Autumn Prayers

Our first open prayer station in St Stephen’s, Redditch has been installed.

“Open” because it will remain here for the next 3 weeks and be available whenever the church is open which is for most of the working week and on Sundays. Congregants, visitors, tourists are all welcome to engage with it, or not.

This first one is called “Autumn Prayers” or “Falling Prayers”.  The main visual inspiration for this came from Old Tractor Tin Shed's Blog.

The guidelines I've provided to engage with the prayer station are only suggestions and I'm hoping that people will feel free to do their own thing.

The Bible verses given are:

• Pray continually – 1 Thessalonians 5:17
• I cried….I prayed… He listened… I praised! Psalm 66:17-20
• I waited patiently for the Lord;    he turned to me and heard my cry. – Psalm 40:1
• Because He bends down to listen I will pray as long as I have breath – Psalm 116:2
• I took my troubles to the Lord; I cried out to Him and He answered my prayer. Psalm 120:1
• Let your hope make you glad.  Be patient in time of trouble & never stop praying. – Romans 12:12
• In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;  in the morning I lay my requests before you  and wait expectantly.– Psalm 5:3
• In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. – Romans 8:26

The Autumn tables are covered in bronze coloured lining fabric and have leaves, bark and mossy sticks collected from our garden. Our Christmas decorations box has been raided to add pine cones.  There are a couple of conkers but most of the ones I found were too small and represented a choking hazard.

The cardboard "leaves" were made by putting real leaves on the card and then spraying with gold paint, removing the leaf.  The added bonus is that the gold spray caused the card to curl, making it more leaf-like.

Some Autumn-themed colouring sheets have been added to the children’s corner to tie in with the theme.  They were free printables from the Ministry to Children Website and Alisa Burke's Blog.  I'd like to be more creative with this corner but my current priority is to get the prayer space up to scratch.

There are a few things that need sorting out which became obvious as soon as I set this up and I’ll explore those in the next post.  Some can be resolved straight away but, because this will only be here for 3 weeks, some will feed into the next station design, which will be linked to the Messy Church we’ll be having on the theme of Noah’s Ark.  I’ll post on that late October.

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