Sunshine and Showers

Brenda Mosedale from Mint Methodist Church in Exeter shares this blog on how she used the Sunshine and Showers resources to help her church consider different forms of prayer.

Sunshine and Showers, that’s something I often hear on the weather forecast – but this is something different. It’s a good title, though, as it reflects some of the uncertainties that I’ve found people, whether inside or beyond the church, find with prayer. It doesn’t always work out how we expect. One of our older members-who’s been in church all their life told me once that they really didn’t know how to pray – they couldn’t find the words. Another could find the words but wasn’t sure they believed it made any difference. I found myself being asked the question – how do you know how to pray when you look at how the world is?

So when I found this course on the Methodist website it really felt worth a look. It’s a six week course, looking at some of the apparently conflicting ideas people have about prayer – not just in theory but in practice.

It’s a course for groups or individuals with a booklet – which is great for those who find that easier than online, although that option is there as well. There are videos and activities, questions and challenges. We decided, though, to use it in our main Sunday service over four weeks as well as giving people the other options. Our service is livestreamed, so this gave a really wide reach.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes when we look at a series for worship, given our Methodist way of working, it’s hard to have it really joined up. So for this we asked those preachers and worship leaders who are part of our congregation, if they would like to have a go at doing this and work together to use the material. So that’s what we did. We met together to work out how to fit six sessions into four Sundays. We decided to put the first two sessions ‘prayer as friendship’ and ‘prayer as rhythm’ together. This was the first session and it was a communion service - which worked really well as communion is part of our rhythm of prayer.

The third session is about forms of prayer. This was an interactive all age service, with so many different ways of praying that gave opportunity for everyone – including those online. For the third week we looked at when prayer is hard and that included some of the next session which focused on prayers for healing. The fourth and final session picked up the last theme which asked the question about whether there are times when we are asked to answer prayers for ourselves.

Working together wasn’t always easy as it required time and the kind of advance preparation that doesn’t always go well with busy lives – but by sharing ideas and skills and by carefully paying attention week by week, I certainly felt that all those involved felt some kind of responsibility for the whole series and not just their own week.

Each week we also had a post-service group for those who wanted to take it further. As we always have a zoom coffee group after worship we joined the 2 together and had a hybrid meeting for the 4 weeks. We looked at the questions in the booklet which we hadn’t had time to address in the service. People shared stories of online prayer experiences which had surprised them.

So - how was it received? On the whole really well.

I hope that it has opened up opportunities for people. It is certainly a point of reference when conversations about prayer come up. I have also seen that those leading intercessory prayer in worship have been a little more courageous in their approach as what was shared in the course has given them confidence. However – for us – it’s only been a couple of months…

We ordered enough copies of the booklet for everyone to have one, but didn't give them out during the service. Not everyone wanted to follow up on this, but we have left them around in our reception area and they have gradually disappeared! I know that some were given to neighbours. Some were taken to work on with housegroups and the post-service group was interesting - something to work on. We plan to continue the pattern of post-service hybrid conversations which this gave us the opportunity to try.

Overall, it was a good experience to work on something for worship that was really collaborative. I also know that some of the preachers involved have taken the material as a resource for other churches, even if not to the extent that we used it. We also used social media to advertise both the services and the material. We started from the perspective that people both within and beyond church have questions about prayer. This gave an opportunity to reach whoever might want the conversation, wherever they might be.

You can find the Sunshine and Showers resources here.