When Sandra* made the decision to become a minister, she knew the best training ground for her new career was in the “heart of the Unity movement”: Silent Unity.

Sandra, 73, first worked as a prayer associate in Silent Unity from October 1988 until she was ordained in June 1994. She returned to work in Silent Unity in 2004. The New Orleans-born Sandra was minister of Unity Church of Christianity in Chesterland, Ohio, outside Cleveland, before returning to Silent Unity.

Her initial years as a Silent Unity prayer associate were an experience of “growing through the process of allowing room for God to do the work and not me, the person.”

Then, as now, Sandra's role was not to tell callers what to do, but to share that “Spirit would guide and direct them if they remained still enough.”

Annually, Silent Unity receives more than 2 million prayer requests, says Lynne Brown, vice president of Silent Unity. The majority come via telephone, but also by mail and e-mail. “Isn't that something?” Brown marvels. “The sacred trust of prayer expressed numerous times a day touches my heart.”

In a 24-hour period, more than 4,000 calls will be logged at Silent Unity. Weekday mornings are high-volume call times, Brown says. During those shifts, as many as 25 prayer associates may be answering calls. Brown believes the calls are highest in the morning hours as “concerns can be top of mind and heart with the dawn of day.”

The prayer associates' goal, according to Brown, is “to behold the Christ in that individual and everyone they're praying for.”
Silent Unity officially began in 1890. Around 1907, people began using the telephone to contact Silent Unity. Even though technology has changed how people contact Silent Unity, the ministry itself has remained the same in that “we meet people where they're at—where they're at in terms of geography, in terms of how they choose to contact us, and in terms of their spiritual path of choice,” according to Brown.

“We do not judge their choices in life; their walk of life. That's true for their spiritual beliefs as well.” Of those who contact Silent Unity, 90 to 95 percent are not affiliated with a Unity church, Brown notes.

Prayer associates don't counsel, advise or judge. “What we do is to pray” to let them (the callers) know “the spirit of God is present within them, guiding and directing them.”

The economy has impacted Silent Unity as well. While there used to be 116 full- and part-time prayer associates, there are now 89. Sandra feels blessed to be one of them.

“To me, it's humbling for someone to share their really deep personal life and to trust I will not share that with anyone else, not even my supervisor,” Sandra says. “It's a sacred time, those couple of minutes (on the telephone). It's a very special kind of gift to experience that.”

… The work can be challenging. “You hear everything,” she says, and the human reaction is to want to fix people's problems. That desire was especially strong in her early days as a prayer associate. She said that John 5:30—“I can of myself do nothing”—helped. Still, there are days when she'll have several challenging calls in a row and she must “get up and walk around and try to center myself.”
“It takes practice to be able to return to center point, to let go of my responsibility for it and trust that Spirit is out there, working through other people and through those who are calling.”

In the beginning, Sandra recalls being told that if she were dealing with a personal issue, the calls would be around that issue so that she would have the opportunity to heal it at a deep level. That proved true. At the time, she was dealing with issues of abandonment by her father and stepfather. She kept receiving calls from fathers who were crying because they couldn't see their children. She came to understand “there were fathers out there who act and think differently.”

If she's dealing with a particular emotional issue, Sandra lets her supervisor know briefly about it so that she can step away from the phones if needed. “We have a human life going on,” she says.

While most calls used to be about healing health challenges, now many are about healing finances. People are calling about losing their jobs, their homes and their relationships. Sandra tries to keep them from retelling the story several times, instead reminding them that “God knows every desire of your heart and every need you have.” She gently leads them into affirmative prayer, letting them know “God is with you, closer than the breath you breathe, to guide you and support you.”

“Often, you can hear the release of tension or upset.”

During this second round as a prayer associate, Sandra says she has noticed a change in callers. “It's remarkable to hear the growth in awareness in the way they request prayer,” she says. “There's a prayer consciousness that has built up over the years. They feel the lack of no income, but when they call, they'll say things like ‘I need divine order in my life.' They know to call to have someone help them get to a deeper understanding.”

Sandra says it's important to “stay prayed up myself.” She meditates daily. The half hour spent in silent prayer at the Prayer Vigil Chapel (where prayer has continued around the clock for more than 100 years) also helps.

While she's been asked how she can work in an environment where she is listening to people's problems all day, Sandra says her job is anything but draining.

“These are people of faith. When they touch that phone, they believe God can help them and we can assist them with that. Their faith is strong.  I love it. This is my passion.”
 

This excerpt appeared in the September/October 2009 issue of Unity Magazine®.