This fall at St. John’s, we’re embarking on a prayer challenge! A prayer challenge is a little bit different from the standard fall fare at an Episcopal Church– I’d even call it an experiment– so I want to share a bit more about why we are doing it and invite you to join in.

Why a Prayer Challenge?

Our prayer challenge idea came from several places. First, I have been exploring with the congregation (and others online!) what people desire in terms of digital resources for prayer. I am an avid follower of Forward Movement’s podcasts and prayer resources. They’ve been in the business of devotionals and resourcing the church since 1935. Second, I met a new pastor who has arrived to Lynchburg, and in learning about his congregation I saw on social media that they were in the middle of a prayer challenge themselves! Third, we are focused on Prayer as our formation theme this fall, and I wanted to expand our offerings to meet people where they are.

For our prayer challenge, we are asking the church to spend 5 minutes a day in prayer. We’re providing a devotional based off of Noonday Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer in video form, as well as in writing in a daily email. We have all the prayers in a single document for those who desire as well. Parishioners can pray anytime they want, alone or with others as they are able.

What’s in it?

In Covid-times at Sewanee, one of the responses to the ongoing pandemic was to form prayer groups– small groups of students and faculty that gathered for prayer at least once a week. Our group chose to meet after morning classes for Noonday Prayer, and that experience of saying Noonday prayer with a couple of my peers has stuck with me. One thing I learned– it doesn’t have to be complicated to share a few moments of prayer together.

This prayer challenge is built on Noonday Prayer, with some additions for our challenge. Every day we pray a Psalm, read a sentence from Scripture, say the Lord’s prayer and another short prayer called a Collect. We will go through Psalms 120-134 twice, as suggested in the Book of Common Prayer. I pulled almost all the short sentences from the Daily Office Lectionary, with a couple readings from the RCL on Sundays or from a feast day proper. We picked collects from the Sunday Propers and the liturgical calendar as well, where appropriate. My hope was that these short sentences might connect us with the broader reading of scripture of the church, just like the sentences in the Forward Movement Day By Day Devotional. All in all, it fits in a page or a 3-minute video.

For St. John’s, this prayer challenge is several things:

• It is communal– we are sharing a short liturgy that can be used anytime of day.
• It is accessible– because you don’t have to be in church, at a certain time, you can pray it whenever it best suits you or your family.
• It is specific– we made the prayer videos with familiar faces from the congregation, in church, at homes, in public places, so that we see all of the places we can pray.
• It is time-specific– people say it takes one month to build a habit; we are praying for four weeks to open us up to that daily habit of prayer even after this challenge ends.

Is this different that the Daily Office, or another one of the hundreds of other devotionals out there? I’m not sure yet. I think it will resonate with my church for the above reasons, and I pray that it will make a difference to them. I am curious what it would look like if another congregation or ministry did something like this in the Episcopal Church. If you’re curious about this, email me!

Would you like to join us?

If you want to join us, you can sign up for a daily email update, or find all our prayer videos on YouTube below. While the selections are for specific days, you don’t have to be synced up with us perfectly. We hope the videos and prayers are reusable; and can be used by anyone at anytime.