Who will you need?

You need people who are:

• Prayerful
• Inclusive – welcoming towards pupils with differing needs, abilities, beliefs and backgrounds
• Reflective – able to listen, ask careful questions and be alongside the pupils
• Professional – in the sense that you are confident they will work to the school policies and will maintain an appropriate level of confidentiality
• Safe – being a safe person, and ensuring that the prayer space is safe for the pupils to use

How many people will you need?

You don’t need a large team to host a prayer space, regardless of how long it lasts. A team leader plus 3-4 other adults is sufficient for most prayer spaces (although for Key Stage 1 children, we would recommend having an adult for every prayer activity). Hosting a prayer space with less people makes it harder to be fully aware and responsive to what’s going on, and the risks increase. It’s possible, of course, to host a prayer space with a much bigger team, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better – just busier. Too many team members can sometimes ‘crowd’ a prayer space, and discourage pupils from participating.

Preparing/training your team

Your prayer space teams may include all kinds of people… children’s workers and youth workers, church ministers and members, parents and grandparents, teaching staff and even pupils. If they haven’t already been involved in a prayer space team, it’s important that you prepare and train them well. To do this, you could:

• Encourage them to explore this website and read the stories from other prayer spaces
• Show them some of the videos from other prayer spaces
• If possible, take them to visit another local prayer space
• If possible, take them along to one of our workshops, or host one yourself