Spiritual Reflections
It’s good to pray together, share together, encourage one another and learn together.
The YBA produces resources and reflections to encourage churches to think about Lent, Advent and other key times in our Christian calendar.
We have been blessed to hear your stories which have resulted from these shared studies.
Please feel free to adapt/update and use any of these resources.
YBA Prayer Diary 2024
Prayers for w/c 15th & 22nd December 2024
Wheatley Park Baptist Church, South Yorkshire
Wheatley Park is a small church with a big heart to reach out with the good news of Jesus. We’re situated in an area of both social and private housing, two miles from the centre of Doncaster. We have between 50 and 60 regular attenders.
We are an outward looking church, with good community connections, with our weekly Friendship Centre, Parent & Toddlers groups, Christianity Explored course, monthly Activity Church (a Saturday afternoon “messy church” format), and Open the Book (a team presents dramatised Bible stories in our local primary school).
Needs
1.Guidance in Choosing Our Next Minister
Pray for God’s wisdom and direction as we are in the process of considering a particular person to become our next Minister, as our current Minister prepares for retirement.
2. Openness to Change and Relevance
Although we are a church with many outreach activities, pray that we remain open to God’s leading.
Pray that we would be adaptable, so that we effectively serve our local community in a rapidly evolving cultural landscape.
Pray that we see more of our many contacts and fringe attenders come to faith and then grow in their faith.
3.Children’s Ministry
Pray that we would be able to effectively resource our Sunday morning children’s ministry after a number of volunteers have stood down.
Thanksgiving
We are thankful for:-
The many opportunities we have to reach out with the good news of Jesus, through the many contacts we have in our community.
The increasingly diverse international make up of our church family, with people of many nationalities and ethnic backgrounds worshiping together.
Visitors frequently commenting that they feel welcomed, valued and at home, for which we are grateful.
York Baptist Church, Eastern
Please find our recent activites on our website.
Zion Baptist Church, Mirfield
Please find our recent activites on our Facebook.
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