Prayer Service Outline for the Racial Justice Prayer & Action Challenge

*The prayer service below is designed to take worshippers from lamentation to liberation. Communion will be the focal point of the service, with the option for a sermon or a meditation/devotion time. Prayers may be in Spanish, Tagalog, French, Korean, and English. In addition, you may select the prayers from the Racial Justice Prayer and Action Challenge weeks. 

*You can also consider the template below as a starting point. You may consider creating this prayer service as a movement of the community – prayer stations. You can identify six distinct locations in your church, sanctuary, fellowship hall, or even outside of the building that you would move to for each prayer area. Those locations may have an image or a giant printout of the prayer they would join. You may also consider using singing, instrumental music, etc. to lead people from one station to another. 

Gathering Music 

Words of Welcome 

  • Share with the gathered community the purpose of the prayer service. 

    Siblings in Christ, we gather in this space to be a community that takes the time to be in intentional prayer for a world that continues to experience racial injustices. Our time together will walk us from lamentation to liberation with prayers that have been written by leaders across the globe for the Racial Justice Prayer and Action challenge of The General Commission on Religion and Race of The United Methodist Church. We will experience silence, scripture, prayers in unison, and communion during this time. Let us now center ourselves on the One who created all of us and proclaimed it to be good!  

Opening Hymn/Song 

Scripture Reading: Psalms 13 

  • If you want to make this interactive, you may have post-it notes for people to answer the following question: What is your lament today? They can place them on a table or wall as the collective lament of the community and then follow it with the prayer of lamentation. 

Prayer of Lamentation 

Hymn/Song

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 1:16-17 

Prayer of Healing 

Hymn/Song on Healing

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 58:12 

Prayer of Repentance 

Remembrance of Baptism 

Celebration of Holy Communion 

  • consider using the following Communion liturgies by Rev. Mary Johnson: 

Communion Liturgy: Black Lives Matter — R-Squared (r2hub.org) 

Great Thanksgiving – Communion Liturgy Celebrating Cultural Diversity — R-Squared (r2hub.org) 

Hymn/Song

Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 

Prayer of Reconciliation 

Hymn/Song

Scripture Reading: Job 14:7-9 

Prayer of Hope 

Hymn/Song

Scripture Reading: Luke 4:18-19 

Prayer of Liberation 

Song of Celebration 

Sending Forth

Go forth as Justice Seekers in world of dire need for God’s justice and grace to be experienced! Amen! 

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