sustain:if:able kiwi

living bread prayers as active, silent, take-home-able

I was leading worship and preaching at my local congregation. The text was John 6. A few years ago, I had used bread rolls. When baked hard, they can be written on with felt pens. It allows a tactile and personalised engagement, as people are invited to write on the bread roll.

This year, I built on the bread roll stations, particularly around prayers for others. I introduced our intercessions as being a time for active but silent prayer. I handed around the baked loaves of bread (cocktail rolls from a local supermarket). I observed they had been baked long enough to be hard enough to write on. I invited folk to pray actively, but silently, by using the felt pens and writing on the bread roll the name of a person or situation that needs Jesus as “living bread.” Perhaps we know someone who is not well, or a situation of conflict.

After several minutes of active silence, I then invited people to place their bread in a plastic bag. The invitation was to take their bread roll home. The plastic bag meant we wouldn’t get crumbs in our handbags or on car seats. And people could use the bread roll during the week, to keep holding, to keep praying, to keep adding things as they came to mind. It was a way of praying actively, silently and in a way that could be taken home into life beyond the gathered service.

It worked well.