Prayer Stalling

Pastors can't exactly cut to a commercial on Sunday mornings when they need to buy some time.

Okay, so many churches have the technology, but people would grow weary of sponsored commercial breaks by Chick-Fil-A, Fox News, Hobby Lobby, Joel Osteen, and LifeWay. Nobody likes a sell out church.

If you don't go to a high production church, then you might be lost by what it means to buy some time since the flow of your church is much more natural.

I love high production churches.

My church is one.

But high production churches rely on multiple people doing multiple jobs with multiple forms of technology all working in perfect sync. That's a lot of variables and everyone knows that Satan loves to possess technology.

Churches often practice Prayer Stalling.

Prayer stalling is when a pastor (or someone with a mic) rambles on and on in a prayer to buy some time. Maybe a computer quit working, loss of internet connection, a screen won't go down, or the lead guitar is out of tune. Some time is bought to fix the problem.

These things happen every Sunday across America.

So how do you know when prayer stalling takes place?

Here are 14 ways you know you've been prayer stalled:

1) You see hand signals. You went to church but it feels like you're watching that South African deaf interpreter. Sure, your eyes are supposed to be closed, but where did Jesus teach to close your eyes when you pray? The tech booth and the stage communicate by a set of hand signals. The people on the stage rarely deliver the signals, rather you can see the fear struck faces when they get one. The most common one is the "stretchhhh" signal.

2) The throat clear. The person praying is running out of things to pray for so they fake a frog in their throat to refocus. If it's bad enough, they might even take a drink of water.

3) Prayer turns patriotic. If they don't thank God the first few lines of their prayer for living in a place where you are free to worship, but they do in the later, chances are you're in the middle of a prayer stall.

4) Prayers of safety for people not there. If it's near a peak vacation time, you can throw this one out. Another play-it-safe prayer like number three.

5) The keyboard player falls asleep. There's nothing like praying with background music, but the sweet melodic tunes coming from the keyboard player might lull her to sleep.

6) You fall asleep.

7) Your mind wanders to places you normally don't go during prayers. Sure it's easy to get sidetracked and start thinking about a grocery list; but if you are able to come up with the plot for a novel, then that is taking too long.

8) You start seeing how long you can hold your breath.

9) All the ums make the prayer sound more like a Gregorian chant.

10) You start thinking it might be fun to volunteer in childcare during the service.

11) You stop praying because it's taking so long that you forgot that you are supposed to be praying.

12) You check your Twitter feed, Facebook, and have time to post a selfie on Instagram (#inthemiddleofprayerstall).

13) You actually read the bulletin (or worship guide) to see what's happening that week.

14) You have time to come up with a post about Prayer Stalling.

What do you do when find yourself in the middle of a prayer stall?