Looking Backwards Looking Forwards

Sunday 31st December was another of our ‘Local Arrangement’ services prepared by our Stewards. The theme was Looking back Looking Forward.

There were lots of things that were different about this service, the chairs had been rearranged and there was a prayer station in each corner of the church. We also sang two new hymns to familiar tunes. Even as the congregation arrived they were given a paper ‘Thank you Star’ and a pen.

At the start of the service we looked back over the past year and wrote the things we were grateful for onto our ‘Thank you Stars’ which were included in our prayers of thanks. The topics included family, friends and neighbours (those close at hand and around the world); how fortunate we are compared with millions around the world; love and care received from others; good health; a successful house move; and gratitude that God and Jesus are part of our lives.

Our Prayer stations were:

• A prayer chain – writing names of people and places we want to pray for and making them into a chain to show how we are all connected.
• Prayers for the world – putting heart-shaped Post-it Notes on places around the world we wanted to pray for.
• Some information about aspects of The Methodist Way of Life with a chance to think about where we are and where we want to move to.
• Prayers in the News – some pictures from newspapers and magazine again using heart-shaped Post-it Notes to write prayers about them.

As some music played the congregation moved around the church, visiting as many stations as they wanted to before the various prayers were placed at the front along with our ‘Thank you Stars’. The service reminded us that we are still in the Christmas season, so our prayer chain was draped across the crib. The picture shows some of the various types of prayers at the front of our church.

As somebody said after the service “It was fantastic to see so much prayer happening this morning”, while someone else mentioned that ”today there was enough time to pray all my prayers”.

We have local arrangement services regularly throughout the year, and they are usually a little bit different to normal. We list them in service sectionof the website so keep any eye open. I hope you can join us for the next one.