Joined in prayer across the Diocese

Published on: 1 March 2018

During the time I’ve been responsible for putting it together, I have come to appreciate our diocesan prayer calendar more and more.

And wherever I go, it’s clear that others appreciate it too. In churches large and small across our diocese, it sits on prayer desks with all the other resources for leading services; it is pinned up in vestries and porches; parts of it are reproduced for pew sheets and local magazines. It is very well used! And that’s before you go into private homes where you might find it leafed into Bibles on study desks and bedside tables…

Each day’s entry guides us in prayer from the local to the global. It begins with one very particular Deanery or Benefice and the clergy and Readers who minister there. Any church schools in that place are also listed. Then the parameters shift a bit wider and we are asked to pray for particular people who contribute to life across our whole diocese – such as the Archdeacons, or those who are responsible for music in our churches. Finally, our horizons broaden again and our prayers are asked for the diocese listed that day in the worldwide Anglican Cycle of Prayer.

As you will see if you flick backwards from this article, the calendar forms the central pages of The Magazine. For those who find it difficult to get out and about, it is a lifeline of connectivity, an opportunity to be one with the praying church around them without being physically present. For those constantly on the go, the wonderful on-line availability of the prayer calendar means that access is easy almost anywhere. So don’t be surprised if you see a colleague finding the calendar on their tablet while waiting for a meeting to start, or the person sitting next to you on the bus reading it on their phone! Just go to DofN.org/prayer if you want to join them or even set up a daily feed to your Twitter or Facebook account.

And did you know that the Dean and Chapter of Norwich Cathedral invite people from each benefice to join them for Evensong on the day that they are listed? It can be very moving to experience your own community being held before God by others in this way – a further example of the calendar’s capacity for encouraging a church which reaches out beyond itself in prayer and is thus knit together more strongly and lovingly.