Goodbye to the Autumn prayer station

In this last week, we were pleased to welcome a party of school children to visit St Stephen's Church to ask the question:

"What is it like to be a Christian today?"

After having a chat with the vicar and Gail, they wandered around the church and some of them added their leaves to the cobwebs.

Although it was sad to dismantle our first prayer station, I prayed over each leaf prayer as I took it down.

It's time to create a new station, one that goes with the theme of today's Messy Church - Noah and the Ark!

Autumn Prayers review

The prayer station has been up for one week and there have been some compliments from people visiting the church but not many interactions.

As I said in the last post, there are some issues that need addressing.

1. There needs to be a clear title so that people can know what they might be looking at - this has been added.
2. The sticks and "cobwebs" are difficult to see against the dark wood panelling and the green plastic leaves (made from water bottles) actually disappear!  This needs to be thought through for the next installation.
3. Although the dais defines the prayer area, people seem unwilling to step up on it.  I think this is exasperated by the positioning of the 2 tables.  I'll look at whether they can be easily re-positioned this week.
4. The suggestions for interacting and the baskets of leaves for peoples' prayers need to be more visible and within easy reach.  Again, I'll look at that this week.
5. The side chapel is a good place for privacy and quiet but it also makes it hard for people to be aware of it. We need to somehow have visible pointers that are also unobtrusive during normal services...

Any helpful comments & suggestions are very welcome.  Either write them below or contact me directly.

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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