The Evening Prayer service provides a time of stillness, liturgy, music, prayer and silence – a regular opportunity for us to reflect and rest together in God’s presence.
While we can’t currently meet physically together in the church building we can still meet virtually together to pray, to be silent and to create space to reflect.
Evening Prayer Onlne services are streamed on YouTube fortnightly on Sunday evenings at 8pm – do join us to pray together ‘live’ if you can, but if not the services will remain available for you to watch/pray at a more convenient time. (Please search for the Emmanuel Croydon YouTube channel to link up)
The latest services are available here
Our services will always include:
* beautiful liturgy
* a Bible reading
* the opportunity for us to pray for ourselves and others
* a beautiful Taize song repeated before and after 2 minutes of silence
* we always finish by saying the Lord’s Prayer together
If you have a candle at home and can light it safely, you could put it next to the screen and do so at an appropriate point in the service.
Thank you for joining us at Evening Prayer.
A few suggestions about how to use silence in contemplative prayer are given below:
You can use the silence in various ways. Here are three ways that Christians have used times of contemplation over the centuries:
+ Choose a word or phrase that has been used during the liturgy, perhaps from the Bible, and turn it over and over in your mind. As you dwell on it, open yourself to God revealing new things to you.
+ Look back on your day, hour by hour, from when you woke up to the present. Where did God make himself known? What are you thankful or sorry for? How will God’s presence today prepare you for tomorrow?
+ If there is something or someone for whom you have a burning desire to pray today, watch intently as the heat rises from the candle and know deep in your heart that prayer is rising to God for that person or situation.