A New Year and A New Prayer Calendar

First we want to wish all a Happy New Year and continuing Blessings of the Season as we move into 2024.

As we head into 2024 we want to share with you all and highlight an important part of the work and mission of AIF, and that is the work of Prayer....

Prayer can be and is crucial for Interchurch Families as it provides a common ground for spiritual connection, fostering understanding, unity, and respect for others faith traditions because prayer helps navigate differences, can help us seek guidance, and cultivates a sense of harmony within us as individuals and as family. Prayer can also serve as a way to honour and integrate the different traditions with their different formats and styles in a way that creates and makes space for the shared beliefs and values found in the mutuality of the shared Christian faith.

However prayer is not just important for the individual families, but it's also important for us as the organisation that is the Association of Interchurch Families, because prayer serves as a unifying force that strengthens the bond among members of the association, and it helps us to reaffirm our commitment to understanding, dialogue and unity within ecumenical circles and with the different denominations across the breadth of Christianity and the vast make up of those in Interchurch Families.

Prayer provides guidance, solace, and a shared spiritual language for addressing the challenges and joys we face as Interchurch Families working to foster a sense of community, engagement, education and support.

So it is that as we move into 2024 we will be working to broaden this language and activity of prayer and highlight it so that Prayer can be recognised and developed within the AIF work wider, to that end we have updated our Prayer Calendar with a theme for each month of the year that can be found here: Prayer Calendar (interchurchfamilies.org.uk

You will also find If you go to our Social Media Channels and our Diary section some weekly or daily prayers on these themes too, so that not only our existing members, but also our wider networks and those not members of AIF can also pray for our works with us, and come to a knowledge of our work and mission through this shared language of faith too.

We would also invite our members and our friends in the wider Interchurch and ecumenical communities to share our prayers out through their networks too, and if you have prayers or thoughts on prayer and Interchurch Families we invite you to share those with us here too...

We welcome prayers of others, and we also welcome contributions for consideration to share on our blog too.