I began following Terry J. Stokes during the pandemic and very much enjoyed his nightly prayers and liturgies on Instagram. This collection of prayers is both thoughtful and fun. I particularly enjoy the prayer for early 00s kids. I will definitely be recommending this one to my FCA students, my church youth group, and I'll be buying a copy for my coffee table.

In this astoundingly lovely collection, Terry Stokes accomplishes something incredible: he puts to words prayers that I didn't even know lived in my heart.

As a pastor, I spend a great deal of time helping others put their prayers into words so that they can adequately express to the divine and to themselves how they are longing for resurrection in their life. This collection of prayers did that for me, and it was such a joy to be on the receiving end of that blessing.

I can't recommend this enough!

I liked the premise of the book, that we should bring all of our human situations to God in prayer, more than I liked the execution. I expected the prayers to be a bit more contemporary. The heavy use of Thee and Thou took away from that and prevented me from connecting with the prayers as I had hoped.

My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Convergent Publishers for allowing me to read an ARC of this book. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are voluntarily given.

As an Episcopal priest, I really appreciate Terry Stokes's comprehensive view of prayer-- that all of life can be the "stuff" of our prayers. Books of prayers for teens and children are numerous, as are collections of prayers for a general population or for people in grief. But Stokes has taken the familiar form of Anglican prayer and composed prayers for young adults' particular concerns. This fills a gap in our resources and will hopefully enrich their prayer lives.

I'm not the target audience, so I hesitate to comment too forcefully on the language or style choices Stokes uses. However, the young adults I know do not use Thee/Thou language for God, not even in their preferred liturgical prayer. I looked for a note from the author suggesting the acceptability of switching those pronouns out for the more familiar "you," but I couldn't find it. Of course, that's an easy change to make mentally, but giving explicit permission might be helpful for people new to written prayers.

I'll keep some copies of this book in my church office and share this resource broadly.

I am not sure that I am the intended audience for this book of prayers as there are specific [younger] generational and cultural references that I had trouble understanding. I was looking for something that could enhance my own public ministry, I had trouble identifying with references to [what I presume are] millennial memes, or specific issues within minority communities where it felt presumptuous for me to even try to appropriate, even as an ally. That said, it is certainly useful in identifying concerns within those communities, even if I felt awkward with the provided language. With the idea that you can [and should] bring everything to God, the author was perhaps a little too literal in execution, even though this is a great idea in theory. This is how you get mundane items like, "For when one clogs the toilet" or "For before third-wheeling" alongside more profound prayers, such as "For a protest" and "For letting go of toxic relationships." Perhaps it is just me, but I don't believe that I would actually use more than a handful of the prayers provided. In addition to the topics that I mostly likely won't encounter at this stage in my life, the mix of formal thee, thy and thou ... with more current "hip" language, just didn't seem to work that well. Fortunately, the author does include a basic [6 step] formula for prayers to enable you to create prayers more relavent to your own specific situation and/or communities and it is pretty good.

<spoiler>I: Friendship
II: Singleness and Romance
III: Family and Home.
IV: The Self
V: Community and Society
VI: Work and Vocation
VII: Recreation
VIII: Music
IX: Church Life
</spoiler>

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#PrayersforthePeople #NetGalley.

In concept I think this book is really powerful but I didn’t connect with the way the prayers were written as much as I had hoped. It was a good way to get me thinking but I didn’t like some of the language used throughout the book.

Idea of the book is fabulous. However, the thee and thy and othet nonsense is way over the top. I don't pray like that. It just seemed way tooooo much. God is listening even if I'm not talking like that.

Thanks to publisher and Netgally for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.