Prayer Spaces in Schools, church, home or outside!
Prayer Spaces in Schools website & resources
Prayer Spaces in schools has a resource website with loads of ideas for creative prayer to engage children and young people in praying in creative ways. If you are engaged with a school already or thinking of doing work in your local school with a prayer space in mind these ideas would be perfect as they are designed to be accessible and used in schools by young people of all faiths and none – but they would also work really well in other more Christian contexts like kids church, sunday school, youth groups or as part of sunday morning worship. We all know prayer doesn’t have to be boring, its not just kneeling beside your bed with eyes closed and hands clasped. Conveying this to chidren and young people is done best by helping them experience for themselves different creative ways to pray and connect with God. The Prayer Spaces in Schools website has lots of creative ideas for this which is what we are recommending as this weeks recommended resource. Keep reading for different ways to use them….
Who are Prayer Spaces in Schools?…
Heres some info direct from their website….”The first prayer spaces in schools took place in 2007. In four locations around the UK, people with experience of 24-7 Prayer rooms in their churches had the same idea at roughly the same time… that doing something similar – making space for creative reflection and prayer – could work well in their local primary and secondary schools.
The stories of those first four prayer spaces spread quickly and the following year there were twelve more. The year after that, there were another 48, and after that there were a further 100 prayer spaces. To date, we have tracked and supported thousands of prayer spaces in more than 30 nations, and at least a million children and young people have participated in them.
Prayer Spaces in Schools was officially launched as a project of 24-7 Prayer in 2010, along with a small team, a new logo and the first iteration of this website. Since then, it has become a growing hub for the network of practitioners around the world who run prayer spaces in schools. Our (still small) teams oversee the websites, encourage the sharing of resources and good practice, offer a wide range of training workshops, and support local networks.”
Prayer Spaces in Schools is a project of 24-7 Prayer who are a international movement and charity that started in 1999, with a student 
led non stop prayer vigil! If you’ve not heard of 24-7 Prayer before, defo worth a search down that rabbit hole for plenty of encouraging stories about faith, boldness and miracles. Look up Pete Greig the founder, 24-7 prayer history, 24-7 prayer mission, or 24-7 Justice. 24-7 Prayer is familiar to me, as a young person our church would regularly hold 24-7 prayer events, setting up a prayer room and iniviting the church members and young people to sign up and pray – trying to cover a whole week of 24-7 prayer. As a 19 year old I also went on a mission trip with 24-7 prayer to Tenerife to volunteer for The Living Room, a Christian cafe and support space for club and bar workers many of whom were from the UK. When I was 20, I also volunteered as an intern for 6 months with a 24-7 Prayer Boiler Room (a permanent prayer space) in Moorgate London.
I’ve also been involved hosting prayer spaces both in primary and secondary schools and for young people within a church context.
Prayer Spaces in schools work because children and young people are innately curious about life. Growing up raises lots of questions, some to do with their experience, both the good and the bad, and some to do with their sense of wonder at the universe we live in and whether there’s more to life than meets the eye. Many have an interest in the non-material aspects of life, the spirit or soul, and want to explore how these ideas and experiences help them to develop their own sense of identity, self-worth, personal insight, meaning and p
urpose. Many young people, especially those in Generation Alpha are also spiritually curious and willing to explore reflective practices and sometimes even prayer. In schools i’ve often talked about prayer for non believers as a hope or a wish, as a chance for reflection and if they want as a chance to talk to God.
Prayer spaces in schools enable children and young people, of all faiths and none, to explore these life questions, spirituality and faith in a safe, creative and interactive way.
Taking a broadly Christian perspective as a starting point, prayer spaces give children and young people an opportunity to develop skills of personal reflection and to explore prayer in an open, inclusive and safe environment. 
To fit in with the context of secular schools – the approach does not proselytise (seek to convert) and purposely allows pupils to make their own meaning and to draw their own conclusions.
A prayer space is usually (but not always) a classroom sized area that has been transformed for a few days or a week with a range of creative activities that encourage personal reflection on issues such as forgiveness, injustice, thankfulness, big questions, identity and stillness.
In most schools, teachers bring their pupils for subject-lessons in the prayer space. In other schools, pupils are invited to visit the prayer space voluntarily, during their breaks and lunchtimes and maybe after the school day has finished. I’ve delivered prayer spaces in schools during periods of exams for year 10’s, 11’s and sixth formers as a chance of respite, calm and reflection alongside a time that is often anxiety fuelled, stressful and anything but calm.
How to use Prayer spaces resources for schools, church, home and outdoors…
As I mentioned earlier in this article although many of these resources are designed for use in schools – they would also work really well in any context with kids and youth. In the resources section of the prayer for schools website there are actually 3 categories – school, home and
outdoors. Many of the ideas within the school category would also work within a more churchy context though, so dont write this off if you wont be using them in schools. Each category can also helpfully be filtered by age group under 5’s, 5-7’s, 7-11’s, 12-16’s and 16+ – you can also search mutiple age groups at once – if you had a mixture or all age situation! You can also search by particular themes. The prayer activities are simple, interactive, and invites young people to consider a theme and then to make their own response as a reflection or prayer. Some prayer activities involve writing or drawing, some involve an action and some are more contemplative.
You could use these prayer spaces activities and ideas in a dedicated prayer space or as a single activity as part of a bigger kids or youth session or as a reflection tool as part of a family service, or other family ministry. Maybe you could do a whole session on prayer and set up lots of these activities to engage your group in creative prayer. You could recommend them to families to use at home. You could handpick different activities and use them in creative ministry contexts like Forest Church or Messy Church. You could use these ideas with your team, as part of a debrief, or team time. There are probably more ways to use them as well!
There are literally hundreds of creative prayer ideas on there. You do have to log in/sign up to access the resources but this is free to do.
https://prayerspacesinschools.org/
https://prayerspacesinschools.org/prayer-activities/
