Prayer for the Week: Your church is born! Your church is alive! Your church is on fire! O Living and Life-Giving Spirit, you provide life and purpose and power to this, your body in the world today. In this Season of Pentecost, we look to you as the source of revival. We call upon your Spirit to break open the facades that we have created that seek a winsome and non-threatening image of Christianity. We call upon your Spirit to shatter institutional religion that seeks self-preservation at the expense of life-giving and life-sacrificing love. We call upon your Spirit to create anew your vision for the church, your Body at work in the world. Come, Holy Spirit, rebuild us from the ground up. Prepare us to be the voice for those who have no voice; to be advocates for justice in a world where too many human lives are viewed as expendable; to be a guiding hand to those who feel utterly lost; to be a source of encouragement to those who know only hopelessness; to be prophets in a world that still seeks to kill the prophets; to be those who passionately announce the Good News of your relentless and reckless love. Too often, we talk about going to church on Sunday morning, yet your Spirit is challenging us to be the church every hour of each day. In the name of Jesus, may we rise to the challenge. Amen.
