Find the missing piece

A new prayer station has just been installed in our prayer space at St Stephens, Redditch, in the side chapel at the front of church.


















The prayer is focused around jigsaw pieces, reflecting on what we need to complete our life. The words written on the large jigsaw piece include the Trinity & the fruits of the Spirit.

In the basket, the jigsaw pieces available for writing on are an incomplete children's jigsaw from a charity shop.

Visitors can write what they need on a jigsaw piece and then either take it away to remind themselves or leave it for others to pray for.

The Bible verses to help reflection are: 

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  Phil 4:6

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Matt 11:28

The Lord is close to the broken-hearted

and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:18

plus a quote from St Augustine:

“You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”

With the jigsaw theme, it seemed appropriate to have a large, 1000-piece puzzle available for people to add to.

St Stephens is a lovely cool place to spend time - a real blessing during a hot Summer - so we're hoping we'll get lots of help to complete this picture of Noah and the animals leaving the ark.

We've also got a new set of toddler puzzles in the children's corner. An activity sheet might appear if time allows.

God so loved the world

The world is a big place but we know:

“God so loved the world that he sent his only son…” - John 3:16

before the title was put up

Text from the directions:

"Stick one or more dots on the maps where you think Gods love needs to be felt:

• Somewhere that needs peace, justice or compassion;
• Somewhere local, national or a long way off;
• Somewhere with people you know or don’t know;
• Somewhere in the news or somewhere that’s been forgotten.

 Spend some time talking to God about that place, praying for it’s needs."

The main picture above was taken before the title was added "God so loved the world" and so looks a bit plain.
The "Come & Pray" signs, with the same text as previously but with a "flag-world" added, have been put up in the porch, the shop and all around the Forum.

More fairy lights have been used - necessary in the winter months when the natural light inside the church is so low. These are the bright, white fairy lights - white being a colour associated with peace. The little stickers are also white for this reason although I might add some coloured ones for greater visibility.

The world and UK map posters were ordered from an ebay store for £3 each but "buy 2 get 1 free".

The map of Redditch can be picked up at the local tourist info point in the Palace Theatre.




My hope is that people will place stickers for their own homes and those of friends and families, with a commitment to pray for them. I'm also hoping that people will place stickers in places that have come to their notice in the news or in other ways that really need our prayers.
People coming to use the prayer station may also see where others have placed stickers and be minded to pray for those places too.

Although my original thought was to encourage people to pray for peace in war-torn places, when visualizing the maps and stickers the concepts of peace in relationships and comfort in times of need got drawn in.

This is a very simple prayer station to set up which was also a consideration for the busy post-Christmas period. 

For the children's corner, there are 2 new colouring sheets, one of the world with John 3:16 around it and one that's a flag colouring challenge. A chart of different flags (from the same ebay store) needs to be added to help with this.




The Christmas-themed books have been removed as have a few books that are either too tattered or too long to be read in a normal visit.

If you're in the Redditch area, do pop into St Stephens, in the centre of the town by the market place, and spend some time praying for the places on your heart. Come when you can, leave when you must.

Goodbye to Praying in Colour

The "Praying in Colour" prayer station has been up from 25th Oct to today, 28th November - 5 weeks in all.

Lots of prayer ribbons have been tied on to the string coming from the cross. It's not obvious whether people were using the different colours for different meanings.

The Paris attacks happened during this period and, following a gathering of people of different faiths and none, a French flag was positioned at the side of the prayer space. The red and blue ribbons ran out and I would have liked to have added white ribbons to symbolise peace but didn't manage to find time to do that.

Overall, there has been a good engagement with this prayer station, starting with Messy Church and providing a focus for those praying for Paris and the wider world.

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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