Prayer walk and prayer workshop

Yesterday was our long awaited for prayer walk day. One of the amazing ladies at church had this idea many, many months ago and through planning meetings and schedules and practice walks and sign up sheets it actually came together.

The day started with an all-age family communion and a fantastic sermon from NVN (new vicar neil) on prayer including making paper aeroplanes and throwing them across the church. The service was followed by parish lunch – ploughman style and fruit. Then the walk process began with prayers. We all wore orange, red, yellow and pink (Pentecost style). The walkers headed out on their 6 mile walk around the parish. I took the kids and anyone else who couldn’t walk into the church for a prayer workshop activity.

The organising committee had established 8 prayer stations along the walking route, each one providing a different place to pray and a different issue for focus. So that those who could not walk could be a part of the prayer day we arranged that the walkers would ring me at each station so we could share the prayers together.

I also wanted to make sure that those who couldn’t walk could have a positive experience and so we made posters about the subjects for prayer as our way of thinking about our parish and its issues:
- transport
- shops and businesses
- sports
- police
- medical community
- schools
- countryside and wildlife
- homes

Here is the police one:


I wasn’t sure how well this idea would work; we had a diverse age range with children from 2 to 12 and then adults of varying ages. However we handed the activity over to God and asked that it became whatever it could be. And it worked. The younger kids took pictures I had found and stuck them on the posters whilst the older ones wrote prayers and drew their own pictures to go alongside. It all came together; the kids worked well together and came up with ideas and produced wonderful posters which we put on the windows of the church for the walkers to see when they returned.

And the prayers. When the phone rang all the kids went quiet and concentrated on the prayers that were being said. And the final prayers were for us to give and we choose to sing “All things bright and beautiful” as our form of prayer. We also sang this outside the church as the walkers returned, our way of welcoming them back.



It was an exhausting day but truly amazing. To see the church coming together and sharing in an outreach activity was fantastic. This is the start of our prayer mission, the start of reaching out. We are in our community, for them and with them.

Here is Rachel’s view on the day:
I liked the paper aeroplanes, I wrote “God Loves You” on the one I sent and when I got one back I wrote “Rachel” on it and drew some ladders to show how to get to heaven. Having lunch at church was fun, I ate French bread and quiches and cucumber and I didn’t eat my tomato. I also had crisps and two bananas. When everyone went off for the walk I stayed in church with mummy and the other kids, we coloured pictures, stuck collages and made posters on things we could all pray about. When the walkers rang we heard them pray and then we sang “All things bright and beautiful” to them. We all had cake when the walkers got back. It was a wonderful time.

Now all I await is the photo and article in the paper, hopefully I will be able to put it up for you all to see.