“Hey, have a look at this,” said my 24-7 Prayer colleague, Sheena, as she passed me the latest edition of Youth for Christ (YFC) News. I opened it up and there in the middle was a huge half-page article called ‘Space to Pray’ by Beckie Pickering from the Haverhill Schools Initiative;

The article describes the recent Prayer Space that Beckie and her team hosted in a local secondary school, and it recommends the Prayer Spaces in Schools model for others who are looking for a way to communicate the Christian faith in a highly effective, experiential way. (If you can’t find a copy of YFC News, Beckie has also written a shorter piece for the YFC website, which you can find here.)

Ways to Host a Prayer Space in School

One of the things that we love is the variety of ways that Prayer Spaces are being hosted and developed by so many different organisations and groups. Some organisations, like YFC and Scripture Union, have an excellent track record of regular, relational schoolswork, and Prayer Spaces can simply become a core part of the menu that they offer to the schools that their workers are involved in.

And then there are local churches, like our friends from Harlow who came to visit me this week to ask how they could begin to serve their local secondary school by helping to host Prayer Spaces, maybe even some kind of permanent Prayer Space. We would love to see more and more local churches, and even groups of churches, ‘adopting’ the primary and secondary schools near to where they are based, and for them to host Prayer Spaces as part of that ongoing relationship.

Some Prayer Spaces in Schools - one or two in England, and maybe up to a dozen in Ireland so far - have been organised and hosted by students themselves, sometimes with the support of a Christian teacher. We suspect that many, many more student-led Prayer Spaces in Schools will emerge over the coming year or two, and we’re exploring ways to work with Christian organisations who support students directly to help make this easier for students.

Finally, there are the Prayer Spaces that have been initiated, and sometimes even hosted, by teachers/school-staff themselves. Obviously it is difficult for teachers to give the necessary time to hosting a Prayer Space in their own school because of their busy schedules, but we’ve heard of a few examples. So it’s obviously not impossible.

The ideal is probably a mixture of all-of-the-above, partnerships between staff and students, local Christian organisations that may have expertise and resources, and local churches that will foster an ongoing relationship in and with the school.

If you’re keen to explore what it would look like to host a Prayer Space in your school or a school close to you, and you’d like ideas, advice, support, help, training, then we hope that this website will help you get started. And then please email Mandy on mandy@prayerspacesinschools.com for more information.

Posted by Phil

Phil Togwell lives in a large community house in Romford (UK) with his family (three daughters - Megan, Poppy and Angel, and one wife - Emma) and various visitors and pilgrims... exploring and experimenting with rhythms of prayer, mission, hospitality, life together. Phil is learning to cook, slowly. He likes curries, mountains, lengthy late-night conversations and reading books. He dislikes cats. Phil leads 24-7 Prayer's UK team and the Prayer Spaces in Schools team.