Midweek Ministry: Curating Prayer Spaces Part 4

I didn’t mention that in the process of working on my own prayer room space, I’m curating a space for a church on May 4. This project is actually quite large because there are two prayer spaces in one. This is an awesome time to reflect on personalizing and customizing.

1)    Cater to your space (individual)

I’ve written a lot about spaces for groups, but I want to write a little note about having individual space as well.

Before I moved, I was in just one room so I literally had a prayer corner of my room. I had my Bible and other devotionals/holy books I use for reading and deepening my call. I had a shelf with candles, sea shells, water, angels and other symbols that I might use in my prayer time (depending on what I’m in need of).  I also had one large prayer pillow that I sit on and a painted picture of my favorite scripture Job 33:4. Because it was so small, I set up boundaries with cobalt blue bottles that have been washed and prayed over. They are a reminder for me to even take this space seriously.  This space was literally 2x4 feet in my bedroom.

My ideas are similar for this conference space and the one I’m designing for this year.

 The Center Space

I place a lot of emphasis about the center space. The center of the room is the most holy space, where God is.   You can have pillows and blankets or people to sit. Some center spaces have built an altar for people to kneel. I often place candles (light of the world) or a small scripture or quote in the center for focus. 

Stations

Stations are intentional spiritual discernment areas that typically include a prayer activity. They should be a physical manifestation of the scripture or theme. Because they are guided practices, there are clearly written out directions and a task.  These tasks should be kept simple so that the focus can be on their meditation, not completing the task to perfection.

Examples include:

·      At a retreat I visited in Nashville, the stations were layered with various colors of cloth and both familiar and tangible things. One station was about letting go of sins, where we could choose an acorn, pray our sin into it and bury it into the sand.

·      At RESET18, one of the stations was on Lamentation and participants could whisper their lament into a bean bag and throw it at the wall.

·      During LIT, one of the stations was mirrors buried in sand, where participants symbolically dug into the sand to see their reflection of what G-d called them to do, then returned the mirror so that G-d could continue refining their calls.

My Progress: This week, I’m actually furnishing my prayer space. I went shopping for all sorts of things, which I’m excited about! I bought fabric (both Walmart and Hobby Lobby have fabric). My prayer room is featuring small lights, so I bought electronic candles. I like these candles - I’ve used some in corporate prayer rooms before - because they come with a remote. This is smaller set that the ones I used in the larger rooms because my space is much smaller.

My other purchases are:

Decorative shower curtains.

Baby building blocks to write on.

Sand

Dirt and seeds.