, it expresses a series of six petitions: “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, forgive us our debts (or trespasses), lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil.” Fourth, the prayer concludes with a doxology: “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Amen.” There is a discrepancy about the ending since some ancient manuscripts include the final doxology while others omit it. Keeping this collect pattern in mind gives structure to my rambling prayers. Today’s prayer from 590AD asks God to drive away gloomy thoughts employing the four-fold collect pattern: