These pages provide content for an hour of prayer focussed on the Climate COPs.
The material has been drawn together by a small group of Christians from St Mungo’s Church who meet most Monday mornings to pray for Creation Care issues, which means that many of our prayers focus on the climate crisis.
Since 2022 we have marked the fortnight of the Climate COP by producing an online prayer resource for last but this year we decided it would be good to come offline and meet with like-minded people from our neighbouring churches to pray for the outcomes of the Climate COP. (You can see last year's resource with links to previous years at www.cop-prayer.uk).
Increasingly there are questions about the effectiveness of the COPs particularly since there are some significant sticking points that hamper real progress. We decided to focus on three of these using the only power at our disposal – prayer - to ask God for breakthrough.
So these pages guide us through reflection and prayer focussing on:
Equity and Fairness
Finance
Phasing out Fossil Fuels
Three different areas but all with a common theme of justice.
The format for each section is the same:
A short introduction to set the scene
Some words from the Bible that we think are pertinent
A led prayer, intended to be read out loud
A few minutes for reflection/open prayer (some quiet background music could be played at this point)
And each section finishes with a Psalm, or parts of several Psalms to be said as a response prayer, following a leader.
Each part should take a little less than fifteen minutes, after which - if you are meeting with others - we invite you to finish with a prayer conga, which we guarantee will probably be nothing like you imagine (and nothing to worry about).
Some people like open prayer, others prefer to reflect, so we suggest that if you are meeting in person, you place chairs in semi-circles so that if anyone does want to pray out loud it will be to a small group.
When we look at the enormity of what is going on in the world around us, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless to bring about meaningful change. However, in 2 Chronicles 7:14 the LORD said to Solomon in a dream
“...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
We call on God to heal our land.