Public Prayer

The Heritage district Lay Servant Ministries team presents Public Prayer with Jim Bolyard…

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All participants are expected to read the participant book, Shaping the Prayers of the People: The Art of Intercession, by Samuel Wells and Abigail Kocher, before taking this course.

About the Course:

Anyone who is called upon to lead public prayer may feel anxious and possibly inadequate for such a task. This course offers help for novices as well as veteran leaders of prayer as they create and deliver appropriate prayers in public settings.

Learners will:

• Consider what public prayer is and is not;
• Acquire practical guidelines for avoiding common pitfalls;
• Explore prayers as an integral part of worship;
• Discuss the kind of language we need, and don’t need, to address God.

For questions about the course, please contact Heritage district director Ken Ripley (kripley@nccumc.org).

About the Facilitator:

Jim Bolyard serves as the pastor of Bunn and Hill King United Methodist Churches in Franklin County, NC. He describes himself simply as a “Husband, Father, Pastor, Humble Theologian, and Good Dude.” Guided by a personal rule of life, “When in doubt, err on the side of love,” Jim brings this principle into every aspect of his ministry. He has served the church community in various roles, including Sunday School teacher, Youth leader, Lay leader, and certified lay speaker. For the past eleven years, he has served in pastoral ministry to rural and small-town congregations as a Rural Ministry Fellow of the Duke Endowment. Jim holds both an M.Div. and a D.Min. from Duke University and is an ordained elder in the North Carolina Conference.