Prayer pointers was last updated in time for Sunday 23rd March 2025.
This page offers prayer suggestions for personal use and for intercessions in Sunday services. Don't feel obliged to use all of it!
Please pass on prayer requests to Stephen, via email. Please do not request prayers for the health or wellbeing of named individuals in this public forum.
Ash Wednesday and Lent reflection
Please reflect in your prayers on Stephen's Ash Wednesday sermon. As rural churches, we enjoy above average levels of churchgoing per head, but the absolute numbers attending church in any given parish are very small. Many people, and most of those under retirement age, choose to attend Kendal or Penrith churches in preference to ours. Our Benefice population, of less than six thousand people, is about the same as the average parish in England, and yet we divide ourselves between 13 buildings rather than 1; 8 PCCs rather than 1. Our burdens our multiplied and our resources are divided. Is this what God is calling us to be? How do we find new ways of being church while preserving our distinctive and important quality of being the Body of Christ in every place?
Giving thanks for the week just past
We give thanks this week for the extraordinary success of our youth weekend away, which we shared with other young people from around Eden and Furness. We are thankful for the fun, the food and the fellowship. We give particular thanks for the enthusiastic engagement with our teaching programme on the Kingdom of God: what is means, how the world falls short, and how we might become more active citizens of the Kingdom. Particular thanks for the participation of our young people and group leaders in the close worship, a celebration and recap of the weekend's themes with an Agape Meal.
We are thankful for our Deanery Synod, to those who hosted us in Kirkby Thore, and to Revd Raewynne Whiteley for her session on vocation. Pray for all Christians, that they might discern how God is calling them to do the things they love in his service. Give thanks for the generous discussion which followed, on the use and future of church buildings throughout the deanery.
This weekend
We pray for all our services in the benefice this week and give thanks not only for leaders, but for everyone whose time and effort is required to make the service happen. We reflect on the conundrum of wanting to be the church in every place, but also therefore dividing ourselves into many small church groups which struggle to sustain themselves, their PCCs and their buildings. Ask God to help you contemplate these competing priorities in the life of your church deeply and joyfully. Ask him to inspire with new ideas and free you from worry. The flowers of the field neither toil nor spin, after all!
David Jones
Give thanks for the life of David Jones and for the enormous contribution he made to our churches, their administration, services, buildings, music and organs. Pray for Jenny and the family, and give thanks for the funeral at Morland on Friday 21st March. Pray for those who organised the service, the livestream, and the viewing in St Lawrence, Crosby Ravensworth.
Online presence
We give thanks for the use we are able to make of our website, WhatsApp Community, Facebook Page and now YouTube Channel. Help us Lord to prosper this work and reach out beyond our congregations. In this most hazardous of human activities, keep us on a straight and narrow path. May our corner of the internet always be one that glorifies you.
Ministers
Pray for our ordinands, Lou and Sue, and for our curate Chris Smith, as he prepares to join us from Hawkshead. Pray for the success of his service of welcome at Crosby Ravensworth (Saturday 5th April at 7pm), for good attendance from our own parishes, and a warm welcome for his visiting supporters.
Church buildings
Give thanks for the work to install areas of infra-red heating in St Patrick's, Bampton. Pray for other schemes to maintain, upgrade or install heating in our churches.
Schools
We give thanks for the Diocesan schools' breakfast attended by headteachers and ministers in Levens last Thursday. Pray for Ruth, Stephen, Duncan, Katie and Louise in their work together and in each of our church schools, not forgetting to pray for the community schools which also make us welcome. e they extend to us and their readiness to visit us in church.
Pray for our Jesus and Me ("JAM") session in Morland this Monday.
Please remember in your prayers Bolton school's search for a new headteacher, to carry on the good work which Mrs Elstone has done. Pray for Mrs Elstone that her retirement from teaching may be fulfilling.
Growing Younger Ministry
Please continue to pray for our youth groups in Shap on Mondays, Morland on Tuesdays and Maulds Meaburn/Crosby Ravensworth on Wednesdays, for Ruth and our volunteers, Mel and Lynda, Zoe and Elizabeth.
Please pray for the new youth group which started on March 6th in Bolton, as it finds its feet and discerns what sort of group it is called to be, that more young people may find a welcome with us, and for Ruth, Rowan and John. Pray for the further funding from Westmorland & Furness for which John is applying.
About prayer pointers ThePrayer pointers page was a suggestion made at one of our Saturday morning training sessions on 15th February 2025. Talking about leading interecessions, we identified the importance of praying, as a benefice, for all the different needs and activities of our communities, churches, PCCs and congregations. In order to do this effectively, we need to know what each other are doing.