Prayer: Many Methods — One Goal

Learning Communion, Not Technique

By: Geoffrey Schmitt

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Prayer takes many forms — spoken and silent, ancient and spontaneous, joyful and aching. Yet beneath every method lies a single purpose: communion with God.

In Prayer: Many Methods — One Goal, Geoffrey Schmitt invites readers into an honest, spacious exploration of prayer as lived relationship rather than spiritual performance. Drawing from Scripture, pastoral ministry, prison chaplaincy, hospice work, marriage, grief, and decades of faith, this study honors both structure and freedom, words and silence.

Each chapter explores a different dimension of prayer — words given, words found, words lost; prayer in suffering and aging; embodied prayer; communal prayer; seasons of dryness; and prayer as abiding presence. Throughout the study, readers are gently released from the pressure to “pray correctly” and invited instead to pray truthfully.

This is not a how-to manual. It is a companion for the road — offering permission to pray as you are, where you are, with the faith you have.

The study closes with a simple refrain that becomes a rule of prayer for every chapter:

Here I am.

As I am.