Blog
16th January 2025
Phoebe Matthews
At Moneyreagh Community Church we’ve been on a bit of a journey with prayer spaces over the last 2/3 years. We started with a couple of pop-up 12 hours prayer spaces in church and now have a permanent 24/7 prayer space and run prayer spaces in our local high school. We particularly prefer to run themed prayer spaces at Advent or Lent, to help pupils consider the time of year, and give a theme to some of the activities. This year in the Advent prayer space the pupils particularly enjoyed writing about the ‘gifts’ in their life or things they were grateful for on wrapped up present boxes. At Easter a favourite was writing and rubbing away ‘sorry’ prayers, or just enjoying the sensation of tracing into a sandpit. We’ve seen teenagers pray for everything from Taylor Swift concert tickets, help with exams and stress, Fortnite wins, bullying and trouble with friends and family. In our rural setting where there is a lot of traditional cultural christianity, it’s been lovely to show pupils a more relational side to faith and how honest and real life our prayers can be!
As for any church, carving out the time to set-up prayer spaces and commit to being in a school to run one for 3 days or a full week is not always easy, or even sensible! But choosing to prioritise this always brings me back to one of the most important points of my role as a youth worker, giving those who don’t yet know Jesus, or are somewhere on the journey of faith, a chance to encounter God. Whilst prayer spaces in schools do look different to prayer spaces in churches (more running and shouting, less sitting still in devout quiet!), it is worth it to even inspire students to consider that they could meet God for themselves if they want to. Whilst encountering God, and thoughts sparked and developed go mostly unseen by our human eyes, I’ve been blessed to hear students tell me of how “safe” they feel even in the busy room, and they love that it is “space to feel not judged”.
If you would like to host a prayer space in your local school get in touch.