It is important that our students develop a rich and reliable prayer life. This means providing the opportunity to pray in community day in and day out, year after year.
Being an Episcopalian, being an Anglican, means different things to different people. There are regional differences, not only in the United States, but around the world. We all share some threads of common life and belief, and across the Anglican Communion we center ourselves around one version or another of the Book of Common Prayer. Here in Sewanee, nothing is more central to our life together than the two books of the tradition—the Holy Scriptures and the Book of Common Prayer.
At Sewanee, we believe that our students should be exposed to the entire breadth of the Prayer Book, the Hymnal, and the auxiliary resources that go with them. We are not interested in familiarity, but fluency. Knowing how they work and how to use them transforms them from texts to tools for ministry whether one is in a parish setting, on a university campus, in prison ministry, or a chaplaincy of any sort.
It is important that our students develop a rich and reliable prayer life. This means providing the opportunity to pray in community day in and day out, year after year. It is a high priority to encourage each other’s capacity to pray, to pray more deeply, and to form the discipline to pray more faithfully. It’s absolutely a critical part of the spiritual formation for ministry. Whatever the context of one’s ministry, a reliable, disciplined prayer life is critical for survival and the foundation of thriving in ministry. Seminary is the time to get that discipline well in place.
