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Those who have been able to join together in worshipping together the past couple of weeks may have noticed a new section in the news-and-notes portion of the printed worship bulletin: “Pray” (to go along with our other major sections, “Learn”, “Serve”, and “Meet”). In the “Pray” section, you’ll find a prayer list for our community of faith, so that you can better continue to be a part of our congregation’s ongoing ministry of prayer throughout the week. Whether it’s something for which you’re thankful or feeling joy about, or a plea-to-God for healing or hope for yourself or someone else, it is a privilege and a joy for us together to hold before God our collective prayers.

Curating such a prayer list is, admittedly, a bit more of an art than a science… there are no hard-and-fast regulations about what’s appropriate or not appropriate to include, or about how long a specific prayer petition should stay on the list. Pastor Matt’s general guideline is that petitions for specific individuals or situations will only stay on the list for 3 weeks at a time, but can be lifted up again if changes in circumstances warrant. New additions to the list will typically come from among prayer requests lifted up during Sunday morning worship (those purple prayer request cards and the things Zoom worshippers put into the chat), along with other specific prayer needs send to the office or about which the church office becomes aware. And the list will be fleshed out as appropriate with concerns from the broader world, as our hearts open ever more toward the expansiveness of God’s heart.

How might you go about using our CUC Prayer List? Well, by praying, of course! The list is not simply a news-sharing bulletin board, but rather an invitation for you to join your heart and spirit with those of the great cloud of witnesses lifting their praises and pleas to God. So take that bulletin home with you (or even tear out the specific page[s], if that’s better for you) and put it somewhere that will invite and encourage your acts of praying. There’s no right or wrong way to pray, and no right or wrong way to pray for the joys and concerns of our community together.

(Please note that as we try to balance the enabling of our communal ministry of prayer against appropriate stewarding of privacy concerns, we are only sharing the fullest version of the prayer list in the printed worship bulletins handed out to in-person worshippers. A redacted version of the prayer list, with certain identifying information reduced or removed, is included on the PDF version of the bulletin linked from the This Week @ CUC weekly eNews and the CUC website, and the prayer list will not be included in the main body of the This Week @ CUC emails. CUC members and adherents can contact the church office to be sent the full version of the prayer list upon request.)