Newly released prayerbook draws from GU talent

Published: December 07, 2021

Just released, Thy Presence My Light: A Free Methodist Prayer Book (Ignite Press, 2021) by GU alum Tyler Boyer 96 continues a path forged by two prior volumes Thou My Best Thought (Ignite Press, 2019) and By Day and By Night (Ignite Press, 2020). Like its predecessors, this third installment leads readers to a deeper, richer prayer life.

Thy Presence My Light builds upon the readings from Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary and historical writings and resources from the Free Methodist Church (FMC). This volume features meditations from pastors in the FMCs Gateway Conference. Contributors include Greenville University professors Eugene Dunkley and Ben Wayman.

Dunkley, professor of biology at GU, also pastors the Coffeen Free Methodist Church. He provides reflections on powerful quotations from Kindling Watch-Fires , a biography of Vivian Dake, an early leader in Free Methodist Pentecostal Bands.

Wayman, professor of theology at GU and the Universitys James F. and Leona N. Andrews Chair in Christian Unity, also serves on the pastoral staff at St. Pauls Free Methodist Church in Greenville. He provides reflections on John Wesleys sermon, Duty of Constant Communion.

Thy Presence My Light offers a format for daily individual or community prayer that includes praying the psalms, weekly collects, and daily scripture readings.

Boyer points to Eugene Peterson, who reminds us that . . . prayer is never the first word; it is always the second word. God has the first word. Prayer is answering speech; it is not primarily address but response. In other words, God calls out to us, and we answer through prayer.

Boyer based the first book in the set, Thou My Best Thought, on Year A of the Lectionary. It helps readers value therepetition of good spiritual habits that form our souls and establishes a daily rhythm of morning, noonday, and evening prayer. It also helps readers recover a more complete sense of what the Free Methodist Church has taught historically by putting the reader in proximity to old words of deep spiritual value.

The second book, By Day or By Night, follows Year B of the Lectionary and was published during a year of pandemic-induced struggles and isolations. Its contributors include laywomen and men from Knox Knolls Free Methodist Church (Springfield, IL) and two former Greenville University ministry students, Kait Matthews 21 and Vanessa Perkinson 20. At a time when, as Boyer says, we were forced to stay home and watch disturbing acts of racially motivated violence unfold before our eyes, this book reminds us of Richard Fosters insight: To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.

You can purchase all three books online at the Light & Life Bookstore.

Tyler Boyer is an ordained elder in the Gateway Conference of the Free Methodist Church. He is the senior pastor of Knox Knolls Free Methodist Church in Springfield, Illinois, where he has served since 2012. He is a graduate of Greenville University, Asbury Theological Seminary, and recently completed a doctorate at Lincoln Christian University. Along with his ministry work, he teaches as an adjunct at Greenville University.