Benefits of Contemplative Practices for Churches and Leaders

We can look at verbal prayer as part of our developing relationship with God and moving into a more intimate relationship. For example, there comes a point in our intimate relationships—with a spouse or family or a very close friend—where the person just knows you beyond what you say. And you’re able to move into this place of resting together. It is a movement that is beyond words to communion—and that is a big benefit of contemplative practices for the church and for leaders.

This material was originally recorded as part of the Renovations Project. It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

For anyone who is used to verbal prayers, that’s part of the relationship building. There may come a time or an experience that the verbal prayer just isn’t providing the same support that it used to; it just feels a little bit different. People can think that something’s wrong, that they’re praying wrong. But in fact, nothing is wrong. We’re just being invited to a new way of knowing, a way of knowing that is beyond words. And that is resting in God.

Related: How Centering Prayer Helps You Find Rest in God

And so contemplative practices help us to marry the cataphatic form of prayer and the apathetic form of prayer. Cataphatic prayer is prayer that uses words and takes our faculties into consideration. So that is church. It’s worship. It’s anything that engages our senses. Apathetic prayer is the complete opposite of that, or the other end of the spectrum. It is without words and it bypasses our faculties.

Benefits of contemplative practices for the church

Contemplative practices—like centering prayer—have many benefits for the church, but we will focus on three. We can think about these benefits from an individual perspective, as individuals who are part of the body of Christ. When the individual members of the body are healthy, that contributes to the overall health of the body, the church.

For an individual, what these contemplative practices help to support is healing. One of the first things that happens when moving into these prayer practices is that we become aware of when we’re operating from our false self—our awareness around those unconscious motivators, those desires that we have to want to control things for others to approve of us. Our awareness is heightened, and we become fully aware of when we’re acting out of that false self–system, which then allows us to disrupt the system and to make a different choice instead of perpetuating that cycle, which often leads to emotional frustration.

Related: Biblical Grounding for Finding Rest in God 

The other thing that is a major benefit to the church is the contemplative mind helps us to move into great periods of innovation. Contemplation helps to develop what’s called a non-dual way of seeing. Duality means that it’s black or it’s white. And our mind loves these categories. It’s this or it’s that. It’s good or it’s bad. That’s the dual way of seeing things. Contemplative spirituality brings in a third way of seeing, and so moving to a non-dual place in our response. You do need duality—you need to know that’s good for us, and that’s not good. But working towards solving it often requires a third way of seeing things. And so here’s where we start to see innovation come into play, which then can lead to collaboration with others as we work to serve and to lead and to problem solve.

The third benefit is that contemplation and action go hand in hand. Prompted by centering prayer, we then move into action that is heart-centered. One way to think about this is that we often associate our heart with our emotions. “Heart” in the ancient world referred to the God within us. Allowing ourselves to be in a place where God is motivating our actions, as opposed to ourselves motivating actions—that describes heart-centered action. If we’re using the technical terms that are associated with this, going back to centering prayer, the intention is to consent to God’s presence and action within so that action then is poured out through us. So those are the benefits for the church.

How centering prayer helps leaders

Contemplative practices have such a huge impact on how a person leads. It really is an experience of grace. Probably the most immediate experience of change would be being aware of when we’re operating out of our egoic self, or out of that place where the approval of others means so much to us, or we are wanting to control every situation. As a leader, to know these things is important because the reality is we can’t control everything. 

Being able to be present to the reality of what are our experiences and pausing to discern if our actions, our response to what God is motivating us to do, are among the first changes. Internally, you’ll notice a lot of changes as well, because part of this process is healing. When we’re talking about embodiment, and we’re talking about how we’re often not encouraged to express our emotions when we move into this posture of rest, we’re actually creating space for the emotions that we have repressed and suppressed. And so it can be very, very uncomfortable. But letting that healing take place, feeling that emotion, is an experience of grace.

If this sounds too difficult, think of centering prayer as a type of therapy. Any good doctor is not going to take us to a place that we’re not ready to go. So anything that we are experiencing, anything that we are feeling, it means that we are fully equipped to experience it.

Contemplative practices can also help to develop some compassion and empathy for those who are suffering. There is a certain mode of operation that we, through these contemplative practices, are dying to. The term connected to this is “kenosis.” It’s the pouring out of self. And that is not always a comfortable experience—being made aware of our own sufferings, our own hurts, the things that we have neglected to see, the compassion that we have neglected to have. That does something within us.

So it is a daily practice of picking up our own cross, so to speak, and being made aware of the things that need to be healed within us. What begins to happen inside translates and is reflected in what happens outside. The compassion that we experience in that secret place with God, it then has really no choice but to pour out into how we engage and interact with others.