Back in July I helped set up a Diary Room (a la Big Brother), which proved to be a great way of giving people opportunity to encounter the gospel.
I’ve had a few requests for some of the materials and graphics we used. These include stuff for the prayer stations and a tract.
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The Diary Room on day 2 and 3 continued to be a place where people in their hundreds paused to think about life and their relationships with others, and then prayed.
A simple concept, and a rather unimpressive diary room, but the whole thing caught people’s imaginations. We have spent the whole weekend leading people (and mostly under 25s) to prayer. We have collected nearly 1000 written prayers at one of the prayer stations. The majority of these prayers were deep heart felt prayers and responses from people suggest they had been really helped by being given the opportunity to pray in this way.
Teenage lads, overcoming the peer pressure to pray and then to talk about God. Families coming with children to leave prayers in the basket. A group of soldiers from the local regiment discussing who they get on best with. Young people leaving prayers for world peace. There are many stories of how people have engaged with the diary room this weekend and through it encountered God.
I learnt this weekend that people are not afraid to talk about God and even to pray, but are very afraid of The Church. I also found that young people are far more open to the gospel than older generations. Older folk often wouldn’t come near the diary room either because they were put off by the Big Brother theme, or fearful of letting barriers down, or more often, when told we were from the churches in St Helens, ran a mile!
Overall there is no doubt that this has been highly effective and surpassed all expectations. In all nearly 2000 people sat in our scruffy leather chair and were prompted to think about life and God.
If you are interested in using this idea, I can make the arkwork and prayer station material available. Just get in touch.
Posted in Mission
Spent today at St Helens Show. My Blog has been a bit quiet recently as I’ve been helping put together the SHINE Marquee (SHINE is the organisation that brings together the churches in St Helens aea). So we came up with the concept of creating a Big Brother Diary Room!
Visitors are invited to sit in the big chair and answer questions like: “How are you today?”; “How are your housemates?”; “Who do you get on with?” and “Who don’t get on with?”. Once they have contemplated that for a while they move on to the three tasks, which are basically inetractive prayer stations. You know the kind of thing – light a candle, hold a stone, write a prayer etc.
Day 1 has been pheonmenal. We did try counting visitors but it got too busy! Something like 700 people actually went in and sat on the big chair and most who did went on to do the tasks. Many other wandered trhough the tent. We have a bag full of posi-it note prayers written by folk, the content of which suggests God really used this today.
The other interesting observation is that 90% of those who went in to the diary room were under 25. Older folk tended to hover round the door and took a lot of persuading to go in! The whole Big Bother thing really hit the spot. Once in the vast majority of visitors took the tasks seriously too – hence the big bag of heart felt prayers.
This has been an amazing day. More tomorrow for Day 2…
Posted in Mission
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