“I loved all the activities at the prayer space and I hope to see you again next year. I just want to say thank you for letting us come into your prayer space.” Letter from a Year 2 pupil, Harborne Primary.

Over a week, we had the pleasure of welcoming around 450 pupils into our prayer space room at Harborne Primary! That’s 450 children who had an opportunity to consider their own faith and beliefs, explore what it means to pray and to spend some time praying or reflecting on a range of issues.

It’s a great opportunity to open up conversations, this year’s prayer activities were based around saying sorry, thank you, forgiveness and thinking of others in need. Sometimes the children are really eager to share their prayer or reflection, sometimes they ask questions, sometimes they’ll share at length their experience or opinions! What this time does, is give you a great insight into what’s important to the children or what troubles them. As they join in with the prayer activity we can reassure them that God always hears our prayers, even if we haven’t spoken them out loud, if we’ve written them, drawn them, used a symbolic action or even made them out of play-doh! Sometimes there are really clear opportunities to share the gospel, for example, one boy said he felt it was important to forgive people, “because if I don’t God will be angry with me and if I do, He will like me better”. It was so special to be able to reassure him that God loves him and no matter what he does or how he behaves, God’s love never changes.

There are always funny moments too, like being told by one little girl that it was good to say sorry or confess things, because then you got to repeat the naughty thing that you said!

My personal favourite of this year’s prayer activities was ‘Praying for the World’. We had a giant world map, some photos and a big tub of play-doh that we used to encourage the children to think of others in different parts of the world who are in need. They then used the play-doh to make a model representing someone in need, as a prayer. What I most enjoyed about this was not just making fun stuff out of play-doh, but engaging with the children over their views on the world and encouraging them to think beyond their own experience, we had profound conversations with children of all ages about everything from poverty and climate change to politics and Brexit!

Many children, are impacted as soon as they come into room. They can sense a different atmosphere, most of the children have never encountered the Spirit of God before, but they can feel something special in the prayer space. The staff notice it too. Several commented (and I think some were surprised) about the calmness. What has been really rewarding is to see how the school have valued the prayer spaces, not just because it ticks boxes (although if we can support the school in that, I consider it to be another act of service to our community!), but because they can see the benefits it has to the children through the “amazing feedback” from both them and the staff.

It takes a lot of time and resources to put on a prayer space for a week, I am so grateful to all of those who volunteered to come along and help. God has blessed these times powerfully, not just in allowing us to share something of our faith, but in the ongoing building of relationships within the school and raising our profile as a Christian presence in the community. Already pencilled in for next year!

Diana Hopkins

Play-doh, Brexit and Naughty Words: Prayer Spaces 2019