RESOURCES

Finding our voice in prayer

Prayer is an absolute essential of every congregation’s life and witness. However, long standing patterns of organising and gathering to pray together are proving challenging to sustain. One of the impacts of this is that new believers have never had the opportunity to find their voice in prayer, while more established followers of Jesus may have lost their confidence in praying with others.

Finding our voice in prayer is a resource that can be used by congregations to help re-establish prayerfulness.

In addition, video stories of how congregations are experimenting in fresh ways of engaging members of the congregation in prayer can be downloaded below to fire the imagination.

From time to time new material on this theme will be added to this page and shared via PCI social media.

Pricing and Orders:

The Finding Our Voice in Prayer resources prices are:

Participant guide – £3.50 per copy (or euro equivalent) including postage and packaging
Leader’s guide – £3.50 per copy (or euro equivalent) including postage and packaging

To order this resource, please contact the Congregational Life and Witness office by either emailing clw@presbyterianireland.org or by telephoning +44 (0)28 9041 7246.

Finding Our Voice in Prayer

Prayer is one of the deepest joys of the Christian life. What an amazing gift to know that the God whose greatness and glory is beyond our wildest imagination listens to us every time we pray. He loves to hear our voice.

Prayer is also a big deal.

As followers of Jesus, prayer is as vital to our everyday existence as eating, drinking, sleeping, and even breathing. Prayer should be the fuel in the engine of everything that happens in our churches. We know we need to pray.

And yet for many of us, prayer feels hard. We might ask ourselves questions like:

When do we pray?
What do we pray?
How do we pray?

And at other times we have perhaps felt all kinds of insecurities hindering our ability to pray:

“I’m not an expert.”
“I’m not eloquent.”
“I’m not confident.”
“I could never pray like them.”

Finding Our Voice in Prayer is a practical, step-by-step guide created to help you and others in your church family find and gain confidence in using your voice in prayer.

Through six beautifully illustrated and interactive sessions:

Teach Us to Pray
Wow!
Thank You
Sorry
Ask
Help

this small group friendly resource will help you find joy – and overcome fear – in your everyday prayer life.

Each Finding Our Voice in Prayer session will take approximately one hour to work through, and will follow the same simple pattern:

Enter in – A simple introduction to set the scene and stimulate discussion;
Encounter – A short Bible reading and reflection which addresses the session’s theme;
Explore – Discussion questions designed to help you react, reflect, and respond;
Engage – One specific practice you can try as a group to help you all pray out loud;
Every day – Some additional activities that will help you keep going and growing in prayer.

To find out more and to order the Finding Our Voice in Prayer resource please email: clw@presbyterianireland.org.

Downloads

This is a special, one off, extra edition of e-quip, presenting a new resource that we would encourage you to read and share.

Following General Assembly, the new PCI Communications team has created and published the “The Review”, which seeks to detail some of the key decisions and debates from this year’s General Assembly.

We are keen to encourage as many of our members and those who may simply be associated with our church, to connect with the General Assembly and see how its decisions and debates will impact them and their congregations.

The Review is an e-magazine. It’s an easy read with links to further reports and more in depth detail, if that is what you want.

Please open, read and share. We are happy for this to be added to church Facebook pages, church WhatsApp groups and announcement sheets. You are welcome to use the image above in your church communications.

https://issuu.com/presbyterianireland/docs/the_assembly_review_2024?fr=sZmRmYjY0NDQyNjU

Mark Neale
Head of Communications

It can sometimes be hard to know how best to help friends, family or fellow church members who are struggling through pain and suffering. But one guaranteed way to love them well is to commit to pray for them regularly. Whether someone you know is dealing with grief, illness, emotional distress, mental-health issues or difficult circumstances, this guide will help you to pray for them with compassion and purpose.

Each of the 21 prayer themes in this book takes a passage of Scripture and suggests five things to pray for your struggling friend—relevant for whatever their troubles may be. You can use this book in any number of ways: work through it as part of your daily quiet time or pick it up whenever you want to pray for your friend.

Helen Thorne is Director of Training and Resources at Biblical Counselling UK. She formerly worked with the London City Mission and has written Hope in an Anxious World, Purity Is Possible, Walking with Domestic Abuse Sufferers and 5 Things to Pray for Your City.

suffering-friend-prayer Download

Further information and where to purchase the above resource is available from the following link:

_{https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/5-things-to-pray-for-a-suffering-friend}

All the days of my life: Finding faith in later life

All the days of my life is a resource produced by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in partnership with Faith in Later Life. It offers a six session, light touch, evangelistic tool specifically designed for use with those in later life.

Walking participants through Psalm 23, it aims to bring to light an awareness of God’s presence throughout life as those who use it look back, then to gently facilitate a response of faith and trust in the Good Shepherd.

It may be used individually, one to one, or in a range of small group settings in a church, residential facility or private home.

The format of each session

Each session follows the same format:

Beginning with a verse(s) from Psalm 23
The introduction of a strong visual image to start conversation and bridge the gap between text and life
The offer of a question to open up various aspects of the participant’s life story
A short piece of text which can be read with participants to raise awareness of some aspect of God’s presence in different seasons of life with the aim of increasing recognition of him in retrospect, in the present or future
The introduction of Jesus as the Good Shepherd from a selection of sections in the New Testament
Concluding with a short prayer that can also act as personal response in the moment and/or build towards a full appreciation of what it means to profess faith in Christ.

Find out more about Faith in Later Life here Faith in Later Life

A users’ guide to help get the most from this resource is also available to download.

Life after loss

This booklet is not intended to be given to every bereaved person but it would be useful to give to a Christian who has questions about the loss of a Christian loved one. It is recommended reading for anyone who has a pastoral care role with people who are bereaved (ministers, deaconesses, elders, pastoral care workers, pastoral care team members, etc.). The person delivering pastoral care to a bereaved person can decide if it would be helpful to give them the booklet and then be available to talk after they have read it.

The booklet contains biblical answers to a number of typical questions asked by bereaved Christians including:

‘Why as a Christian does it hurt so much to lose someone?’

‘Where is God when I can’t feel his presence?’

‘Why did they die so young?’

‘What is heaven like?’

‘Will I recognise my loved ones when I go to heaven?’

There are also a number of suggested prayers which may help people when they struggle to find the words to pray. A resource list is provided with suggested support agencies for specific forms of bereavement and some suggested books.

A free sample of first five pages is available to download here.

Purchasing the booklet

The booklet costs £1, and can be purchased using the menu to the right. Alternatively, it can be purchased through the Council for Congregational Life and Witness office (Email: clw@presbyterianireland.org or tel: +44 (0)28 9032 2284).

Blaze: Learning together to be a global disciple.

Introducing Blaze …

Blaze the bee is a new way of helping children and families in congregations right across PCI explore how God is at work in the world and what it means for them to be a global disciple, doing what they can to play their part in God’s global mission.

This includes learning about, and praying for, global mission workers, God’s church around the world and a Christian approach to big issues like creation care.

The Blaze character is being provided to your congregation for use in children’s addresses and other activities such as Sunday school or uniformed organisations. You will know best where Blaze fits and will have most impact in the particular shape of your congregation’s children’s ministry.

Creating a buzz …

So, you’ll be hearing and seeing a lot more about Blaze in future.

Watch this space as we will regularly be making materials and resources available be used in conjunction with the Blaze character will be made available at several times throughout the year, offering simple and readily usable outlines to give a child-friendly window on a variety of aspects of global mission.

To download our resources to introduce Blaze as a global disciple in your children’s ministry check the downloads section below.

Three simple ways ideas to get to know Blaze …

Here are three simple ideas for helping everyone in your congregation become familiar with Blaze as a character readily associated with global mission:

In a church service, Sunday school or children’s organisation, use Blaze to help you look at a map of the world together. Choose a country to learn about, perhaps one in which you already have a link with an overseas mission worker or project. Follow up by learning more about what God is doing in that country and praying for God’s church there.
Buy a travel journal for Blaze. Have a child or family take Blaze home for a week, choose a country to learn about what God is doing in mission or the church, and add what they have found out to the travel journal. Children or families could briefly report back to the whole church or group and you could pray specifically for that country.
Take a photograph of Blaze in a setting local to your church which pictures an aspect of creation care e.g. a recycling centre, a wind farm, a bird or animal sanctuary. Use the photo of Blaze on location to help children grasp that caring for God’s creation is part of what it means to be a global disciple.

Blazing a trail …

Blaze is an important part of how the Presbyterian Church in Ireland wants to encourage a lively and growing interest in being involved in global mission from the youngest to the oldest member. You can help capture the breadth of that emphasis visually, by taking a photograph of Blaze with children or families in your congregation and sending it to mailto: rbromley@presbyterianireland.org

Your photo will become part of a growing gallery of publicity used to further promote Blaze and what God is doing to stimulate our appreciation of the greatness of his work in the world.