Praying Their Way: A Resource to Bridge Generations

You wouldn’t immediately think a book with the title Praying Their Way: 24 Prayer Practices for Kids and the Adults Who Love Them (Upper Room Books, 2026) would be a go-to resource for older adult ministries. I certainly didn’t think so when I wrote it with my daughter, Mary Clare.

I had parents like me in mind, who longed to lead their kids into a deeper life of prayer and to introduce them to friendship with God, but felt ill-equipped. I wanted to craft a resource to help folks who work with middle-grade kids feel more confident in their own prayer lives, talk with kids about prayer, and lead them in prayer practices.

I wasn’t thinking about older adults.

But a few weeks ago, I made an important discovery: This isn’t just a book for kids, their parents, and children’s ministers. It’s a book for anyone with a youthful spirit and a longing for God, for anyone who wants to grow in their understanding of prayer, and who will appreciate a winsome, kid-friendly take on prayer.

This is a book for people of any age.

During the first few weeks of Lent this year, I led a small-group study at my church on Praying Their Way. Most of the participants were parents with young kids. It was clear from the first day how desperate they were to become more comfortable talking with their kids about prayer—and actually praying with them. I thought, Great, this is exactly why I wrote this book.

But there was one woman, Betsy, who attended the class and didn’t fit the demographic. She was older than the other parents by at least twenty years. When we introduced ourselves, she mentioned that she volunteers with vacation Bible school and thought the book could equip her for that ministry.

Each week of the class, I began with one of the prayer practices in the book. Each prayer practice began by inviting those praying to sit in silence for a few moments and imagine God smiling on them. Each week, I welcomed these adults into that experience, saying, “Just take a few moments to enjoy the thought that God is taking so much delight in you!”

During our last small-group session, I again led a prayer practice and began with the same invitation: “Imagine God smiling at you and enjoy that for a few moments.” After the practice was over, I asked, “How was that experience?”

Betsy was the first to share. “I love that you begin each practice asking us to think about God smiling at us and taking delight in us,” she said.

And then she raised her arms and said emphatically, “Where has this been all my life!”

And that’s when I knew that everyone needs to experience simply resting in God’s embrace of love. Many adults still carry images of God as a stern judge, a strict taskmaster, or a disappointed parent, rather than a loving friend.

It’s never too early to discover God as a loving friend. And it’s never too late.

Praying Their Way offers twelve short chapters about prayer, with titles such as “God Is Here,” “Friendship with God,” and “No Right Way.” They are conversational and, I hope, fun to read, while sharing ideas about prayer that are crucial for anyone to grapple with. Each short chapter ends with conversation starters to get people talking together about prayer.

In part two, the book offers twenty-four prayer practices, arranged into the categories of scripture, silence, body, nature, together, and justice. It’s easy to think that prayer is simply talking to God or asking God for things—and, of course, it is that—but it’s so much more. These prayer practices offer kids and adults many different doors through which they can enter prayer. They can try out different ways of praying. They can experiment and discover what’s most comfortable for them. Since there’s no right way to pray, it’s important to explore all these dimensions of prayer.