Discovering and celebrating diversity to build unity

Discovering and celebrating diversity to build unity

EEA WEEK OF PRAYER 2019 Unity in Diversity

There is great richness and diversity among Evangelicals, which needs to be celebrated and not only be a cause for concern. One way to celebrate our diversity and in fact use it as acceleration for more complete unity is through the Week of Prayer of the World Evangelical Alliance. There is no better way to celebrate this than to come together in worship, thanksgiving, confession and bringing together our needs to God. Many local churches in Europe take this week of prayer as an opportunity to organise joint prayer meetings, which we would like to encourage. Here a few suggestions for you to keep in mind when you plan: 1. Please make sure that ALL Evangelical churches are invited and included in your prayer gatherings. Make an extra effort to also reach out to the migrant churches. Do you have Roma churches that you could invite? Including everyone will make your unity richer and more diverse. 2. It’s always a richer experience to go to various places, don’t forget about to the smaller ones? Each place is different and adds colour to your unity. 3. How can you practically express the vast diversity in your country? Do you make room for that? Opening up, making room adds surprising perspectives to unity. 4. Is your event relevant and appealing for youth as well? We encourage you to allow youth to participate and even help you plan and prepare. Unity across generations is really important for the church. 5. Plan a creative, relevant and appealing prayer meeting? Double check to make sure that prayer has the bulk of time? Unity is best expressed in spending time praying together. 6. We urge you to keep a gender balance. Have both men and women working together to create a program that will help express diversity? God has made diversity and rejoices when his body expresses this in unity. 7. Consider the future. Imagine seeing this event grow throughout the years. How can you create this year’s prayer event that will draw people back and bring their friends with them? Love is the glue which brings together diverse people in unity. God has blessed us with a wide range of ways to worship him! Let this week of prayer be the opportunity to celebrate this! Let this week of prayer be the spring board to make unity visible in our communities and show the world that diversity means being made rich as a united body in Christ. Praying that we will discover the vast richness of diversity in ways which will build and add to our unity as never before. Thomas Bucher General Secretary | European Evangelical Alliance

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