Pastor’s Formation LibraryKraig Kleeman
Cover of The Year You Stopped Praying
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The Year You Stopped Praying

What God Was Doing While You Were Gone, and How to Find the Record of It

For the pastor who went numb for a season and filed it as empty: a method for finding what God was doing while you were not looking.

$12Read online and download as PDF
  • 11 chapters
  • 56-page PDF
  • About 50 minutes to read
  • Team discussion guide included

By Kraig Kleeman, founder of The Zoé Life

Read a PreviewSee the team guide ↓

The Core Premise

You did not decide that nothing happened. You stopped being in a position to notice, and then later mistook the one for the other.

Why This Matters

Most pastors have a year they would rather not reread. This book shows why absence is not evidence, where the record of God's work actually is, and how to reconstruct that season honestly, without forcing meaning onto years that were simply hard.

What You'll Discover

  • Why absence is not evidence
  • What numbness does to memory
  • Where the evidence actually is
  • The limits: some years were just bad
  • The method, on one page

From the Book

The seven thousand did not require his attention in order to exist. They only required it in order to be known.
Providence does not arrive announcing itself. It arrives looking exactly like an ordinary Tuesday in which you got some work done.

For your team · Included with the book

Read it together

A printable discussion guide for pastor cohorts and peer groups reading The Year You Stopped Praying together. 4 conversations, one for each part of the book. Each one opens with a line from the book, then gives you questions and one practice to carry into the week.

  1. Session 1 · Introduction and Chapters 1–3

    The Report You Filed

    The seven thousand did not require his attention in order to exist. They only required it in order to be known.

    4 questions · 1 practice

  2. Session 2 · Chapters 4–6

    Why You Could Not See It

    The years a man remembers least are not the years that held least. They are the years that were hardest to record.

    3 questions · 1 practice

  3. Session 3 · Chapters 7–9

    The Reconstruction

    Some things were keeping their own record the whole time, and none of them needed you to be present in order to do it.

    3 questions · 1 practice

  4. Session 4 · Chapters 10–11 and Conclusion

    The Limits

    God does not correct the exhaustion. He corrects the count.

    3 questions · 1 practice

Free sample · The whole first sessionSession 1: The Report You FiledPart One · Introduction and Chapters 1–3Read Session 1

The seven thousand did not require his attention in order to exist. They only required it in order to be known.

— Introduction

For the leader: This guide works best among peers, such as a pastor cohort. If a senior pastor is leading their own staff, no one should be asked to report on their prayer life to the person they work for. Keep sharing voluntary.

  1. Introduction · Elijah under the broom tree

    Elijah’s report, “I alone am left,” was sincere and wrong. Why can an exhausted leader be honest and still miscount?

  2. Chapter 1 · Name the Year

    The book asks when the drift started, not when it got bad. Why is the starting point easier to avoid naming?

  3. Chapter 2 · What You Decided About It

    How does a hard season get reduced to a one-sentence summary? What does that summary leave out?

  4. Chapter 3 · The Mountain Was Already Full

    Elisha’s servant counted the army correctly and was not rebuked. What does that say about how God treats an accurate but incomplete view?

Practice for the week

Each person privately writes one sentence: The report I have filed about that season is… Keep it until the next meeting. You do not need to read it aloud.

The full guide opens from inside the book after you buy it, and prints straight from the page for each person on your team.

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