Imaginative Prayer - by Jared Patrick Boyd (Paperback)

About the Book

How do we help our kids connect with God and experience his presence? Jared Patrick Boyd has discovered that children's spiritual formation is rooted in the imagination. This unique resource helps us guide our children through weekly sessions of imaginative prayer, providing a yearlong experience of spiritual formation.

Book Synopsis

How do we help our kids connect with God and experience his presence? Jared Patrick Boyd has discovered that children's spiritual formation is rooted in the imagination. This unique resource helps us guide our children through weekly sessions of imaginative prayer, providing a yearlong experience of spiritual formation.

Review Quotes

"Imaginative Prayer opened up the Bible again for our kids and gave them an intimate and fresh experience of God's love and activity in their lives. As the pastor of our kids' ministry, I was able to recruit teachers just by sending them a sample of the curriculum. They would read through and respond immediately, asking to be put on for a seven-week block of teaching. It was amazing! And the children responded with encouraged faith and curiosity about God and his Word. This is the first material where I had a child ask me if she could have a copy of what we did in class to take home and read over on her own. Amazing and wonderful!"

"Jared Boyd has given Christian families a gift with this imaginative and practical guide to Bible study and prayer. While attending the same church as Jared, I saw firsthand the ways that his masterful storytelling and simple ideas for next steps excite children and adults alike with the message of Scripture, inspiring them to live out the story of the Bible in their own families."

"Jared Boyd's material is an invitation to explore the goodness of the kingdom of God through imaginative story. The heartbeat of Jesus' love is masterfully threaded into every narrative-gently and powerfully growing in the hearts and minds of children as they interact with it. Appealing to both the young and the young at heart: parents, grandparents, and teachers, you'll be surprised at your own experience! It is rich soil for spiritual formation and the fruit is abundant!"

"We are glad to hear about anyone who is able to make the connection between this spiritual practice and both spiritual direction and spiritual formation. This is the kind of nurturing that is necessary for the transformation and renewal of Christian families and communities.

"As a pastor, I have regularly taught that parents are the most important spiritual influencers in their child's life. But how do we parents do that job well? I would highly recommend Imaginative Prayer to anyone who wants to help their children know and experience God. Jared Boyd engages not only the life of the mind, but also the life of the imagination through each session. His exercises help transform large theological themes like God's love, forgiveness, and the mission of God from the head to the heart, so that parents can be the spiritual influencers we want to be."

"As the wise ancients have made clear, prayer is not part of life; it is life. But to pray-to live with God in the world as God lives and to be formed in the image of our older brother Jesus-necessarily requires the marshaling of our imagination. And it is our imagination that leads to the neuroplastic change-flexible alterations in our neuron firing patterns-to which St. Paul was referring when speaking of the renewal of our minds. With Imaginative Prayer, Jared Boyd has given us a treasure that reveals not only what children need to flourish in their spiritual formation but, even more, what we adults need-we who are woefully undernourished in the practice of truly, robustly imagining God living with us. If the deeper, more joyful, more resilient life is what you seek for your children (and for yourself), then look no further to find what perhaps has been just beyond your imagination but now expectantly awaits your discovery of it."

"I loved this book! If only it had been around thirty years ago, when our family was exploring devotions! This book is an imaginative game, a devotional guide, and a theology text all rolled into one. It will nurture your own spiritual formation as much as your child's. The guided prayers that form the core of this book are well constructed, creative, and simply delightful. Boyd is not afraid to introduce difficult questions, but he helps me as a parent talk about them with my children. Imaginative Prayer develops essential skills of Christian spiritual formation-skills that are often neglected in the training of our children. I would recommend this book to parents, Christian education workers, and theology professors. We all need to imagine the gospel!"

"In the age of social media, so many of us struggle to be present to those closest to us and to God, who is an ever-abiding presence with us. Jared Boyd's extraordinary book Imaginative Prayer introduces us to a way of learning to be present to those closest to us-our children-and together with them to learn to use our imaginations to become more attentive to God's presence with us. Read this book slowly and carefully, and experiment with it: you, your family, and your church will undoubtedly be transformed!"

"In this book of depth and whimsy, Jared Boyd inspires the imagination with new ways of engaging children in the work of the Spirit. I will be using this book for years to come, not only with the ministry leaders I teach, but with my own children! Jared's book speaks to a deep need felt within the church and within the lives of parents to help our children learn new and creative ways to engage with what the Holy Spirit is doing in their lives and in the world today. The result is a book that is practical and reflective: a deep reflection on a way of approaching the inner spiritual life of children."

"Jared Patrick Boyd invites parents to walk alongside their children into a fuller experience of who God is and his work in us and the world through the beautiful and powerful gift of imagination. These exercises forge a path toward knowing firsthand the love, forgiveness, faithfulness, invitation, good news, and remaking that are ours in Jesus. Be ready for a deep, transformative encounter with the divine, for both your child and yourself. We enthusiastically recommend this book!"

"This is not a book for reading. It's a book for practicing. Jared Boyd graciously invites us to practice new ways of being present to God, ourselves, others, and creation, for and with the younger children (or childlike ones) in our lives. Not surprisingly, we are all transformed in the process. By gently making room and time for creative listening, imagination, and revelation of God's very good news of lavish love, children young and old together come to know God by experiencing this love that surpasses knowledge. From his experience as a parent, a pastor, and a beloved child of God, Jared sets forth practical, prayerful, and playful rhythms to tend the spiritual gardens of our children's lives. These habit-forming, love-shaping practices soften and seed the soil of their Christian imaginations, which the Holy Spirit tends, waters, and grows as he conforms them in love to the image of Jesus. Reminding us not to ask children (or anyone) to go where we are not willing to go ourselves, Jared vulnerably does the same, offering clear, creedal, formative structures with room for the dynamic relationship our children will have with God. Far from instilling knowledge about God into our children, Jared invites us to provide opportunities for our children to encounter and be transformed by God's triune love, faithfully embodying that life together with them as children of our heavenly Father."

"We are shaped not primarily though information-gathering but through practices and experiences that work their way into us, forming our appetites and kindling our imaginations. Many of us want to invite our kids into the miracle of knowing God in prayer and through the Scriptures, but we often aren't sure where to start. Imaginative Prayer is a great gift to parents (or godparents, aunts, uncles, and anyone who loves children) because it offers a guide for us grownups to engage our kids with the gospel holistically-not just their minds but also their hearts and imaginations. These prayer exercises are theologically rich yet elegant, even refreshing, in their simplicity. Here is an invitation to wonder, to surprise, to creative engagement with God. Walking through these practices with our kids was delightful and nourishing, not only for our kids but for us parents as well."

"While imaginative prayer is powerfully transformative for adults, we have to work through our culturally conditioned tendency to equate imagination with fantasy in order to engage in it. But I've often wondered how much more powerful this sort of prayer would be if taught to children before they had learned to distrust their imaginations. Imaginative Prayer is the book I've been waiting for! With clarity, spiritual insight, practical wisdom, and powerful examples, Jared Boyd walks us step by step through the process of helping children experience the love of God in tangible ways that will form their characters for the rest of their lives. Everyone who has the privilege of influencing the spiritual formation of children, from parents to Sunday school teachers, needs to read and utilize this invaluable book!"

About the Author

Jared Patrick Boyd is a pastor (Vineyard USA), spiritual director, and founder of the Order of Sustainable Faith, a missional monastic order for the twenty-first century. He is the author of Invitations Commitments: A Rule of Life. He and his wife have four daughters, and are planting Franklinton Abbey, a new faith community on the west side of Columbus, Ohio.