October 6 1997

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The Lord and His Prayer,by N. T. Wright (Eerdmans, 89 pp.; $8, paper);

Praying Jesus' Way: A Guide for Beginners and Veterans,by Brian J. Dodd (InterVarsity, 128 pp.; $9.99, paper);

Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life,by William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas (Abingdon, 110 pp.; $7.95, paper). Reviewed by Susan Pendleton Jones, the United Methodist campus minister of Duke University.

I have served as the pastor of four rather diverse congregations, yet in each church there has been a common occurrence. In making pastoral calls to elderly parishioners, I discovered that even those who could no longer remember their own names were always able to join me in praying the Lord's Prayer during the liturgy for Holy Communion. The phrases spilled out from the deep recesses of their memory because the prayer had been committed, not only to the mind, but also to the heart.

They had prayed it every Sunday in church. Many of them prayed it each night at home with their families before going to bed. Some of them had memorized it long before they had learned to read. It is the prayer of Christians at all times and in all places; it is the prayer our Lord taught his disciples to pray as the model for all of our prayers.

If the Lord's Prayer is so well known, committed to memory by most Christians, even taken for granted as a part of every Sunday worship, why then have there been several recent books introducing people to this prayer? Perhaps it is because there are those—non-Christian and Christian alike—who don't know the prayer. Certainly there are far too many children growing up today who rarely hear or pray this prayer, and it is unfamiliar to many adults as well.

Yet I think a more significant reason for ...