31 August 2018 | Belgrade, Serbia [Widar Ursett]
Have you ever seen your sins disappear right in front of your eyes, literally? I came close to that today, but I had to walk a while to get there.
If you carry a burden of sin, or have a song of praise in your heart, or even if you are empty; there is a table and a chair waiting for you in the European Pastors’ Council [EPC] prayer room.
Geographical Challenge
As you climb up the stairs and face the doors leading to the auditorium that serves as the meeting hall for EPC 2018, you turn instead to the right and follow the big sign for the Prayer Room. Come around the left-hand corner and follow the corridor through the S- chicane, until you hit the corridor junction. Keep going! Take a sharp left and keep walking. Carry on! We’ll get there in a minute. Keep your eyes peeled for the next sign. It’s across the empty market-ish square space, and next to that shop over there. Another left turn, and you’re heading straight for the Art Café. Open the doors and walk in. You’ve arrived. It is a big café – and off it is the prayer room. Yes, all of it.
I didn’t know that, so the first time I visited, I wandered about looking for a small room where I could close the door behind me and pray without anyone seeing me. Quite the natural thing for a retiring, sensitive, introvert. However, if I needed that kind of prayer space, I should have stayed in my hotel room. This was something else, which rapidly dawned on me as Veronica explained the concept laid out in front of us. Veronica Williams is the South England Conference Prayer Coordinator. She was part of the planning team that designed this large open space.
Creativity
Even if you don’t go there to pray, it’s worth checking out. You can pick up truckloads of ideas that are immediately transferable to a local church setting.
Tables line up along the walls on two sides of the room. Follow the tables and you are guided through the story of the Prodigal Son, varied displays highlighting different aspects of that story as it unfolds in the Bible. The displays encourage you into activities that will aide you while you meditate and pray. As this story unfolds, you reach a table with a washbasin. And that’s where I saw my sins vanish. You write your sin on a piece of white cloth, dip it in the liquid, all the while confessing and asking forgiveness. When you open your eyes, the cloth is white again, and your sin have disappeared. Inspiring!
Karen Holford, director of the family ministries department at the Trans-European Division, and the architect behind the concept, tells of an old woman, 80 years old. The woman had done something 40 years ago that plagued her conscience. Intellectually she knew God had forgiven her. One day, though, she had the opportunity to pray her way through the journey of The Prodigal Son, and it transformed her. She came to the washbasin, and as she saw her sin disappear, she felt the burden lift, and had an almost physical sense of cleansing which provided a closure otherwise out of her reach. Can you imagine the intense peace?
Holford has given considerable time and energy to this set up, and just as much time procuring the materials and creating the guide texts. They are worth reading, even if you are one of those fortunate pastors who have nothing in their lives to be ashamed of.
Following the tables around the whole room, you will discover that the prayer topics and themed tables follow a logical sequence: You may enter the room with remorse and regrets, and bare your soul to the everlasting, always caring Father, yet you will realize at length that you are precious to him in spite of it all.
In spite of it ALL! And as you transit from one side of the room to the other, you are led through the beatitudes to the tune of “blessed are the…”, “blessed are the…”. You begin to understand that you are indeed blessed.
You come in remorseful and full of regrets. You leave rejoicing and renewed.
William’s words ring sad in my mind as I contemplate what so many could experience for themselves. “My experience tells me that you seldom get lots of people coming through, but those who do come really, really need it.”
I needed it. I’m surprised. I’m changed.
tedNEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Sajitha Forde-Ralph, associate editor
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