The changes we have made - And why we have made them

Prayer undergirds the work of the YBA. Prayer demonstrates our utter reliance on God and our care for one another. One of the ways we do this as a staff team and wider Baptist family, is by regularly praying for all our churches through the year using the YBA prayer diary.  Thank you to all who have been doing this faithfully or maybe even sporadically. For those who may not know, each week, a couple of our churches are featured in the prayer diary and become the focus of prayers from other churches and people across our Association. We may not know the specific needs of these churches, but we hold them in our hearts in prayer before the Lord seeking His blessing over them and their ministry.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were to additionally be able to pray for the specific, expressed needs of our featured churches each week?  That is exactly what we want to do this year – to raise up the specific needs of our churches before God’s throne of grace in obedience to His word: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Phil 4.6). 

Ahead of their scheduled week, we are inviting our featured churches to send in a short paragraph about their contexts and/or congregation alongside a few bullet points – three or four – of specific things our YBA family could be giving thanks for or praying for them that week and possibly beyond.  This is being uploaded to the Prayer & Spiritual Reflection section of the YBA website.  If they want to include some photos that is great. (Please remember to ensure that you have appropriate permissions from the individuals in the photos for them to be used in this way.) Any church who, for any reason, is unable to send in their praise report and prayer requests, will still get prayed for.

So be on the lookout for your church’s invitation to send in your prayer points and also do check out this area of the ‘Prayer & Spiritual Reflection’ section of the website, each week, so you can pray with knowledge and specificity for the needs of our churches across Yorkshire.  We look forward to celebrating specific answered prayers as we join together in praying for our churches.

If you have any questions about the administration of the prayer diary, please click here to contact Iris Cheung.

Nike Adebajo

YBA Regional Minister