Pastor to Pastor

- Show Name: Pastor to Pastor

- Episode Title: Lord, Teach Us to Pray with Matt Smallbone

- Date: 2026-04-28

- Host(s): Dave Stone

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Dave Stone: The phrase that stood out to me was Jesus tells the disciples how not to pray. This is in the Sermon on the Mount telling of this. Don't pray like a Pharisee. Don't pray like a pagan. I realized I was doing much of that when you do the exegetical hermeneutical work to figure out what that might mean in our cultural moment. I was doing one-sixth of how Jesus actually taught us how to pray.

Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor to Pastor with Dave Stone. I'm Dave Stone, coming to you right here in Colorado Springs from Focus on the Family. Thanks so much for joining us today. Make certain that you subscribe to Pastor to Pastor wherever you listen to our podcasts. If you can, leave us a review. Rate the program. We love five stars. I don't know if you're feeling five today, but we would appreciate it. You can always follow us on Instagram at Pastor to Pastor podcast, and you can also see us on YouTube at The Focus Pastor channel.

If this conversation blesses you, then please pass it on to some others. There's other Christian leaders within your sphere of influence that I know can be blessed by this podcast if you only take the time to send it along to them. How confident are you in your prayer life on a scale of one to ten? Just think of the number. You don't need to say it. As Christian leaders, a lot of us feel like that we should have this figured out by now, and maybe you do.

I know that there are times in my ministry where I have wrestled with distraction or inconsistency or discouragement when it comes to the area of prayer. The same has been true for our guest today, until he tried a prayer experiment that changed his prayer life. His name is Matt Smallbone. He is the lead pastor at Church of the City's downtown campus in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, he is going to lead us in rethinking prayer.

He has a book that is about to come out right now called The Prayer Experiment, and I know that it's going to be a blessing to you. He's going to help us understand prayer in a whole new light. He's either from Possum Scratch, Kentucky, or from Australia. I'll let you decide when he says his first line. Welcome, Matt Smallbone.

Matt Smallbone: Matt, it is always good to see your smiling face and to get to hear an Australian accent from a guy living in Tennessee. It's hanging on a little bit, Dave. It is my honor to be with my first American preaching crush here today. I don't know if I've ever told you this.

As I was driving here this morning, I remember our Aussie band came and recorded a record in Louisville, Kentucky. The studio we were working at, everyone in that orbit went to Southeast Christian. We would go there on Sunday mornings. I don't think you were quite the senior pastor yet. You were preaching wearing a suit and tie, telling stories like Oprah. You're not yelling. You weren't a salesman. Australian preaching had got pretty salesy back then. There was some great Bible stuff, and I was like, "This is how you do it."

This was before the internet, before you realized you could keep up with people. I learned a lot about preaching from you. This is pretty thrilling for me.

Dave Stone: Very kind of you, Matt. I did not know that. I do remember the very first time we met was at your cousin's 40th birthday, Joel. I think that was the first time that we met in person. I think that's probably it. I sat under your teaching in that massive church several times. We walked down the hill together. We had a great talk. I've got good memories of that.

You have had a really cool past because for years you were on the road. You were a bass player for Michael W. Smith. You also traveled with Rebecca St. James and with For King & Country. By the way, those three groups are some of my favorite of all time when it comes to Christian music. When did you start traveling? We've got a lot of people who are in worship ministry who listen to this podcast. I know God's given you a lot of different gifts, but in the music realm, that's kind of how it began. When did you start? How did that come about?

Matt Smallbone: I started playing music in front of people because we were in this little Methodist church in a small country town in Australia. Mom was the piano player, and I would just play bass every Sunday with her. When I turned 19, Rebecca needed a touring band for the first time. She called me to see if I wouldn't mind dropping out of university for a little bit to play bass on her "All About God" tour. That record stands the test of time. Absolute bangers.

It was so much fun. I fell in love with America in 1997 and realized that there may be an opportunity to pursue this music thing. That's really how it began for me. I didn't get paid all that well, but there was free pizza every night. I was like, "How great is this country?" I still can remember the first time they showed me Walmart, and I was convinced that America deserved to be on top.

Dave Stone: How did you end up being with Michael W. Smith? I think our listeners would be interested in that.

Matt Smallbone: We ended up going to church together when we moved over. The band started winding down, and he offered the opportunity. I was actually touring in Australia with the Newsboys, and I still remember the voicemail that I got from him asking me to come out and do a few shows for him that summer. I could not believe that Michael W. Smith had left me a voicemail, and second of all, that he'd want to work with me. That couple of shows over the summer ended up becoming several years.

Dave Stone: That's awesome. I'm sure you probably thought a buddy was playing a prank on you. You're thinking, "Boy, that guy does a pretty good Michael W. Smith impression."

Matt Smallbone: It was a very good Michael W. Smith impression. Maybe he was just too kind and he just rolled with it. You showed up and you're like, "Yeah, I got your voicemail." He's like, "Yeah."

Dave Stone: Let's fast forward a little bit because you go into a different form of ministry. When did you feel like God was calling? We have a lot of people who are trying to figure out, "Okay, Lord, am I done in worship ministry? Am I done in student ministry? Is there something else that you want me to be doing?" How did you know when it was time to make that transition into a different way?

Matt Smallbone: I can remember playing a show in South Africa, a big worship event, and my mind started wandering during that event. We were about to have our fourth child. It had been very difficult leaving home. My oldest boy would get really stressed out, still to this day actually, when I have wet hair and I'm carrying a bass guitar around. That was his Pavlovian conditioning that dad's going to be gone for about a month.

The lifestyle wasn't really going to work anymore. It was 100 to 150 nights a year away from home. I also had a nagging sense that began in my early 30s that I was holding down someone else's dream job. I would look across the stage sometimes and realize that this music was moving other people a lot more deeply than it was for me. I loved music, but I didn't think I was feeling it like they did.

Another thread in that was that I won a green card in the green card lottery to be able to move to the United States. My wife was always convinced that it wasn't for music. It was such an interesting thing because we'd got to the top of a genre and it felt like a massive success, but she was always like, "I don't know if this is why we won this thing." It was the first time I've really discerned the end of a season and just felt the grace lifting. It was a wonderful group to tour with. There were no problems. It was a great environment. I love Michael and love that band, but I just felt like that season was ending. I just started trying to figure out what on earth I was put on earth to do if it's not to play bass guitar.

Dave Stone: Isn't it amazing how intuitive our wives or our spouses can be? They can see things sometimes in the distance further than we can. Now all of that makes sense of her assessment that this is not the main reason why you're here. There were so many insights in what you shared. I don't want this to get lost in the shuffle when you talked about your oldest son. Seeing your hair was wet and you're carrying a bass guitar meant dad's about to be gone for three or four weeks. Really, the takeaway for me in that is I'm just proud of you for taking a shower. I don't know a lot of bass guitarists that do. May your tribe increase, brother.

Matt Smallbone: Being a lead pastor, you get to tolerate a whole lot less bad bass player jokes in this line of work. That's the trade.

Dave Stone: I apologize for sliding that in. When you did make this transition, it's interesting to hear you say, "I'm at the top of my game." We had a guest not too long ago, H.B. Charles, who was a pastor and was being used in great ways in Los Angeles in a thriving congregation. Instead, he felt God calling him, against his will, to come to a church in Jacksonville, Florida, that had just had a moral scandal. He's like, "Why would I leave this healthy, great church for one where I don't feel called to, and yet God continues to call me there?" Talk through what your situation was like with that.

Matt Smallbone: I think part of the plan was to move back to Australia at some point. Just the way my mind works, I'm like, "Okay, how old's too old to learn a new skill?" Back when you're in your early 30s, you go 35. That's about as old as you can be and learn something new. I kind of made a decision, an act of the will, to get off the road by the time I was 35. As opportunities would come- when you're adjacent to guys like Michael W. Smith, some opportunities come your way that probably wouldn't have otherwise. I'm forever grateful for him and that phone call.

I had a businessman in town ask me to come and book motivational speakers at his speakers bureau. It was going to be enough money to take care of the family really well. I did that for a year. That was kind of my gap year. I was committed to doing that, saving up a little bit of money to possibly move back to Australia was the plan. I had just taken a part-time job as a music director at a church here in Spring Hill, Tennessee, just south of Nashville.

Through that relationship, I was offered a job to be the Connections Pastor at a church in Ormond Beach, Florida, which is the local beach just north of Daytona Beach. It wasn't even pastor because that title was definitely not anything I was interested in. I considered myself the connections guy. I was going to help people get into community groups, and before I knew it, I was preaching and remembering that I loved that.

Dave Stone: So that was how you got back in ministry. You were in Florida being used as a Connections Pastor. God put that on your heart. Then you end up in Nashville, Tennessee. You find yourself at Church of the City, a thriving church making a huge difference. Eventually you become the pastor of the downtown campus there of Church of the City. It's a church where you're preaching now 30-plus weekends a year. Is that right?

Matt Smallbone: That's right. It's a 4,000-5,000 word paper due every week. It's a lot of work.

Dave Stone: It's that term paper. We've got a lot of people listening who are like, "Yeah, don't remind me." This is my time to just be able to enjoy and to be ministered to. It's always hanging over our head. We always joke about saying it's the only profession where you're carrying that baby all week long. You're nurturing it. You're carrying that baby. You give birth on Sunday, and then you wake up on Monday and you're pregnant again.

Matt Smallbone: Why would we do it? That's the perfect metaphor. It's a lot of work.

Dave Stone: And yet God uses these listeners who right now have been called to preach. God speaks through them as they open up God's word.

Matt Smallbone: The surprise twist is that it's an incredible joy to be able to jump into that. If I had had what being a lead pastor was explained to me before I said yes to it, I don't think I would have said yes. What's crazy is that God has just somehow made me this way to really enjoy doing this thing.

Dave Stone: Do you enjoy the preparation more or the delivery?

Matt Smallbone: I think I'm a better writer than communicator. That's what I'm learning about myself. I do enjoy both. I wouldn't have said this 10 years ago, but I really do enjoy the preparation of it now. I think eventually you figure out what the major movements are that you do and you figure out what your strengths are. I've committed to preaching sermons in three movements, and since I've done that, they're a lot easier to write.

Dave Stone: That's a great way to look at it. Talk to me about that a little bit because you've said that phrase and there's a lot of people that might be saying, "Okay, well, help me with my lessons. Help me with my sermons." When you talk about having three different movements in a message, give me some idea what that looks like.

Matt Smallbone: I've committed to three movements. That's the problem, the Bible, the right next step. That is really how I do it. Then we do this thing called Circle Time, which is an idea we had a little while ago that I'm most proud of about our church community. You spend your time studying scripture and try and figure out what is the main through-line in the sermon. I learned all of this from you, by the way, vicariously.

I just try and come up with an interesting intro. What is the felt need? What is this scripture the answer to? That becomes the intro. Then I always feel like there's nothing worse than knowing theology and not moving your body to do something about it. I do the work to figure out what the next right next step would be for me.

The other thing we do at our church is this thing that I love called Circle Time. After the sermon, we break out for three to five minutes and we have the congregation move their chairs and talk to each other and answer two questions: "What stood out to me?" and "What am I going to do about it?" It's been unreal.

Dave Stone: What does that look like? This is exciting. Everybody turns their chairs, and what are the two things that they talk about?

Matt Smallbone: We used to ask a bunch of different questions. We've committed to- because there's no one really to follow on this. What stood out to me? We think the broader- we used to get really specific and ask technical theological questions about the talk. What is better is "What stood out to me?" and "What am I going to do about it?" We used to have to throw out some rules early on, like appropriate levels of disclosure, but we don't really make any of those intellectual concessions anymore.

The room just gets really loud. We receive communion afterwards while people are still looking at each other. You've got this kind of around-the-table thing. Then we close with worship. The best weeks are the weeks you can't get the room back, where you're just standing there holding the bread going, "Hey, hold your bread up. Let's- we're ready to run again." That's the rhythm we've fallen into.

Nashville's a very friendly- the South is very friendly. Nashville's very friendly, but it's hard to make friends. Most people were saying, "I like your church. You do things pretty well, but no one would talk to me." We've got a very young congregation in this weird post-Christian zip code right in the middle of the Bible Belt. I used to hate it that people would come to church and no one would talk to them. I've always found making friends easy, so I never said this out loud, but I was like, "I can't make you talk to people." Then I actually realized I could. We gave it a shot and it's been unreal. I thought it would be the least seeker-friendly thing we've ever done, but we had this hockey stick spike in attendance the moment we did it.

Dave Stone: The loneliness epidemic continues to run rampant. To think that Circle Time might be the only time that people are face-to-face, knee-to-knee through the entire week, and to think this is a time for them to connect. If you're listening and you have any say in what happens in the worship environment, why don't you try Matt's idea? Try it one week, just see how it goes. Do it as a test run. You don't have to do it every week. Do it occasionally and see if it's something that people really resonate with and if they start asking for it more.

Matt Smallbone: Your other option is to beta test it on a shorter series and go, "Hey, for this series that's four weeks long, we're going to try this out." Pose it as an experiment and you can get away with anything in the church space.

Dave Stone: I guess you could even- I hate to put this monkey on the back of the pastor- but you could even say, "I'm going to preach five minutes shorter and we're going to do this in this series and we're going to give you a chance to talk about it a little bit." What's interesting is that on my Bible study, we have a young couple's Bible study that meets at our house. One of the first things I'll say after the lesson is, "What stood out to you? Share a phrase with me." It's amazing how just that line, people will then start saying a line or a takeaway and people will be nodding. It just takes the pressure off because now they start opening up.

I want to talk about prayer, Matt, because I know this is something that's important to you, important enough that you wrote a book about it. I love where you came from on this because the fact that you very honestly and candidly share that this was a struggle for you. I find myself in Christian leadership, but I also find myself struggling with my prayer life at times. You wrote the book, The Prayer Experiment. I love the premise of it. I love what you did every day, but before we get there, will you talk a little bit about maybe the inadequacies or the shortcomings of your own prayer life? That will help me feel better about myself, but also it's what was the cause of your writing the book.

Matt Smallbone: Like we mentioned earlier, we work together on our sermon series and we always start the year with 21 days of prayer and fasting. We do it across Middle Tennessee. The preaching series we committed to was called "Teach Us To Pray". It was six or seven weeks on the Lord's Prayer. I remember January 1st feeling the weight of- every now and then a series comes up where you don't have mastery over it. This was the most imposter syndrome I'd felt in however many years of being a lead pastor.

I felt like I had two options. Option one being fake it and wordsmith the heck out of the stories. Who would ever do that? I love Jesus and I fear God, so that was not an option available to me. I just wanted to own it and learn along with the congregation. What are the barriers to prayer? I had several. One of them was theological. I believed in the sovereignty of God, still do. So there's this moment where you go, "Well, if God knows what's about to happen and can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, what is my role in that?"

I had some undeveloped theology surrounding this very important idea of the sovereignty of God. I would get bored when I prayed. Personality-wise, I'm not the silent retreat guy. I would rather do almost anything else. I've never been able to get up at 4 a.m. excited to pray. I felt some shame about that in my world. Unanswered prayer was a big barrier for me. It just seemed very haphazard.

I would hate to say I wasn't praying as a lead pastor, but it wouldn't be my first. I'd go into problem-solving mode when the problems come rather than praying about it. I also think a lot of people just face, myself included, this supercomputer in my pocket now that can keep me distracted all the time. I can watch Netflix whenever I want. It's a difficult environment just to get quiet and alone. It was a mix of all of those things.

Dave Stone: In all honesty, you described a lot of struggles that I have and a lot of things that are barriers. I'm not the silent retreat person and I'm easily distracted with my ADHD. It's tough for me to focus in my prayer. I've found that in some ways it's easier for me to read God's word than it is for me to talk to God. God put something on your heart that became the main feature of the book, The Prayer Experiment. Talk to us a little bit about what that experiment is and what you began doing on a daily basis and how God showed up.

Matt Smallbone: When we were teaching through this series, the phrase that stood out to me was Jesus tells the disciples how not to pray. This is in the Sermon on the Mount telling of this. Don't pray like a Pharisee. Don't pray like a pagan. I realized I was doing much of that when you do the exegetical hermeneutical work to figure out what that might mean in our cultural moment. I was doing one-sixth of how Jesus actually taught us how to pray.

He literally says, "This then is how you should pray." I've studied a ton of Bible, preached a ton of sermons, and it occurred to me that I have never once actually tried praying seriously the way Jesus said. It seems like there's a wrong way to pray. I was doing a ton of that. All I was really doing when I- I'm a genius at asking God for stuff. I was good at asking for my daily bread. I realized I was praying wrong and had never actually taken Jesus seriously.

With spiritual practices, I have learned I can't do all nine of them or whichever book you're reading at once. My temptation is to New Year's Day it and add them all in, but I've had a lot of success adding one in per year. I added Sabbath in a few years ago when I was having panic attacks writing these sermons that we have to write. That was so healthy for me. I thought, "Why don't I commit to praying Jesus' way for the next year?"

I just prayed it several times a day. I've learned it's important to pray the whole thing and in order. I'm not sure why, but there's just something about the way the human heart works that this is the right way to do it. It has just really changed everything about how I interact with God and with people.

Dave Stone: So you're talking about actually just praying through the Lord's Prayer as it's found in Matthew 6 or in Luke 11 and just praying just as Jesus prayed. I love that passage in Luke 11 where it sets it up because the disciples come to Jesus and they say, "Lord, teach us to pray." To me, it's incredibly interesting that they don't say, "Lord, teach us how to walk on water," or "Lord, teach us how to cast out demons," or "Teach us how to calm the sea." Instead they say, "Lord, teach us to pray." What I get from that is that evidently they saw this incredible correlation between Christ's prayer life and Christ's power. I think that's what we miss out on. So you began praying this prayer with regularity, sometimes two or three times a day, because he gives us this model prayer that has all these components to it, from confession to request to interceding to worship. What starts to happen in your own life when you take the prayer experiment?

Matt Smallbone: I pray it, something bubbles, something happens that I'm reacting to. I pray through the six movements. It'll take one minute often, three minutes sometimes, not much more than 10 very often. What has changed about it is that my prayer life is so much more rich and fully developed. When you think about these movements, you start with adoration. You're praying for "our" Father, not "my" Father.

I'm realized my whole life I've just childed my way to God. It's me asking for my thing, but the pronouns really matter. It's "our" Father, "give us today our daily bread." It fundamentally changes the things you're asking for. "Our Father in the heavens." That word for "in the heavens" in the Greek is often translated as "in the air," like the birds Jesus will talk about the birds flying in the heavens, in the air. King James would translate it "in the air."

I pray these days something like, "Our Father, who's as close as the air I breathe, I honor your name." I just sit there for a bit. Whatever I'm praying about, I start with that. Then I'll just riff on something that's to do with whatever the situation I'm facing. "Your kingdom come, your will be done." It's a moment of surrender and you're going, "God, I'm about to ask you for something that I'm pretty set on. I know how I want this to go and I'm about to do this on Tuesday, but I'm going to surrender to your will here."

Then you pray, "Give us today our daily bread." You remember it's a community thing we're asking for. Reminds me that there's billions of people praying to God. Dave, here's the thing that blew my mind because on my best days I could do that. But then Jesus says every time you pray- and remember these guys would pray at least three times a day as good Jewish men- Jesus says, "Then you move to forgiveness." I've been asking for forgiveness and forgiving people several times a day for the last year and it's been incredibly freeing.

The shock is that it actually gets quite easy. I'd always handled forgiveness like I have a bucket of unforgiveness that I'm carrying around, and when it gets too heavy, I would remove an easier one, try and forgive someone somehow, and then just carry the rest around with me. When you're forgiving several times a day, it just becomes very light. It's important for everyone listening to know I think Jesus argues for regular and unlimited forgiveness in the New Testament.

That's the 70 times seven, or 77 times, whatever. Just need to say for anyone who's listening in, forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. We're called to unlimited forgiveness. I don't think you can always reconcile. One of my barriers to forgiving regularly is if God's asking me to forgive that person for that thing they did and let us pretend that everything's fine. I'm out. That's not safe or even a fair thing of God to ask for me. Forgiveness isn't about jumping back into relationship. Crazily, forgiving people all the time is a lot easier than it used to be.

Dave Stone: I want to dig into that a little bit more because when you talk about that fourth movement of talking about forgiveness, I don't think it's a one-time act. I don't think it's just, "Okay, well, I forgave that person and then it will never come back again." My own experience has been that it's ongoing and that I have to keep choosing to forgive. What are some ways that you've found? I try to pray for that person. What are some things that you do in order to foster or to fuel that forgiveness?

Matt Smallbone: There's people I've prayed for dozens and dozens of times. I prayed for them in January of last year and I'm still praying to forgive them right now. One thing that helps me is praying generational blessing. It's such a strange little thing, but I've found praying, "God, would you bless them and their family? Generational blessing upon them." My wife- I married a marriage and family therapist. She also recommends imagining them as a five-year-old who was hurt by somebody. She says that helps as well, just to think of them as a little kid who the way they are is because of probably something that happened to them, not because they're just straight evil.

Regular forgiveness stops you from caricaturing people because if you just hang on to it, you start imagining that they're entirely evil and that's just very rarely true of anybody that we meet.

Dave Stone: I love what you said about your wife because that's something that I had to do in order to process some bitterness that I was feeling towards someone. Someone said to me after some time, "Hey, how are you doing with forgiving this person?" I said, "You know, it's actually moved from being angry and mad to where it's really sorrow and pity." It's because of what your wife said. It's because, "Gosh, I just feel so sorry for him that he's not capable or he has chosen not to do what's right."

Maybe something did happen in his childhood. "Hurt people hurt people." He missed out on something, and as a result of that, that's why he acts the way he does in relationship. That's really wise of your wife. What's that next movement that we have after forgiveness?

Matt Smallbone: It's one of the stranger lines to translate into English in the New Testament. It's "lead us not into temptation." That's super interesting, isn't it? Why would we have to ask God not to tempt us to sin? My favorite theologians say that a better translation is "do not bring us to the test." The language I pray, and it works really well after forgiving people, is some version of, "God, this is- I'm really stressed out, don't let me break."

It resonates with my soul when I pray that. Then that's always very freeing, just to trust this loving Father who is close as the air to not let me break over this thing. Then you finish with which I'd never done ever, you finish with spiritual warfare. I was raised Methodist. We cared a lot about manners and eating quiche. The thought that every prayer now ends with an acknowledgment that there's an evil one who's trying to take me out, trying to take us out, trying to make sure that this bad situation that I'm praying about has gasoline thrown on it.

You just start praying spiritual warfare prayers. Start pleading the blood of Jesus and asking that God would protect me so I can stand, keep standing. I'd never prayed like that before.

Dave Stone: That's a good wrap up to it as well, because that's the final movement within the Lord's Prayer. We're inviting him to come alongside of us and to help us because we desperately need him in this culture that we're living in. What are some rhythms that have caused you to stick with this?

Matt Smallbone: I've seen tons of benefit in what it's done to my heart and how I have prayed. It just feels like Jesus understands the human condition and this is the right way to connect with God about it. Regarding the rhythms that have helped me stick with it, I don't find myself getting bored anymore because I'm not judging myself if I don't make it to 25 minutes or whatever. For some reason, I'm a bit of an overachiever mentality, and most of my friends can pray for 25 minutes, no sweat.

I just know there's six movements. Sometimes it's a minute, sometimes it's 10 minutes. I'm committed to doing all of them. I usually camp out longer at one. For me, it's like I've had to learn in myself again adding one spiritual practice per year is about what I can do and it be worthwhile. Quite often the first time I pray it is when I'm driving to work in the morning thinking about my day. It's the last thing I do before I fall asleep, reflecting on the day quite often.

Usually I'm praying about the big thing that just happened, the thing that's consuming you and the thing that's right at the forefront. It's helped me sleep better for sure, and then just several times throughout the day. It's just how I pray now. We almost called the book The Only Prayer You Need, but the publisher talked me out of it.

Dave Stone: I love the term The Prayer Experiment. I think it's one that is intriguing, that it pulls us in. I want to dig in a little bit on motives, our motives when it comes to prayer. You talked about what not to pray or how not to pray, and you gave the examples from the Sermon on the Mount and you talk about that a little bit in the book as well. Pious repetitions, how do we make certain that when we're quoting this, that it doesn't just become a pious repetition or empty words that are said over and over again to where we just say them as a routine or by rote and as a result of it there's no meaning. How do you guard against that when you do something once or twice every day?

Matt Smallbone: I just make sure I'm bringing creativity to the prayer. You're praying the movement, praying the words of the actual prayer, or my own version of that line, and then I just dig into it for a little while. Motives, what I realized is I was only really ever praying, "My Father in heaven, here's what I'm going to need you to do right now to bail me out of this situation I've got myself in. Amen." So my motive was purely like, solve this problem that's in front of me.

I would say my prayer life was very transactional. It was asking God to do stuff exactly one way and then being disappointed when that didn't happen. There's something about the way this prayer is ordered that it just kind of solves a lot of that kind of selfishness and self-focus. It gives you this kind of more community outlook on the prayers that we're praying. Again, it's "our" Father, it's "give us today our daily bread." It just really changes the contents of your prayer and sort of solves your motives if you stick with it.

Dave Stone: I've never really thought about that, and I'm so glad that the book brings us out and I'm glad you're bringing it up today. It's such a small thing when you first said it. My initial response that Satan pops in my mind is, "What's the big deal about 'my' or 'our'?" But really what you're saying is as you go through those different portions and those different themes is, "Okay, we're all in this human condition together. We all are in need."

It also gets me out of my own little world. I think specifically on "give us this day our daily bread." I don't worry about if I'm going to have money to eat or food to eat. That's not in my mind, but yet there are countless people who are not certain where that next meal is coming from. It does get me out of my own little bubble and gets me thinking about the community, the culture, the world as a whole.

I want to dig deeper on the motive piece because we have a lot of people who are listening who do a lot of public prayers. You do prayers in church and I think we want to be really cautious that at times I wrestle with, "Okay, what am I praying? Am I praying this for this crowd or for this congregation to be heard so they all say, 'Oh, boy, I really liked the way he wove that in or tied this in from the message'?"

I'm actually praying for something tomorrow, a public event, and it'll be the biggest thing I've ever prayed for. Right now, as we're having this interview, I haven't started to even think about what I'm going to pray at this. And yet my motives, I've got to be in check. I wrestled with this a little bit as I was falling asleep last night, Matt. I want this prayer to be something that is evangelistic, I want it to give hope, I want it to give promise, and I want the Lord to be the focus of it. I don't want to just write my flowery phrases so that people say, "Oh, boy, that was really good." That's not the purpose of a prayer. What are some thoughts that you would give us, some guiding thoughts as I put you on the spot, Mr. Prayer Expert, on public prayers and how we keep the focus where it truly needs to be and on who it truly needs to be?

Matt Smallbone: What immediately comes to mind is Jesus tells us two ways how not to pray. One is like a Pharisee. When you unpack that, I think the way that we might pray like a Pharisee in 2026 is by feeling the pressure to give some kind of spiritual TED Talk hidden in a prayer. Jesus also notes the problem with their motivation. Before the Lord's Prayer is about the motivation of how we pray, how we fast, and how we do one other thing that's not coming to my mind right now, but it's all about the motivation of the human heart.

Don't pray like a Pharisee to be seen by people. Part of the public prayer at some point, it feels like Jesus is saying don't pray in public at all. Don't pray on the street corners like the hypocrites do because they've got their reward in full because they've got the applause of people. You've got to be very cautious, and I think about this all the time too when we have to pray several times a week into a microphone to make sure that I'm not doing this so people think that I'm smart.

The phrase, my favorite phrase on this I've stolen from John Tyson, is "pray what you got." I think it's important as you're praying the Lord's Prayer, as you're praying in public, that you're praying using words that you would use to describe the situation that you're in. Don't pray like a Pharisee. Pray what you got. When you're praying the Lord's Prayer, I think when you read through scripture, there's tons of examples of Moses and throughout the Psalms of people praying these powerful prayers that are just almost stream of consciousness.

There's one time there's a woman who's- her mouth is moving and making utterances and Jesus says that's the better way to pray. Then also Jesus cautions against praying like a pagan, which is about volume of words. What Jesus talks about there is just they think God will pay attention to them by their sheer volume of words. Jesus is saying that's not how to pray either. I think Jesus argues for simplicity and making sure that our heart- I think our prayers, great prayers, do impress people. It just can't be our heart to do that. That can't be the motivating factor.

Dave Stone: I think I wrote down all these things. I think those are really, really important for us to keep in mind whenever we're praying in front of people. I like the way you said it, Matt, when you said we find ourselves praying into a microphone. That's what Christian leaders end up doing. Was there a particular phrase in the Lord's Prayer that kept confronting you or comforting you? You've been doing this for over a year, probably close to a thousand times, because you say you do it two or three times a day. Is there one phrase that you've kind of latched onto and this is the Matt Smallbone phrase that God has used to speak to me in a louder voice than any other part?

Matt Smallbone: An interesting thing about our jobs is as churches get bigger, the hurts start to pile up as well. I wasn't quite prepared for how lonely it can feel as the parking lot fills up earlier and fuller every Sunday. What I needed was the forgiveness phrase, to several times a day to be in forgiveness. I think as we young people, our biggest temptation is related to sex, lust and all of that, but as we age, the great temptation is unforgiveness.

That's where I was at. What I really needed was to humbly ask God to forgive me every day, and it's pretty great to think of several things to remember you're not the all-good, all-knowing hero of this story of my life, that I've got blind spots and I make mistakes, and then to forgive other people for the hurt that just piles up as life goes on. That was probably my- the best thing that happened to me.

Dave Stone: Matt, we can't thank you enough. I want to thank you for a couple of different things. One is for your taking time to write The Prayer Experiment and for how it is that that's going to bless so many Christians and it can be a great resource for pastors as well, and could also become the framework for a sermon series perhaps this fall or this summer. The second thing, I just want to thank you for your friendship and for taking time to have a conversation with us. It's been really helpful for me personally, but I know it's going to be helpful to every Christian who's been listening to this podcast. Thank you so much for taking time, my brother.

Matt Smallbone: Thanks, Dave.

Dave Stone: Well, I don't know about you, but there are a lot of different takeaways you can walk away from this episode with. The Prayer Experiment book can be helpful to you. Matt was incredibly honest about his prayer life before he started praying the Lord's Prayer and he said it was the most imposter syndrome that I had ever felt as a lead pastor. Then he also shared those six movements of the Lord's Prayer and he talked about how that's really helped him with forgiving others. I think it's probably because he's not carrying that burden of unforgiveness.

I love when he talked about Circle Time, didn't you? If you're a lead pastor and you're in a smaller setting, boy, this could be something that you could try out because I think it'd be great just to kind of talk a little bit about the message afterwards. Just try it for a short series sometime. If I could sum it up, I think a lot of us, myself included, can drift into treating prayer like a transaction with God. But Matt reminded us that prayer is actually all about a relationship with God. My favorite quote was when he said, "Satan trembles when the weakest Christian is on their knees."

The story that I want to share with you today comes back from a time a number of years ago when I was speaking at a friend's church in Dallas, Texas. Rick Atchley had asked me to come and preach on a Wednesday night. I flew in on Tuesday night through a strange twist of events. He said, "I'm trying to get us on at Preston Trail Golf Club, but it's a prestigious place. I've lived here 13 years and I've never played it. But I'm trying to pull some strings." I didn't know what strings he was trying to pull, but somehow he got us on there.

Preston Trail Golf Club became famous not so much because of the course, but because of the designer. The course was designed back in 1963 by a man who was better known as a golfer than a designer. He probably was the greatest golfer to ever play the game. His name is Byron Nelson. To put it in perspective, a number of years ago, Tiger Woods went on a hot streak and he won five straight tournaments, most that had ever been done in over 50 years.

Well, in 1945, Byron Nelson won 11 straight tournaments. He lost by one stroke and then he won the next three weeks. He dominated the sport. He retired at the age of 32 so that he could live a simple life of running his own ranch. Preston Trail's a course with rich history. It was gorgeous. It was immaculate. It was first class. I baptized a lot of golf balls that day. It brought me to my knees. But playing the course was not the highlight of my day.

Well, it occurred later that night after I'd finished preaching. I was shaking hands in the lobby, visiting with people, getting ready to head to a meeting with their elders for a question and answer time when an older gentleman came up to me and he shook my hand and he said, "Dave, that was a great sermon. I enjoyed it." My hand began to tremble as I shook his hand and I said, "Well, thank you very much, Mr. Nelson. I enjoyed playing your golf course today."

I had no idea that he went to that church. Here he was, this 89-year-old Christian man, living golf legend, and he's there at the age of 89 at a Wednesday night church service. For the next 5 to 10 minutes, I got to visit with he and his wife and we talked about the church and we talked about Jesus and we talked about golf. That became the highlight of the day.

You see, it's one thing to play the course. It's another thing to get to know the designer. Your church may have a rich history. It might be a respected church, but it's one thing to show up there for worship. It's another thing to get to know the Designer of the universe to whom you sing. It's one thing to go through the motions and just be in a worship experience. It's another thing to know the one who bought that church with his blood. And it's one thing to take communion, but it's another thing to know the one who died for you.

Prayer allows us the opportunity and the avenue to get to know the designer. I hope today through Matt's words and maybe even through this story, you've been inspired to increase your prayer time and your time with the Lord. Maybe The Prayer Experiment can be a big help to you on that journey. As always, thanks for listening to Pastor to Pastor. We drop a brand new episode every Tuesday. It's designed to encourage, inspire, and to challenge you, because we know that leadership can be lonely and we call this Pastor to Pastor to remind you that you're not alone. Until next time, I'm Dave Stone saying, "God bless."

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