Develop a Discipleship System
Praying for Change: Daily Prayers for Anti-Racism
By Derek Weber
While the headlines may have receded, the sin of racism continues to be seen and felt on both individual and systemic levels. Dismantling racism is not a short-term task but a lifelong moving forward to perfection in love—to use founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley’s words. Therefore, Discipleship Ministries and other agencies and bodies of The United Methodist Church will continue to provide resources and guidance on how to become anti-racist individuals and churches. Please seek out the help you need to maintain your efforts to transform your community into an anti-racist fellowship.
The Worship Team of Discipleship Ministries believes, however, that such a change will not happen unless the whole process is bathed in prayer every step along the way. To that end, we will continue to provide daily prayers to help keep us all centered on the ongoing journey of transformation. From Monday through Friday, a new prayer will be posted here for your use as personal devotion, to share in your small group, or for use in corporate worship.
If you wish to receive these prayers each day in your email, the process for signing up is outlined below. If you would like to submit a prayer for anti-racism, click here to contact us. Join with us in this season of prayer and change in our denomination and beyond.
April 25, 2024
Spirit of Truth, grant us the grace to put ourselves and our reputations on the line, again and again. Empower us to use our voices to make room for other voices. Hold us accountable, powerful God, until we break down the last of the walls and partner with our siblings on the other side of them. Rather than objects of our pity or recipients of our goodwill, they are your capable and called servants. May we serve humbly alongside them, never assuming that we have or know what they need.
Keep us hungry, we pray, until the day when we sit beside those who were once “them,” at a shared table, a shared feast, with room enough for all. Keep us unsatisfied until there is no “they”; there is truly only “we.”
We ask this in the name of Jesus, the persecuted refugee; your beloved child who stopped at nothing to change our hardened hearts. Amen.
Excerpted from Prayer of Confession and Commitment, Migration Sunday Order of Worship, Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, https://www.bwcumc.org/article/migration-sunday-order-of-worship/.
April 24, 2024
God of Heaven and Earth,
You created the one human family and endowed each person with great dignity. Aid us, we pray, in overcoming the sin of racism.
Grant us your grace in eliminating this blight from our hearts, our communities, our social and civil institutions. Fill our hearts with love for you and our neighbor so that we may work with you in healing our land from racial injustice.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
We have prayed and now, with changed hearts, let us move our feet to action.
Closing Prayer, A Prayer Service for Racial Healing in Our Land, US Conference of Catholic Bishops, https://www.usccb.org/resources/prayer-service-racial-healing-our-land.
April 23, 2024
God of branches and of roots, God of vines and of fruit,
Those of us who claim the United Methodist Church as our spiritual home call upon the Holy Spirit to work within us as we begin the ordeal we call General Conference. We have struggled throughout our history to live into your vision of what it means to be the church. Sometimes we seem to have come close; other times, our failings and shortsightedness have damaged our witness and our work. Sometimes the “fightings without and the fears within” have kept us from living out the “open hearts, open minds, and open doors” that we claim to represent.
So be with us in these days of General Conference. Help us listen to one another; help us deliberate together, to decide together, and then to minister together as we seek to put your kin-dom before our preferences. Help us tear down the barriers, the divisions, the mistrust, and stand as a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual community of faith with a story to tell to the nations. Be in us and between us. In Christ’s name. Amen.
Derek C Weber, April 2024
April 22, 2024
Most might think, Creator God, that the subject of caring for this planet would be a point of unity, a common cause. Yet even here, we manage to find ways to bring division. Even here, we devalue some lives over the comfort of others. We declare that we all live on the same sphere and therefore it is in everyone’s interest to work together to preserve and protect this place we call Earth. And yet even a cursory glance shows us that we do not live in the same world at all. Some live in a world protected from the ravages of so-called natural disasters. Others live as climate victims or climate refugees, forced to flee rising waters or encroaching deserts. Some live as though resources are inexhaustible; others struggle to get by with less and less.
Open our eyes, God of all peoples, to see Earth Day as a justice issue, an equality issue, a race issue, not simply – though importantly – an environmental issue. Help us see those who are being broken by our desire for more and better as sisters and brothers, members of the one family of humanity. Let us learn to live more simply so that others can simply live, as the truthful cliché has stated. Help us be the community you created us to be. In Christ’s name, Amen.
Derek C Weber, April 2024
Rev. Dr. Derek Weber, Director of Preaching Ministries, served churches in Indiana and Arkansas and the British Methodist Church. His PhD is from University of Edinburgh in preaching and media. He has taught preaching in seminary and conference settings for more than 20 years.
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