Thy Kingdom Come 2024

‘Thy Kingdom Come‘ is the name given to nine days of focused, interdenominational prayer each year between Ascension Day and Pentecost Sunday. In 2024, this covers the period Thursday 9 to Sunday 19 May inclusive.

Local churches can take part in ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ in one or more of the following ways:

PRAYER STATIONS – Consider setting up prayer stations around your church building, or outside in the church grounds. Prayer stations can help people to pray in a variety of ways – with a different focus at each station. This year, artwork created by Revd Chris Duffett, with an accompanying Visio Divina PAINT acronym, is available to guide your times of prayer. You can order A6 postcard, A4 size or larger sized sets from CPO here, with a digital downloadable version coming soon (Link HERE).

UNBROKEN PRAYER – Why not organise a time of continuous prayer for your church and/or group of churches? This could be one 24-hour period, a week of unbroken prayer, or prayer throughout the whole novena. If you don’t have enough people to cover a 24-hour prayer period, explore joining forces with a neighbouring church. This provides a great opportunity to build inter-church relationships. By using modern technology, you could even collaborate with a church in a different time-zone elsewhere in the world, so that all times of day are covered in prayer. The ‘24-7 Prayer‘ movement provides useful pointers to continuous prayer-times HERE.

PRAY FOR FIVE – Praying for five friends, family members or colleagues to encounter the life-transforming love of Christ, is at the heart of Thy Kingdom Come. As a church, why not buy some wristbands or cut pieces of string, and encourage each person to tie five knots as a reminder to pray for their five people over eleven days? Or perhaps you could set aside time in your church service to pray this way? Lots of creative ideas can be found HERE.

PILGRIMAGE – Each year during Thy Kingdom Come, Christians journey together in prayer on pilgrimage and through prayer-walking – whether in the local community or further afield. Perhaps your church could create a prayer map of the local area and highlight specific places of interest to pray for, such as schools, hospitals, town centres. Or perhaps you could commit to praying for every road in your neighbourhood and mark them off as you walk and pray for them? ‘Hope For Every Home‘ has produced a simple prayer-walking guide, that you can download via THIS LINK.

PRAYER OUTREACH – Your church can connect with the local community in many ways during ‘Thy Kingdom Come.’ For example, why not combine a prayer event with a community fun day – something suitable for all the family? You could make it fun for small children by using the Cheeky Pandas video resources (Link HERE), or set up a trail in the churchyard or community garden, with activities, crafts, stories and songs. Alternatively gather Christians to offer prayer for people in the town centre, using the ‘Say one for me‘ resources. Or deliver ‘prayer postcards’ to homes in the neighbourhood and encourage people to send in their prayer requests, with an invitation to come to church. Or open the church building at specific times during the day so that people can come in, pray, reflect and explore.

Young people are invited to join with thousands of others across the nation, to pray ‘The Prayer‘ that Jesus taught us, The Lord’s Prayer, in one mighty voice, at 5.30pm on Pentecost Sunday, 19 May. A national event will take place from 5.00pm to 6.00pm, to include contributions from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, plus Rachel Gardner and The Way UK. Discover how to get involved with #ThePrayer HERE.

Individuals can engage with ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ in 2024 by downloading a free, 32-page prayer journal HERE.

Thy Kingdome Come resources for individuals, children, families, young people and local churches can be found at www.thykingdomcome.global.