“The more you try to do things that require deep focus in a culture that is constantly scattering your attention, the more it can feel like you are paddling upstream.” —Johann Hari.
Kingdom South is a formation-first church.
By that, I mean our preaching, programming, and practices are intentionally designed to form people into the image of Jesus.
In 2024, as part of Volume Three of our JWalking series, I shared a message titled Jesus & Spiritual Practices. In that message, I introduced our church to nine core practices we plan to integrate into the life of our church over the next several years.
The first of those nine is the practice of prayer, which we define as a communicative response to the knowledge of God, which can be mental, oral, or written.
This weekend, we begin a new teaching series on prayer, titled ‘Get Your ACTS Together.’ However, before we explore prayer theologically in the series, I would like to use this article to reflect on it culturally. Consider it a primer. I want to explore the greatest threat to our ability to engage in the ancient practice of prayer in the modern world: distraction.
Prayer in the Ancient Imagination
In the ancient world, prayer was a central part of life with God.
It wasn’t a compartmentalized act; it was the spiritual infrastructure of the soul.
The earliest Christians inherited a Jewish rhythm of prayer that included the daily recitation of the Shema, fixed-hour prayers throughout the day, communal prayers rooted in the Psalms, and prayers of lament, intercession, and thanksgiving that were woven into the fabric of their daily lives.
Prayer was not primarily about self-expression.
It was about alignment.
It oriented the worshiper toward God and reminded the community who they were.
In other words, prayer shaped identity. It formed a people.
And it did so in the face of opposing cultural forces, empires, competing ideologies, and societal pressures to conform.
For the early Church, to pray was to resist.
They Planned to Pray: A Fable
They planned to pray.
They even set their alarm ten minutes earlier than usual. They placed their phone on the other side of the room the night before. They wanted to begin their day in quiet.
But they woke up and checked their phone.
A few texts. Five notifications. One missed email. A news alert about something they can’t fix.
They planned to pray.
But first, a scroll. Just a few minutes.
Twenty minutes later, the desire is gone.
Their mind has sprinted through a dozen tabs of information, but their soul hasn’t said a single word to God.
But they planned to pray.
Does that count?
Prayer in the Modern Imagination
In the modern world, prayer has been quietly pushed to the margins.
It often shows up as a quick moment before meals or meetings, a last resort in times of crisis, or a spiritual formality before something more “important” happens.
But prayer was never meant to be a formality. It was always meant to be formative.
The great challenge we face today is not resistance to prayer but the replacement of it.
Distraction is the dominant force shaping the modern imagination. It fragments our attention, shortens our patience, and pulls us into a thousand shallow interactions. And because prayer demands attentiveness, presence, and time—things we’re being conditioned to live without—it increasingly feels foreign, even to those who believe in its power.
This is especially true in a culture driven by efficiency (a need to see measurable results) and performance (curating what is seen and optimizing what works). Prayer is none of those things. It is often slow, hidden, vulnerable, mysterious, and dependent, which runs counter to our cultural addiction to control.
In other words, prayer asks something from us that modern life is training us out of, which is why, for the modern Church, to pray is to resist.
So here we are, modern people with ancient longings. And prayer, though often neglected or misunderstood, still stands as one of the clearest bridges between the two. In the ancient world, to pray was to resist empire, idolatry, and self-sufficiency; it was a declaration that Caesar was not lord, God was. In the modern world, the forces may appear differently: distraction, efficiency, and performance, but the invitation to pray remains the same. Prayer pulls us from the frenzy of the feed and returns us to the feet of the Father.
It was countercultural then. It is countercultural now.
And that’s the point.
Hey, if this resonated with you, would you consider sharing it with someone else?
And while you’re here, I’d love to hear your thoughts:
How are you using prayer to resist the dominant narratives of the age?
👇🏾 Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments below.
I'll go first.
As a Type A personality, prayer helps me to, in the words of the wise man, "lean not to my own understanding." I like knowing what I'm doing and where I'm going, but life doesn't always work that way. Prayer is one of the ways I push against the narrative of control. It helps me practice dependence. 😩