{"id":721,"date":"2017-08-05T08:40:06","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worship\/?p=721"},"modified":"2017-08-04T10:39:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T16:39:29","slug":"ministry-free-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worship\/721\/","title":{"rendered":"A Ministry of Free Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Today’s post is from Marie Sager, Pastor at\u00a0Trinity Lutheran Church, Hays KS.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Have you ever been to a coffee shop and seen people working on their computers? How about reading a book? You probably answered yes to both of these questions, but have you seen someone praying? A ministry that is starting to take off is Free Prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n

I first heard about the ministry of Free Prayer via Facebook in a post that featured an article about The Rev. Thomas Rusert<\/a>, a pastor in Pennsylvania.<\/span> The article talked about\u00a0<\/span>why he offers \u201cFree Prayer\u201d at different places. The idea sounded interesting to me, so I decided to try it. I requested a Free Prayer sign, and I was off to the local coffee shop near me.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been doing Free Prayer, at a local coffee shop, since April 2016. It has been such an amazing ministry. I have received lots of inquisitive smiles, and those who do venture over to pull up a chair have had many different prayers. I have had a request from a kid eating lunch with their family about safety in an upcoming storm, to requests for family members in the hospital, to safe travel on road trips. There are no \u201csmall prayers\u201d prayers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Besides praying for people, one of the reasons I do Free Prayer, is to offer a ministry to the community. I sit in my clerical collar most Thursdays with my sign offering Free Prayer. In a predominantly Catholic and non-denominational community, I am one of the only female pastors. Therefore I also view my Free Prayer ministry as an evangelism tool, to let people know that women can and have been Lutheran pastors for around 45 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, I post on Facebook about this ministry as well. I have a pinned post on my <\/span>PastorMarie Sager<\/span><\/a> page with dates of upcoming Free Prayer times. I also post in real time as I am doing Free Prayer asking what I may pray for.<\/span><\/p>\n

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  Today’s post is from Marie Sager, Pastor at\u00a0Trinity Lutheran Church, Hays KS.   Have you ever been to a coffee shop and seen people working on their computers? How about reading a book? You probably answered yes to both of these questions, but have you seen someone praying? A ministry that is starting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Ministry of Free Prayer - ELCA Worship<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worship\/721\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Ministry of Free Prayer - ELCA Worship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Today’s post is from Marie Sager, Pastor at\u00a0Trinity Lutheran Church, Hays KS.   Have you ever been to a coffee shop and seen people working on their computers? 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