The Wesley Prayer Challenge Participant Book: 21 Days to a Closer Walk with Christ

by Chris Folmsbee (Foreword), Adam Hamilton (Foreword)

The Wesley Covenant Prayer has been used in Methodist services around the world on the first Sunday of the year since John Wesley introduced it in 1755. Wesley expected that people would pray this prayer as a way of remembering, renewing, and surrendering themselves in complete trust to God. When we pray it, we are to remember what living like Jesus looks like and what loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves requires of us.In The Wesley Prayer Challenge, author Chris Folmsbee invites readers to consider words from the Wesley Covenant Prayer each day for three weeks while reflecting on their meaning in the context of the larger piece.Each day’s reading will include scripture, prayer, and a challenge for daily life.Additional components for a three-week study include a comprehensive leader guide and a DVD featuring author Chris Folmsbee.

139 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 6, 2020

About the author

Chris Folmsbee is an author, speaker, volunteer youth worker, youth ministry consultant, and the director of Barefoot Ministries, a non-profit youth ministry training and publishing company located in Kansas City.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good timing

I have struggled with my faith during the plague. Zoom was better than nothing, but I live alone. Try as I might be stay close to God, it took a medical problem and this book to remind me how wonderful God is.

[Edwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was, unfortunately, very much what I've come to expect from Christian small group study resources. I struggle to understand how there is such a huge industry in the Christian community producing and marketing these things. It's almost as though we should, I dunno, just read our Bibles together instead!

Anyway, this book breaks the Wesley Covenant Prayer into 21 short (4-6 pages) snippets, intended to be read over the course of 21 days. Each day's reading starts with a Bible reading, goes into the author's reflections on the highlighted portion of the Prayer, and concludes with individual and group reflection questions as well as a prayer. In the margins of a page for each day is a "challenge" intended to get you to put some concept or other into practice. All well and good, but here's where my problems start: the Bible readings are usually several paragraphs, sometimes even a page or two long, but there was almost NEVER any attempt to show how the particular portion of the prayer or the author's reflections on it tied to that reading. It's like it was a pro forma attempt at giving Biblical warrant for whatever it was the author wanted to talk about instead of actually tying the Wesley Covenant Prayer to Scripture.

Second, the author has a very odd habit of not referring to God with personal pronouns, which makes for some very weird sentences. For instance, there's this nugget on page 38: "To depend on God is to live with a bias of hope that God is who God says God is." Umm, He/His, anyone? Strangely enough, the author even did the same thing with Jesus a few times, such as on page 50: "Jesus was essentially saying that the way people would now come into contact with Jesus would be through their work and witness, word and deed." I don't understand why the author wouldn't use "he" and "his" in reference to Jesus and God when those exact words are found in the Bible. No, I'm not accusing Folmsbee of kowtowing to political correctness; I don't know Folmsbee or his motivations, and I won't speculate on them. I'm just accusing him of making the experience of reading his book like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard because of sentences constructed in this way.

Lastly, I'm disappointed in this book because of the almost complete lack of historical background of the Prayer or mention of John Wesley. Given that the man's name is in the title of the book and the Prayer itself, you'd think he might have warranted more than a single paragraph in the introduction, and that partially focused on how he didn't write the Prayer that bears his name. Why did Wesley see the need for adapting a prayer by Richard Alleine for a "Covenant Service" to begin with? I'd like to hear more about why Wesley believed that this Prayer's impact would be felt forever. I realize that Folmsbee didn't write a history book, but some background and detail would have been helpful in supporting his assertions about the power of the Prayer.

Two stars for the lack of any obvious heresies.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Take Action Book

Things we can live out right away. Daily challenges make it easy to do something today. I love this prayer.

[Jeri Silfies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good group study of a prayer I have always struggled with.
Designed as a 21 day study but we took one chapter (day) each meeting of our weekly one hour gathering. OK way to work through the book and it filled up about five months of lessons.