Prayer In Social Work

This week’s readings surrounded around the topic of prayer. Fung and Fung stated that the STEP found that individuals who knew they were being prayed for had more post-surgery complications than individuals who were unsure if they were being prayed for. This study done in 2006 supports a Christian worldview, as God does not give preferential treatment to those who receive more prayers than others. This is a strengths based approach at interpreting the data from this study. It also is practical as God knew that this study was being done but still had his followers to take care of after their surgeries. This can have implications for social workers as though we can pray for our patients or clients, it is still not up to us but rather in God’s …show more content…
He says that prayer is personal between the individual and God and is discovered the best way for the individual through trial and error. The goal of prayer should be gratitude, awareness or needs, and glorification. This should be done without an attempt to manipulate God but rather us just accepting what God has to say, or not say, at the end of the day. Biblical models that Packer discusses are prayer as a conversation, Trinitarian exercise, response, doxology, address, exertion, energy, and reward. Though at first I did not see a link as to how Packer related to social work practice, taking more time to reflect I can now see some implications. We can bring the needs of our clients and ourselves to God in prayer, especially as this work can get mentally draining. We can also thank him for the successes our clients make when they make them. Taking time out several times a day to say a quick prayer may be the key to keeping …show more content…
This study was somewhat flawed as they only interviewed individuals at a Christian counseling sites. Overall, both clients and counselors wanted prayer to be said out loud in the sessions. It was interesting that clients wanted the counselors to bring up the topic of praying in a session. As a social worker in training, I would have never thought to bring this up to a client, rather let the client make the first move so to speak. It was also note-worthy that women were found to be more prayerful on the index and the higher the individual’s score the more prayer they expected from the counselor. The main this I took away from this article combined with my experiences thus far is to be intentional about reading the client’s cues about spirituality and really listening for unspoken meaning they may be