Baptist Futures, a Prayer for BU Council


The Baptist Union of Great Britain is currently engaged in a review and discernment process about the shape of our structures and ways of relating and resourcing. Today and tomorrow the BU Council meets to make some decisions that have potentially profound effects upon our life and witness together.

Simon Perry, a Baptist Minister, has written this prayer. I share it with you in the hope that you'll join us in praying for the future that God desires to be a reality.

Lord of time and space, we thank you for the good gifts granted to us:
For the place you have given us in history; for the corner of the world in which you have called us to serve; for the people whose lives are interwoven with ours; for the convictions that we treasure; for the heritage that shapes us.

As the Baptist Union Council meets to explore your will for our ways of living together, we thank you again for the Baptist heritage in which our identity is rooted.  
For the urgency of mission, and the desire to build colonies of heaven within a world of injustice.

For the passion to relate well to others within and beyond our church communities;
For the practical theology and the readiness to hear your voice in others, 
For the pragmatism that works around circumstances in the quest to see your will done on earth.

So as we take stock, and assess again where we are in our walk with you, we are conscious of the cold financial realities we face.  
As our Futures Group explores with Council how we might reconceive our ways of being together, we pray for wisdom: wisdom to trust that you are not confined by the structures we have long thought necessary; wisdom to find alternative ways honouring you with our minds, our mission and our worship.

We pray for holiness: Holiness to hear your word in whatever voice it comes; holiness to be open to a divine will that may liberate and transform us because it threatens and disturbs us.

We pray for vision: The vision to find opportunities for faithfulness where we have been neglectful; vision to see you at work in places we hadn't recognised you.

We pray for courage: Courage to explore new church structures and new ways of being together; Courage to change what we thought was unchangeable.

Lord of time and space, meet with us here and now, and grant us the faith to entrust our future to you.

The Revd Simon Perry  http://simonperry.org.uk/
For a question and answer session on the Futures process visit

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