Hey Drew,

You don’t know me. I was at the Christian Conference last night and your contact address was printed on the program. I hope you don’t mind me emailing you like this, but I have some questions to ask about what I saw and heard last night. Firstly, the meeting was cool. There was a great “buzz” and everyone seemed very friendly. People were singing along to the songs, waving their arms and dancing. That was great. I often go clubbing, especially if there are going to be some real cool chicks there. But when they started to pray I wasn’t sure what was going on. I felt “out of it” and everyone else seemed to know and do something that I knew nothing about. It was as though they had a secret that they hadn’t shared with me. I would like to go to another event, but I don’t want to feel “out of the loop”. I want to fit in with everyone else. Am I paranoid to feel this way? Can you help, please?

Jack Newport

Howdy Jack,

This is normal and let me tell you why. First, it’s important to note that this feeling of being “out of the loop” isn’t unique to Christianity, but can be found in many settings where someone is observing something with which they aren’t familiar for the first time. What I mean is this: you didn’t feel out of the loop because of Christianity but because of a broader sense of what it means to belong to any group that has its own rituals, ceremonies, jargon and understandings. Prayer is such an act, or ritual, that can leave the uninitiated feeling perplexed and even awkward. The people praying will most likely bow their heads, close their eyes, and possibly fold their hands (people don’t much fold their hands anymore). And, if you are in a group and one person is praying (such as a pastor), you may hear others in the congregation (“crowd”) seemingly talking to themselves indistinctly or randomly saying “amen.” This is normal in the standard Christian prayer context, and it is quite normal to feel out of the loop if this was your first time observing such as this.

To show that what you felt isn’t unique to Christianity, let me tell you a quick anecdote about a lecture I went to while in college. The lecture was a public presentation by a doctoral student in the Biology Department of their research about the transference of HIV from animals to humans. I thought the lecture sounded interesting so I went and checked it out. After about 45 minutes of biological jargon, the only aspect of the presentation I found entertaining were the pictures of various monkeys on the slide show. I was bored out of my mind and left feeling quite “out of the loop.” Why did I feel this way? Because the Biology Department is a cult? No, but because the field of Biology has its own terms and conventions that it employs. If you aren’t familiar with the terminology and customs of the group in question (like I wasn’t at the lecture), then it becomes a quite natural reaction to feel out of the loop and perplexed. This feeling is a result of groups and their own, specialized vocabularies and actions. To be ignorant of the jargon is to be clueless of what’s going on; but never fear, humans are great learners.

Maybe it would be helpful to understand why people do what they do while they were praying. Here are some pointers:

1. Prayer is simply talking to God.
2. Because you are talking to God, people bow their heads to show reverence.
3. You can close your eyes to block out distractions around you so you can concentrate/focus.
4. You can say “amen” (Greek for “let it be”) to show that you agree with what is being prayed–unfortunately there’s no term to say when you don’t agree with what’s being said!
5. “Amen” is also said as the final word of the prayer (along with “In Jesus’ name”) to mean the same thing as above.

Finally, let me encourage you to feel free to attend such Christian conferences in the future though you may seem out of the loop–you’ll catch on.

And here’s a prayer to send you on your way:

“God, I ask that you give understanding to Jack about prayer and about the need of every person for forgiveness of sin. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

Nil desperandum Christo duce et auspice Christo,
Drew