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Praying Our Way Forward

Bishop Gregory V. Palmer encourages all West Ohio United Methodists to participate daily in Praying Our Way Forward until the conclusion of the Special Session of General Conference which ends February 26, 2019. Below are some suggestions and resources for your use.

• Engage in a weekly Wesleyan 24-hour fast from Thursday after dinner to Friday mid-afternoon.  Those who have health situations causing food fasts to be inadvisable might consider fasting from social media, emails or another daily activity.
• Pause and pray for our church's mission and way forward daily for four minutes from 2:23 through 2:26 a.m. or p.m. in their own time zone OR at another time.  This is because the Special Session of General Conference will be held February 23 through February 26, 2019.
• Pray using a weekly prayer calendar that will be posted on the UMCPrays.org website from June 2, 2018, through the end of February 2019. The calendar will list a unique cluster of names each week. The names will balance United States bishops and delegates with Central Conference bishops and delegates. It will also include General Secretaries, Commission on a Way Forward members, the Commission of the General Conference and the staff of the General Conference.

National Day of Prayer

The City of Madeira and the Village of Indian Hill will once again join together on Thursday, May 3, 2018 in observance of the 67th Annual National Day of Prayer.  The national theme is “Unity – Pray for America!” with Ephesians 4:3 as the theme scripture.  For more information about the national theme, go to www.nationaldayofprayer.org.

This year’s observance will be held at Madeira’s McDonald Commons Park (7451 Dawson Road) at the Veterans Memorial starting at 7:30 a.m.  We are hoping you will be available to participate in this event as we gather together to pray for our nation and its leaders.  Armstrong Chapel's Pastor, David Brown, will be part of the leadership on that day. Let’s also surround Armstrong member, Mark Kuenning, as mayor of the Village of Indian Hill in this season of prayer.

A Season of Lent in Prayer

A Season of Lent in Prayer

I came cross this recent reflection on the nature of answered prayer by Virginia Ramey Molenkott in Speech, Silence, Action! She shares:

“Most of the discussion of prayer I had ever heard centered on whether God answers prayer and how we can know that God does. But during the past decade I have come to believe that prayer is not a matter of my calling in an attempt to get God’s attention, but of my finally listening to the call of God, which has been constant, patient, and insistent in my inner being. In relationship to God, I am not the seeker, the initiator, the one who loves more greatly. In prayer, as in the whole salvation story unfolded by Scripture, God is reaching out to me, speaking to me, and it is up to me to learn to be polite enough to pay attention. When I do have something to say to God, I am rendering a response to the divine initiative. So the question of whether or not and how God answers prayer now seem to me bogus questions. God speaks, all right. The big question is do I answer, do I respond, to an invitation that is always open.”

 This moves us more from a discipline or spiritual exercise to an answer of the call. Prayer might simply be something we do each day to offer our insights on the world that God created, rather than pausing to listen with intent to the One who is the Initiator. Maybe this Lenten season we will not be discerning how many prayers God answers for us but how we might answer God’s prayer.

The Psalmist writes: “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4)  As we explore what it means to be a member of the body of Christ – the church – may we also discover the call God offers to us to be part of the larger Christian community and the prayer that God is reaching out to us through Jesus Christ – the head of the church!