. But really…maybe I should just read this one 12 times? Plus,
Prayer:
“Rough Draft Rants and Typos”
“Some of us are kept from praying because we listen to everyone else’s prayers and it makes us feel like we’re next up after Winston Churchill in high school speech class,” admits Tyler Staton. He adds, “Many Christians spend years limiting their experience of prayer to sitting in a pew while a professional Christian talks to God in words they never use in normal conversation, leading to the misconception, ‘I must be doing it wrong.’”
Frankly, I’m tempted to end my review right here—and say no more—for fear my paltry commentary would prevent you from reading or listening to this extraordinary book:
It’s only June—but I think I’ve found my 2026 book-of-the-year. Like you, I’ve read my fair share of memorable
books on prayer—all exceedingly helpful. But this one?
Oh, my.Feast on these gems to nourish your own walk with God and, maybe, share them with your team members, your family, and your friends.
•
“When it comes to prayer, God isn’t grading essays, he’s talking to children. So if God can delight in prayers as dysfunctional as the ones we find wedged into the middle of the Bible [see the Psalms!], he can handle yours too without you cleaning them up first.”
•
“If the Bible tells us anything about how to pray, it says that God much prefers the rough draft full rants and typos to the polished, edited version. C.S. Lewis said of prayer, ‘We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.’”
• “The way your motives change isn’t by working them out in silence; it’s through such brutal honesty with God that he, by prayer, can refine your motives. Complaints are welcome.”
Before his current role as a pastor in Portland, Ore., Tyler Staton served a church in Brooklyn, N.Y. You know the kind: “Save for a rickety set of stairs in the back corner, it was just an open room with a stage at the front and stacks of flimsy Ikea chairs set out on Sunday mornings."
Upstairs were two small rooms, one “where we crammed way too many babies into a tiny room with a few brave volunteers.” Sundays that room was a nursery (which “still held the stench of dirty diapers”). Eventually…it became a 24/7 prayer room Monday through Saturday. And yes, prayer leaders had the audacity to post a sign outside the nursery door:
“Please remove your shoes.
The place you are entering is holy ground.”
What prompted Staton to prioritize prayer? Must-read: Chapter 1, “Holy Ground: Pray As You Can.” At age 13, and for every single day during his summer break from school, young Tyler “wore a dirt path into the thick summer grass” at his school grounds.
Using the school directory (every student had one), he used this personal “book of common prayer”—“guiding the whispered words of my uncertain, pubescent voice while I paced around the outside of that familiar building, holding every last name in my soon-to-be eighth-grade class before the God I only half believed in.”
(The rest of story: stunning.)Oh, my. Read the book—but if you can’t wait—
read this powerful story in the “Read Sample” link on Amazon here. (See pages 7 to 12.) And by the way, it was my wife, Joanne, who discovered this—and insisted I read it. So I read it. Then I bought the book. Then I shared it with our church’s Tuesday morning prayer group. I’ve gifted the book multiple times to friends.
(This prayer thing is getting expensive.) CHEW ON THESE MORSELS:The Spiritual Equivalent of Celery! “…the worst-kept secret in church history is that most people, even most Christians, don’t really like prayer. Don’t get me wrong, we still do it, mainly out of guilt or obligation because we know it’s good for us, making prayer the spiritual equivalent of celery.”
Not in Control! “Daily bread prayers are a daily reminder that we are not in charge, not in control.” Why the “give us” phrase in the Lord’s prayer? “Daily, as we ask, he weans us off our
addiction to independence, our insistence on living under the illusion that what we most deeply desire we can feed ourselves all on our own.”
The Rule of Asking! Whew. The author reminds us that in
Luke 11:5-8,
“Jesus told a story about prayer that was surprising in its ordinariness and irreverence.” In the profound chapter, “Daily Bread,” Staton quotes Charles Spurgeon: “If you may have everything by asking, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is, and I beseech you to abound in it.” Spurgeon adds, “Remember, asking is the rule of the kingdom…”
“Miraculous.” That’s how the non-Christian, non-praying surgeon described a historic moment in the operating room—when the doctors gave up and declared Staton’s brother-in-law deceased...but a nursing student began to pray. (Spoiler alert: he lived.)
LIVING LIKE FOOLSOK…maybe we can work on praying like monks, but living like fools? Be serious!A Holy Kind of Foolishness. The author reminds us, per
Psalm 24, that David didn’t describe himself as the “king of glory.” Staton wonders, “Is that a typo?” No, “David is an experienced songwriter. He knows what he’s doing.” Verse 10: “The Lord Almighty—he is the King of glory.”
The scene: “What they actually saw was David, their new king, at the front of the parade, wearing a linen ephod, and he’s dancing. A linen ephod—that’s the outfit David chose for his big day, not the expected royal robe and a crown.” (An ephod was a priestly undergarment.)
“Here comes the new king. David is singing a song of praise to God, and he’s dancing in a priest’s underwear. It’s foolish, but it’s a holy kind of foolishness.”Not Fanatics, But Radicals. Staton reminds us twice in his book about Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), “a German twentysomething sitting on a sizeable inheritance,” who invited refugees to join him and live in community. The
“daily countercultural decisions to prioritize the other” had a stunning impact!
The 48 refugees “committed to a disciplined rhythm of daily prayer. Just five years into that commitment, a refugee village of 32 homes had inadvertently launched the greatest missions movement in world history.”
Staton asks: “What was their secret?” He answers:
“Plenty of people want to bottle up and imitate the magic of the Moravian revival. In the words of Zinzendorf himself, here’s the recipe: ‘I have one passion. It is He, only He.’”
Three years ago, while reading
this book, I listened to a
hymn written by Zinzendorf (he wrote 2,000!)—and realized I knew absolutely nothing about this spiritual giant and prolific hymnwriter. So, of course, I read a book about him. (
Read my review.)
Asking for a friend…could a hundred-year prayer meeting make a difference in our world today? Speaking of Songwriters. I read this book slowly, over several months. (It’s one of 12 “inspirational books” on
my list for 2026 morning and/or weekend reads.) During this period, one of my granddaughters joined me for a
Land of Color concert. Since my car still has a CD player (don’t laugh—our other car has a cassette tape player), I bought the album, “
You Hold It All.”
Pick any theme in Tyler Staton’s book and Land of Color have written and recorded a song that blends beautifully with the “monks” and “fools” motifs. Examples (listen to the YouTube versions): • “
House of God”
• “
Skin and Bone”
• “
We Will Wait"
THERE’S MORE: •
The a cappella hymn session—when Paul and Silas (Acts 16) sang in a jail cell (“the ancient version of solitary confinement”) and dragged “heaven into a dark corner of earth, and it changed the atmosphere.”
•
Wait…what? A Tent—Not a Ballroom? Must-read and must-share: “David’s very first act on his very first day as Israel’s king was to reconstruct Moses’s tent of meeting in the city center” [
the tabernacle]. “David…sat down with his board of advisers, and laid out a plan. David hired 288 worship leaders, prophets, and elders to pray and work in that tent, presumably twenty-four hours a day. He was a king leading a military during an era of tribal warfare, and he just emptied the national savings account for prayer.”
•
Practice Pages. Each chapter concludes with “an invitation to prayer—a simple starting place for moving past consideration to discovery.” Staton encourages us with this: “Don’t read this book for its content; read it for its practices.” Example: leverage the prayer of examen. “Typically prayed in the evening, examen begins by reviewing the day with God, playing back the events of the day like a movie and thanking God for every good thing along the way…”
•
The Assumption and the Task. “The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.” (
Eugene Peterson)
And then this final bonus paragraph in Appendix 1, “The Intercession of Christ”—where Staton reminds us that “Jesus is praying for you right now.”
“One of my most frequent prayers is to simply try to get in touch with his prayers for me. I usually phrase it as a question: ‘Jesus if you were to walk in the room right now, what would you want to say to me?’ Ask him. Be still and wait. In my experience, he’s eager to share his heart.”TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for
Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer, by Tyler Staton. Listen on
Libro (8 hours, 3 minutes).
Listen to the first 3 minutes of Chapter 4 (free).
LOL!
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Think your prayers don’t measure up to a Holy God? Tyler Staton notes that “Morris West names a certain point in the spiritual journey when our prayer vocabulary gets summarized to only three phrases: ‘Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!' To enjoy our lives, to savor our days, is sweet praise to God.”
2) Staton: “When we engage in intercessory prayer we are loving others on the basis of heaven’s resources. Prayer is heaven’s highest security clearance…” And this: The Swiss theologian Karl Barth once said, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Does the evening news depress you? Turn off your devices and start an uprising!
SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic BooksYou have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time!Book #50 of 99: The Carrot PrincipleFor your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #50 of 99 in our series, “Second Reads.” The big idea:
REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books (and articles) still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring.
The Carrot Principle:
How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People,
Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance
By Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
According to a 10-year study of more than 200,000 employees, a whopping 79 percent of people who quit their jobs “cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving.” Another 65 percent of North Americans “report that they weren’t recognized the least bit in the previous year.”
How tragic. •
Read my review (Issue No. 36, May 7, 2007)
• Order from
Amazon (updated edition: April 7, 2009).
• Management Bucket #10 of 20:
The Hoopla! BucketThe big idea? “Purpose-Based Recognition.” The authors note that purpose-based recognition involves meaningful recognition (not cash) in four areas: goal-setting, communication, trust, and accountability. Their research shows that inspired moments of recognition act as “accelerators” for creating more effective and more profitable companies.
CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN
Read Jerry White’s commentary on Lesson 28, “Slow Down and Wait on God: He does not bestow his gifts on the casual or hasty”—one of 40 guest blogs on the book, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom (2nd Edition).
NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.
