Prayers for your church and community
For the people you sit with on a Sunday, and for the ones who have stopped coming.
Church is people, which is why it is hard. The woman three rows in front who has not spoken to you since the vote. The man on the door who has done the same job for nineteen years and is tired. The family who used to sit at the back and stopped coming in March, and nobody has rung them.
Some weeks you go and something in it holds you. Some weeks you sit through the whole hour and feel nothing at all, then go home wondering why you bothered.
The prayers below are short and grouped by what is actually happening. The ordinary Sunday you go to because you always go. The full room where nobody says your name. The meeting that leaves people not speaking in the car park. Holding a church that hurt you, and not knowing whether you will ever walk back in. The empty seat you have noticed, and the number you have not rung.
16 prayers on this page, and 9 Bible passages with notes on what they mean.
Before you walk in
For the ordinary Sunday. You are going because you always go, or because someone is expecting you, or because you could not think of a good reason not to.
For an ordinary Sunday
I am going in. I have not brought much, God, and I am not sure what I want from the next hour. Let me be here anyway. Let something in the singing, or the reading, or the person sitting next to me, get through to me.
Going out of habit
Lord, I am here out of habit. Take the habit and use it.
For the people in the room