SNEUCC Call to Prayer 2023

In January, you’re invited to pray together with our siblings from the Central Pacific Conference, the Kansas Oklahoma Conference, and the Pacific Northwest Conference. Each week, we’ll be led in prayer by one of our Conference Ministers.

This week, please join with the Rev. Dr. Courtney Stange-Tregear, Acting Conference Minister in the Pacific Northwest Conference, in praying for local churches, conferences, associations and covenant partners.

SNEUCC churches are invited, along with the churches of these conferences, to commit to praying for various aspects of our body in ministry.

Week 1: Prayer for our Lay Leaders
Week 2: Pray for MIDS and Authorized Ministers. 
Week 3: Pray for the local church, associations, and our covenant partners (This video. Text below)
Week 4: Pray for Conference Staff

Prayer:

Generous one. Thank you above all for gifting us with the gift of prayer. Prayer which brings us together, which offers a place for us to share what is on our hearts, for us to praise your name and rejoice in your blessings. And also prayer for where we can pour out our hearts and lamentation, where we can ask for your guidance, where we can feel your presence among us, knowing that you weep with us when we cry, and you walk with us when we struggle.

Thank you, generous one for gifting us with the practice, the act, the habit of prayer. As we've been taught to pray. We pray today and on our days because we know generous one, we know that you listen, that you hear and that you are with us. And so we lift up our voices, the voices we share out loud and, and the voices, the words that are in our hearts and are unspoken in prayer for our local churches, our associations, our conferences, our covenant partners for all of the settings of your church.

We lift up our prayers for all of the settings of the church, especially in this time where there has been great struggle, there has been great difficulty. There has indeed been amazing, miraculous blessings. But we all know these last few years have been trying. We've all had to learn how to pivot, how to change, how to adapt, how to be in new and different ways. All of the settings of your church have had to learn new ways of being church, of gathering together in your name, gathering remotely or through technological means. We've had to discern when is appropriate and okay and safe to gather in person. Our settings of the church have had to stretch what it means to gather, stretch what it means to be church. But in our stretching, we have learned and we have grown, and there is much to rejoice. All of the settings of your church, while we have had to stretch, we have been blessed. All of our settings of the church, we pray for.

We pray for the ways that the church is blessed to be a blessing, for leaders lay and ordained, for communities, for other entities within our communities, for the ways that we seek and pursue and work for justice, for the ways that we offer extravagant welcome, such that all people might feel welcomed and heard and loved and cared for. For the caring and connection that comes through church in ways unique to church. For the intergenerational connection. For the way that people of all different ways of being in the world can come together across differences and across distances.

We pray for local church leaders who have had to learn and adapt, who have had to struggle, but also have, have encountered great blessings in the struggle. We pray for all the ways that we have learned and stretched. For all the ways that we have responded to the calling that you've placed on our lives. Most of all, to be your church, to be an incarnation of your word and will in the world. To be places that are more than geographies and more than buildings, but are most certainly places where we pray for your will and your world to be here as it is in heaven. And so generous one, we pray and we know that you hear our prayer and we are so thankful.

Please continue to pour out your blessing and your abundance; your love, and your calling upon these settings of your church. Continue to guide and bless. Continue to to urge and push, continue to comfort and nurture. Continue to teach us in our prayers, to praise your name, to rejoice in your abundance, and to name your presence as we walk through our lives, leading in your name, worshiping you, and being as one body. Generous one, hear this and hear all of our prayers on this day, on all of our days. Amen.