“We ran prayer space in the last week of term in the school chapel. The chaplaincy team along with the RE department were involved a week of prayer and reflection themed around ‘Peace – Discovering peace as a gift from God, having some peace in our lives and praying for peace in our world’. 

Around 200 students took part in the prayer space during the week with lots of engagement at different levels. For some it was a time to pray, for others it was a space just to be quiet and rest, for others they used the time as an opportunity to reflect on some of the bigger questions of life and our world. 

It’s been about 4 years since a prayer space has been run at the school so most the students didn’t have any experience of using a prayer space and most of our students don’t go to church or have a Christian background so we spent time explaining what prayer might look and be like for them. On the whole most of the students engaged really well. 

Our ‘create lego station’ was probably the most popular station as the students were encouraged to use their imaginations to create something from the lego. This usually involved the creation of some kind of weapon, like a gun! Although in some ways disappointing given our theme it did open up lots of really good conversations around war and violence in our world – particularly as there was a school shooting in the USA during the week. Most of the students came to agree that there is far to much violence in our world and so turned their guns into other things. One student created a air ambulance helicopter which was incredible. 

We learnt that activities that use touch and movement are the best at engaging students and bring out their true thoughts, feelings and experiences. 

We believe prayer spaces is vital to our students coming to encounter the living Lord Jesus. It is also vital in terms of our whole community becoming an even more fruitful and flourishing community – we want our students to grow out of rich and transformative encounter with Christ and prayer spaces is crucial to this vision”.