5 ways your church can take part in Thy Kingdom Come 2024

1. Prayer Stations – Consider setting up prayer stations around your church building, or outside in the church grounds. Prayer stations can help people to pray in a variety of ways – with a different focus at each station. This year, we've got some beautiful artwork available, created by Revd Chris Duffett, with an accompanying Visio Divina PAINT acronym to guide your times of prayer. You can order A6 postcard, A4 size  or larger sized sets from CPO here, with a digital downloadable version coming soon.

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2. Continuous Prayer – Why not organise a time of continuous prayer for your church / group of churches? This could be 24/1 24/7 or 24/10. If you don't have enough people to cover 24 hours in prayer, perhaps join forces with a neighbouring church? This can be a great opportunity to build relationships with other local churches. You could even collaborate with a church in a different part of the world, in a different time zone, so all times of day are covered! Here are some tips, including from 24-7 Prayer.

3. Pray for 5 – Praying for 5 friends, family members or colleagues to encounter the life-transforming love of Christ, is at the heart of Thy Kingdom Come. As a church, why not buy some wrist bands or cut pieces of string, and encourage each person to tie 5 knots as a reminder to pray for their 5 during the 11 days? Or perhaps, you could set aside time in your church service to pray this way? There are lots of creative ideas which can be found here.

4. Prayer Walking / Pilgrimage - Each year, we hear wonderful stories of people journeying together in prayer through pilgrimage and prayer walking – whether in the local community or further afield.

Perhaps your church could create a prayer map of the local area and highlight specific places of interest to pray for, such as schools, hospitals, town centres, for example.  Or perhaps you could commit to praying for every road in your neighbourhood and mark them off as you walk and pray for them? Hope For Every Home have a great prayer walking guide that you can download.

5. Creative Prayer Outreach Ideas - There are lots of wonderful ways your church can connect with the local community during Thy Kingdom Come. For example,  why not combine a prayer event with a community fun day- something suitable for all the family?  You could make it fun for small children by using Cheeky Pandas resources to set up a trail in the churchyard or community garden, with activities, crafts, stories and songs.

Or perhaps your church could try ‘Say One For Me’ – like the churches in Romsey who gathered together, from across different denominations and traditions, to offer prayer for people in the local town centre.

Or why not deliver ‘prayer postcards’ to homes in the neighbourhood and encourage people to send in their prayer requests, with an invitation to come to church, should they wish to?

Or perhaps you could open the church building at specific times during the day, for people to come in, pray, reflect or explore?