Earlier in the week, I had decided that rather than me writing and leading prayers of approach, I would use 'open prayer' allowing people to offer their own praise and thanks.  By the time I got to worship this afternoon, I had changed my mind, and decided I would do what I sometimes do with the girls in Brigade, and ask everyone in turn to offer a one sentence 'thank you prayer.'

I duly introduced the idea, warned the person who would be asked to start us off, and told people they had to use the (hand held) microphone so that everyone would be able to hear.  I wasn't sure if people would play ball or not.  But, miraculously everyone did - and I feel the mike as a prop probably helped.  Some prayers were unintelligble because they were bellowed or mumbled into the mike, but everyone made an attempt

The prayers were no more, and no less, profound than those my five year olds offer.  Thanks for family and friends, for church, for freedom of worship, for Jesus, for the sunshine (which was gorgeous), for the school building where we meet.

It would be lovely to think that suddenly everyone would be confident to offer extempore prayers, but I think that would be a little optimistic.  But at least now we've done this once, we can do it again, and people will hopefully feel a little less intimidated by prayer.

Pay back came in the form of the duty intercessions leader forgetting all about it, so I had to step into the breach - my turn to be put on the spot and pray extempore with no chance to think about it first.

Still, overall I think the service went quite well and allowed us to think afresh about the theme of temptation, sin and forgiveness.