Each day during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we provide a starting point, reflection, questions and a prayer based on the theme. Here you can turn your reflections into action with our Go and Do points. Please check here for any up-to-date links.
Day 1
- Personal: Consider how you can help renew the part of the world that you inhabit. What small act of service or care could you undertake to make a difference?
- Local: How could you work with other churches to show God’s love in your community? Invite churches near you to explore this question together.
- Global: Seek out opportunities to learn about and connect with your global neighbours. This could be through strengthening your church’s international links or engaging with global issues like the climate crisis.
Day 2
- Personal: Explore creative ways to pray, through art, craft, or in nature.
- Local: Seek out a church or group near you that is taking action to care for the natural world. Find out how you can help them.
- Global: Consider how your actions can cause damage to God’s world in places far from you. What can you do to address this?
Day 3
- Personal: Reflect on the human ordinariness of Jesus’ life – his travelling, eating, talking, resting. Where in your ordinary daily routines do you meet Jesus?
- Local: Jesus calls us to meet him through our love and care for others (Matthew 25:40). Who in your community needs to be cared for and how can you help them?
- Global: Choose three places around the world to pray for regularly. Learn about those places to inform your prayers and actions.
Day 4
- Personal: Have you planned for your own death? Take your worries about death to God in prayer. Talk to someone you trust about what you want to happen when you die.
- Local: Bring a group of people together in your church to talk about death and dying. Ask for help from local organisations and charities to discuss issues like making a will, grief and what it means to die well.
- Global: Consider how you can support a hospice and palliative care movement in another country.
Day 5
- Personal: Learn about how to use your breathing in prayer. Pray a short chant or ‘breath prayer’. Invite the Spirit to guide you.
- Local: Consider ways to reach out ecumenically to other churches near you, not only during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, but across the year.
- Global: Each February, churches across the UK mark Racial Justice Sunday. What is your church doing to respond to the injustice of racism and discrimination in the UK and around the world? Pray together for the wisdom of the Spirit as you explore this question.
Day 6
- Personal: Reflect on how you handle disagreement. Explore ways to build bridges with people who have different views to your own.
- Local: “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Explore ways in which your church community live up to this calling of existing for the sake of others?
- Global: Find out more about what churches are doing to take action on global justice issues through organisations such as Christian Aid and CAFOD.
Day 7
- Personal: Reflect on a transformative moment in your journey of faith. Share your reflection with others.
- Local: Organise an ecumenical walk or pilgrimage together with Christians from other traditions.
- Global: What has your faith freed you from? What has it made you free to do? Consider how you can live out the liberative power of faith by acting to help free those who are oppressed.
Day 8
- Personal: Who is made to feel invisible or overlooked in our world today? What can you do to reach out to someone in that position?
- Local: Find out about an individual or community dedicated to bringing hope to a divided world. Think about how you and your church can follow their example or join their work.
- Global: Learn more about the World Council of Churches (WCC) at www.oikoumene.org. How can you support the WCC’s work of promoting Christian unity in prayer and action?
