The Conference has declared 2020/2021 a year of prayer so that our Church-wide commitments to evangelism, church growth, church at the margins, and pioneering and church planting will flow from a deep, contemplative orientation to God’s grace and love.

With lockdown having seen a major shift in engagement in online worship, The Methodist Church has launched a weekly online service for its Year of Prayer. The short weekly online service will take place each Tuesday lunchtime, beginning on 1 September. The 15 minute service will be inclusive and led by people from across the Church. Trey Hall, Director of Evangelism and Growth, said: “This Year of Prayer is a special time, a called out time, for the whole Church to be disciplined and intentional about seeking God’s will, God’s purpose, God’s dream for the world. And doing that together. The world can feel like it’s falling apart – not only due to COVID, but also due to systemic injustice, racism, to climate change, to political instability.  And if we as the Church are going respond in any meaningful way with love, with humility, with courage, if we’re really going to be in mission and service in this broken and beautiful world, we need more than ever to pray, we need to call upon God for healing and renewal and wisdom.”

The Year of Prayer marks the start of the Methodist year and will launch, beginning on 1 September at 12.45pm via Zoom and live- streamed via Facebook. The Year of Prayer is an important step in the new strategy adopted by the Methodist Conference to be an inclusive, evangelistic, growing, justice-seeking Church. This will be achieved by focusing resources on helping new people explore faith, starting hundreds of new churches, serving communities experiencing marginalization. The short act of worship will be led by a different person from across the Church each week using music, story, silence, art, and differing theologies and styles of worship. Sign up and find out more here.