Help Us: Prayers of Fleming Rutledge

"To encounter the living God, through the trembling voice of one of his most faithful heralds..."

In advance of the celebration for Fleming Rutledge this past week, Teer Hardy and I compiled and transcribed the prayers Fleming has prayed on the podcast over the past many years. We’ve put them into a collection along with a transcription of the online Bible study Fleming led for my church in the early days of the pandemic. Sadly, it wasn’t ready for me to give her a hard copy last week.

You can get the collection here.

Here is the Foreword Teer wrote for the collection.

The Word Still Speaks: On the Prayers of Fleming Rutledge

There’s a danger in writing forewards like this. You can end up sounding like you are handing out a lifetime achievement award, or worse, offering a eulogy for someone who is very much still preaching, teaching, and correcting the Church with more gospel clarity than most of us dare to attempt. So let me just say this: Fleming Rutledge changed my preaching. Not because I wanted to be a better speaker or needed more literary illustrations to impress the pew, but because I finally heard what it sounds like when the Word of God is proclaimed without apology, sentimentality, or self-help strategies masquerading as grace. Fleming taught me to stop writing “Let us” sermons. You know the ones: “Let us be more generous,” “Let us love more boldly,” “Let us live into resurrection.” On the surface, these statements sound like an invitation. They can be inspirational but end up as another version of the law, placing the burden back on the hearer to accomplish what only God can do. Fleming’s preaching and prayers refuse to let us get away with that. She does not give us a checklist. She gives us Christ. Crucified. Risen. Coming again. She gives us a promise. This collection of prayers is soaked in that same Christ-centered conviction. These are not performative petitions or polite liturgical filler. Each one was spoken spontaneously—without script or rehearsal—at the end of a podcast episode, and yet they reveal the depth of Fleming’s personal faith and theological conviction. These are the prayers of someone who trusts that God is not just listening but acting. Consider the prayer that cries out: “Dear Lord, we don’t know how to say what you want us to say… But you know, and it’s your will, to speak through the most unexpected people at the most unexpected times” (Episode 121). That is a word for every preacher who has stared down a pulpit with nothing but a blank page and a desperate hope that the Spirit will show up. Or take this, a benediction disguised as lament: “Oh Lord, let us never forget that we are part of the problem… Save us from ourselves over and over and over again, as you have always done” (Episode 95). Fleming does not flatter the Church; she intercedes for it. And as one who has spent more time in the pulpit because of her encouragement, I can testify that these prayers are a gift for preachers and anyone clinging to the hope that the gospel is true. Even her prayers for the nation refuse to traffic in cheap civic religion: “Do not let the hope of the world in the United States become lost. Please do not let the Statue of Liberty’s torch become meaningless” (Episode 51). These are not abstract theological meditations. These are honest prayers offered for real people in real pain. Her voice is both prophetic and pastoral, unafraid to name the darkness but even more insistent on proclaiming the light: “Make us citizens of that kingdom, Lord… Turn our face to the light, the light that comes at the end of all time… the hope that places all its resources in the promises that you have made to us in your beloved Son” (Episode 185). To read these prayers is to overhear a preacher who actually believes this stuff. And more than that, someone who trusts that God is still at work in pulpits, pews, podcasts, and even in people like you and me. So if you are looking for a collection of eloquent sentiments, you may be disappointed. But if you want to encounter the living God, through the trembling voice of one of his most faithful heralds, listen closely. Fleming is still preaching.

Thanks be to God.

Soli Deo Gloria

Eastertide 2025