Spiritual Practice of the Week

Sunday Morning.....

Each Sunday I'll be posting a Spiritual Practice for you to use with yourself or with a group of Youth.

Spiritual Practices are intentional prayers, activities and reflections that pull us toward our connection with God’s presense in our lives, the lives of others and the world. Making time for spiritual practice in your own life and your ministry with youth is essential to helping us all move from the surface of life to the soft places where the tangible presence of God can speak to us.

Offering spaces where youth can attend to their own connection with God, in stillness, reflection, contemplation and awareness.   Be intentional in how you practice, creating time for your connection with God to expand.  Life gets busy and we can often let go and forget these practices that can be the very thing that sustains us in this beautiful and challenging ministry.  

Prayer Poetry
Have a large number of unrelated words written on small pieces of card stock laid out on a table. Have double sided tape or tacks available to affix the small papers onto a backdrop on the wall or a large bulletin board. Invite youth into a space of stillness and ask them to put together whichever words they wish on wall to make their own prayer of poetry words. They can build on prayers already created. Have a few blank pieces of paper as well in case people need a word that isn’t in the pile.  Play some quiet music and allow youth to work on the prayer wall for some time.  Ring a bell or gently call the youth back and as a group stand around the poetry prayer wall.  Spend some time as a group noticing the poetry prayers that have been written. Have each person choose the prayer that speaks to them and read it aloud at the end of your meeting as a way of closing this practice of prayer. 
You can keep this practice set up in the youth space or reuse the poetry prayer words on other occasions.  You may wish to have the practice in a space where other members of the congregation can see the prayers of the youth.  


Go well into all your prayers,


Doris


(c) This prayer practice and all of those on the Sunday Morning Blog Post can be found in:  "Go Deep: Spiritual Practices for Youth Ministry" Wood Lake Publishing