L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #325 Using collects (fixed form prayers) to study the attributes of God

MJ. Smith

Another tip of the day (TOTD) series for Logos/Verbum 10. They will be short and often drawn from forum posts. Feel free to ask questions and/or suggest forum posts you'd like to see included. Adding comments about the behavior on mobile and web apps would be appreciated by your fellow forumites. A search for "L/V 10+ Tip of the Day site:community.logos.com" on Google should bring the tips up as should this Reading List within the application.

This tip is inspired by the forum post: various requests for an attributes of God data set.

The collect is a fixed form prayer going back to the early church and used today in many denominations, sometimes under different names. It's classic form is sometimes shortened to 4 parts and sometimes disguised in translation but the basic form is:

Discipleship Ministries | A Prayer for the Denomination in Troubling… (umcdiscipleship.org)">

1. An Address to God.
2. An attribute of God is named (or God’s action in scripture briefly recalled)
3. A petition is made that relates to that attribute or biblical narrative.
4. The intended result of the petition is stated, often in a relative clause beginning with “that.”
5. A final doxology or ascription of praise is offered, often in Trinitarian form.[

The beauty of this form is that it ties a particular attribute/action of God to a particular petition providing an automatic tie between God and current human needs. From that base you may study that particular attribute of God in Scripture or study how in the fallen nature of humanity, the petition became a part of the "normal" human condition to the point that it is included in such universal prayers.

An example of a contemporary collect from Robert Webber, The Services of the Christian Year, vol. 5, The Complete Library of Christian Worship (Nashville, TN: Star Song Pub. Group, 1994), 166. Note this resource combines the petition and intended result into a single "invocation" element

From General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America. An Explanation of the Common Service. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Philadelphia: General Council Publication House, 1908. we get the traditional 5 part division.

There is a generic point that looking a liturgical texts or worship aids often lead to useful study aids that bridge the gulf between scripture and worship.

Jesse Blevins

Thank you MJ - I find your work of providing these tips to be very kind and of good benefit.