PITTSBURGH SEMINARY PROFESSOR RELEASES BOOK ABOUT PRAYER PRACTICES FOR KIDS
The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens, Hugh Thomson Kerr Professor of Pastoral Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, has published Praying Their Way: 24 Prayer Practices for Kids and the Adults Who Love Them (Upper Room, 2026) with his daughter, Mary Clare Owens.
Praying Their Way is a practical resource to designed to support adults and pre-teens as they navigate the healthy evolution of spiritual life that older children encounter as they transition from childhood to adolescence. Dr. Owens encourages readers to warmly welcome this new phase of spiritual life and celebrate adolescents’ newfound ability to ask more complex questions; simultaneously, he acknowledges that many adults feel uncertain about how to walk with children as their faith matures in this way. Co-written with Owens’s 15-year-old daughter, Praying Their Way offers caregivers and young people conversation prompts, accessible terms for talking about prayer, and a variety of concrete prayer practices to cultivate a holistic prayer life, including silence-, Scripture-, body-, nature-, and justice-based practices. Hailed as a “true gift,” “tender,” and “the book we have all been longing for,” teachers, parents, grandparents, children’s minsters, and others who wish to nurture young people’s spirituality will find this book full of practical resources for building connection and journeying together with the kids and teens they love—and may find their own spiritual lives deepened in the process.
About Dr. L. Roger Owens
Dr. Owens has served urban, suburban, and rural churches for eight years as co-pastor with his wife, the Rev. Ginger Thomas in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. He is the author of seven books on Christian spiritual practices and congregational life, including Everyday Contemplative: The Way of Prayerful Living (Upper Room, 2022), Threshold of Discovery: A Field Guide to Spirituality in Midlife (Church Publishing, 2019), A New Day in the City: Urban Church Revival (Abingdon, 2017), and Abba, Give Me a Word: The Path of Spiritual Direction (Paraclete Press, 2012). He has published works in The Christian Century, Currents in Theology and Mission, The Journal of Religious Ethics, New Blackfriars, and elsewhere. Dr. Owens serves on the faculty for the Upper Room’s Academy for Spiritual Formation, where he lectures on the history and practice of Christian spirituality, and he has lectured and preached across the country. He is an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and he holds degrees from Anderson University (B.A., Bible/Religion and Philosophy), Duke Divinity School (M.Div.), and Duke University (Ph.D., Theology).