Youth Prayer Room

So....kind of crafts with kids, just older ones and with of a more creative meets spiritual feel!

Last Sunday I was to lead a session on 'prayer' with our 11+ Sunday School group. After setting up many prayer spaces in the past I was keen to do something along the same lines- lets face it, prayer is something you do rather than just talk about. Normally prayer spaces take aaaaaages to set up and I was only having an hour session with these guys- seemed like a lot of work!

Anyhow, I found a great discussion/talk thingmy in YouthWork Magazine about prayer and it had a guide for a discussion followed by a simple prayer space based on James 5v13-20

"Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. ¹⁴ Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. ¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

¹⁷ Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. ¹⁸ Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

¹⁹ My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, ²⁰ remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins."

It then goes on to suggest ideas for 5 different prayer stations for each type of prayer mentioned.

Here is a plan from the room I used and some photos (taken on my phone so not brill!) for the different zones

Prayers for difficult times- this was really chilled out, pretty lights, encouraging bible verses on the walls, I hung a side on the gazebo so it only had one side open making it fairly private. People had paper to scribble on and write their thoughts/prayers on.

Prayers for good times- just lots of bright coloured art stuff and paper stuck to the floor!

Prayer for forgiveness- the article I read suggested having water to wash hands with to symbolise getting clean after giving stuff to God. I added to this giving a bin to write and "bin sin!" and also Magna Doodles to write sins to give to God and then erase them.

Prayers for healing- we just had an area with a church elder waiting to pray!!!

Prayers for others-again I added to this area, it was supposed to be just one large candle and tea-lights for people to light as they prayed for someone else, I added the world map and post-it notes to widen the scope of the prayers and to add more activity as we had quite a lot of people in the room!

And that's about it, we also had some worship music playing quietly and as you can see from the pictures the room was lit by fairy lights and lamps which gave it a really nice atmosphere.

Have fun with creative prayer!