Worship/ Sunday 28 June: Prayer of Intercession

Hi everyone - welcome to worship!
It's great that we can join in this time together, where we stop from all the busyness and quiet, and other bits and pieces of life, and take some time to praise the One who calls us His people and calls us to worship.
Hope you are all doing well and hanging on in there in these strange times.

Over this last month we've been thinking about prayer, particularly the prayer we find within public worship. Today brings us to the end of our series, and we finish by reflecting on the prayer of
intercession - also referred to as prayers of concern, or petition - where we prayer for the world, for
others... and also, ourselves.
You can find the WORSHIP LINK HERE that will take you across to our YouTube channel for the service, while below, there are several notices, including a link directing you to a site that gives examples of how to use the Psalms to help your personal prayer when praying for others and yourself. I hope you enjoy our time of worship and come away refreshed, and with something to take with you into the week ahead.

NOTICES/
A lovely piece of news first:
Our vestibule window, which had come out second-best with a football a wee while ago, has now been given a new lease of life! The big wooden board was taken down on Wednesday afternoon, and in its place, our brand new window was installed - simple, sympathetic, and elegant.. Huge thanks to our resident stained glass artist and church member, Fiona Foley for her generous gift of time and talent - it's so fab to see out into the daylight and an improvement not only on the old wooden board, but of the previous opaque window... now our welcome team will be able to see who's coming into the building. Job well done indeed. Will get a picture up by next Sunday...

Speaking of coming into the building:
TO OPEN OR NOT TO OPEN... for private prayer?
You may have heard discussion in the news about the easing of regulations around lockdown, including the possibility for church buildings to open - for private prayer only. This is very different
to opening the building for public worship, as we would normally do on Sunday mornings.
At the moment, the Kirk Session is considering what we might do.
While opening the church building for private and personal prayer is not really something we'd normally do, nor is it really a part of our Presbyterian tradition, nevertheless, given the strange circumstances we find ourselves in, perhaps people in the church and wider community might find it a helpful thing to offer.
So... we are discussing this.
And as we do, we're also discussing how this might be done to ensure all are safe, undertaking a risk assessment, filling out a safety checklist, and working out best practice for using the building - should we decide to open for private prayer, in the first instance... and then, later, when we are allowed to hold services of public worship once again.
Once we've considered all of this, filled out the paperwork, installed sanitiser stations, etc., our report goes to Presbytery - who either would give us permission to open, or not...
This will take several weeks to organise and put in place.
Do bear with us.

PRAYER HELPS:
Having reflected on prayer over this month, as we think about praying for others, we know that at times, we can get a little stuck on what and how to pray. There's a really useful wee site that gives some helpful examples for finding ways into prayers of intercession by way of making use of the psalms. For access just click on THIS LINK to take you there. When praying for the world, and for others outside our own immediate sphere, it's good to link into the news - USE THIS LINK to take you to a page that gives some tips in making use of the papers/ online media when praying more widely.

WAYS INTO PRAYER FOR YOUNG PEOPLE:
There's a great wee resource from BRF to help the younger members of the community think about prayer, and suggestions for ways into prayer - you can access it BY THIS LINK
It might also come in handy over the course of our time in worship.

DONATING ONLINE:
Thanks to those of you who've already made use of the donations online link over this last week.
We're delighted to have got a working solution for those of you who had been expressing a desire to make their offering in this way, due to lockdown.
For those of you who missed last week, there is now a dedicated 'online giving' page up in the tabs above the blog post... and also, the LINK HERE to save you scrolling back up.