Prayer Hearings

A year ago Bishop David, the Bishop of Barking, invited people in the Diocese of Chelmsford to accompany him in the adventure of 'listening to God in places where prayer is less common'. Six Prayer Hearings were held around the Diocese at places such a Civic Centre, Shopping Centre, Hotel, and School. Now all those involved - and anyone else who is interested - are invited to complete and celebrate the Prayer Hearings in Chelmsford Cathedral on Saturday 28th January from 10.00am - 2.00pm.

At the Prayer Hearings, participants were asked to send in information about practices that they found helpful in prayer, so, following the Prayer Hearing at Newham's Council Chambers, I wrote the following description of prayer activities at St John's and of my own practice:

"At St John's we are getting involved in a number of prayer events over the next few weeks as we seek God's vision for the future here and experience a broader range of ways of praying. These include the Global Day of Prayer, prayer walks, 24hr prayer, a prayer corner, and a prayer ministry team but, given the consultative nature of last night's prayer hearing, it was good for us to begin this series of prayer activities with reflection on the nature of prayer.

I have come to experience prayer primarily as an unstructured, ongoing conversation with God about the things that I see, hear and experience in everyday life. I have found the writings of Stephen Verney helpful in seeing the extent to which Jesus was participating in an ongoing interchange of love within the Godhead (what Verney calls the "Dance of Love") with this mutual interchange including prayer as conversation with God (see Verney's interpretation of John 17, for example, in The Dance of Love or Water into Wine). Jonathan Sacks' writings on the great dialogues between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job and the way in which this dialogue continues within Judaism (particularly his lecture Judaism, Justice and Tragedy - Confronting the problem of evil) have helped me to understand the extent to which God wants to draw us into a real relationship where we are free to question, debate and argue with him.

Prayers that I have found to tap into this understanding of prayer as an ongoing, everyday conversation with God involving all our emotions include: the prayer-poems of George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Berryman; the prayers collected in the Carmina Gadelica; and the prayer-reflections of David Adam, Martin Wallace and others drawing on the heritage of Celtic Christianity. The Psalms are of course, as Ann Clarke noted last night, the great repository of prayers in which God's people pray from within this kind of relationship with God.

As part of encouraging prayer in and through the everyday I have been running at both St Margaret's and St John's a work-based email group which involves sending people in work a weekly email containing a brief work-based reflection and prayer combined with information on a resource for Christians in the workplace. We have a google group site for the group which can be found by clicking here. All the emails sent since the group began at St John's are stored there and anyone is welcome to join the group.

Carol Ball, Philip Ritchie, Paul Trathen and myself have also been involved in developing and trialling a resource pack for churches and workplaces on 'Christians in the Workplace'. This has now gone to print and will be launched shortly. The pack includes resources to help people think about the place of prayer, reflection and spirituality within the workplace and in their everyday lives together with practical prayer exercises to help people pray in the way I have outlined above. Philip Ritchie can provide details of how and when the resource pack will be available. I wonder whether the pilgrimage we are on with the prayer hearings could explore, make use of and publicise this pack.

Finally, I find the Arts helpful in prayer, both public and private. While at NTMTC, together with Tim Hull and Alan Stewart, I was involved in developing several multi-media services that combined paintings, readings, poems, prayers, creative activities and songs. I have continued to use this style of prayer and worship as I find it draws people into a rich experience of God's presence by engaging people at a range of different levels (involving our range of senses and touching our emotions, intellects and spirits). This is something that has been a major feature of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions within the Church and which can be re-discovered and re-imagined in the possibilities opened up by new media and alternative worship."

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Iona - Here I Stand.