In addition to our existing themes, here are some specific prayer requests for January and February 2022.
As we begin 2022, these are our key themes:
- Everything in Southampton to be underpinned by prayer.
- Encouraging everyone in the church to develop a daily time of prayer, encountering God each day.
Schools
For nearly 30 years now, Southampton City Mission schools workers have been providing assemblies, Question of Faith days and prayer spaces in many schools in Southampton. They also provide much-appreciate spiritual support around the Y6 to Y7 transition time.
In the assemblies the team explain that they are Christians and tell the children about some aspect of the Christian faith, ending with a prayer.
In the Question of Faith days, the team usually works with a whole year group for the whole day, exploring what Christians believe and also what the children themselves believe. They do this through many different themes.
The prayer spaces may be temporary, but in some cases have been permanent.
SCM are in a new local partnership with Scripture Union, using the Revealing Jesus Framework. This has resulted in some new work, setting up Grow Communities for children who want to follow Jesus for themselves.
So many schools are welcoming this input – the team are more or less fully booked right up to the Summer holidays!
We also feel that SoHOP and SCM are in a new partnership! We join with SCM to aim for every local school being supported by regular, specific prayers. You will see this reflected in these Pray 168 updates, in our Prayer Line text (details of the following day’s assemblies and question of faith days), and in our network of ‘small-HOPs’ (each one adopting local schools to pray for regularly).
Specific prayer points for this month:
- choose one or two local schools to pray for regularly
- pray for the admin team at SCM who have to schedule in all the different activities in all the schools.
- pray for the schools team who deliver the activities at the schools
- pray for the resource team who prepare all the resources used in these activities.
- pray for the Grow Communities (there are 2 at the moment, with more to come)