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  • 6.29.2025 Bulletin
  • 6-22-2025 Bulletin
  • 6-21-2025 Bill Shiels
  • 6.15.2025 Bulletin
  • 13 Weeks of Prayer Invitation

    The following is a list of thirteen prompts, one for each week to help you to pray about St. Timothy and invitations. It will be helpful to have a notebook that you can refer to during this year. The notebook can be used to write down specific questions that you have for God, as well as any thing you hear or feel during your prayer time. It’s a great way to keep track of what you’ve asked God and how God has answered.

    1. For the next three months you are invited to join St Timothy in discerning the role invitation is meant to play in the life of our church.  What comes to mind when you hear the word “invitation”?  Do you have a negative or positive reaction to the word?  Spend some time contemplating your response to this word.  Then ask God to show you what the word invitation means to him.  Write down whatever comes to mind.  
    2. Take some time and remember how you came to be at St. Timothy. Did someone invite you? Were you making your way through all the Presbyterian churches in town? As you think back about that invitation, what made you say yes? As you hold all those memories in your mind, ask God to show you how you can extend invitations to others.  
    3. When you come into the church, what’s the first thing you notice? What feelings and thoughts come to mind as you enter St. Timothy’s church building? Are there things that make you feel warm and safe? Are there things that make you feel unwelcomed or that are barriers to you? Ask God to show you things in our entry space that could be encouraging or barriers to other people.  
    4. What is important to you to feel welcomed into a new space? As you go about your day, take notice of spaces that feel welcoming to you. Then take note of what made that space warm and inviting.   
    5. Write down a list of your friends that you really enjoy spending time with. What type of activities do you do together? Does St. Timothy participate in any of those activities? If not, spend some time in prayer about how St. Tim might expand what types of activities we do together.  
    6. Find or print a map of your local area. Take a week and pray for all of your friends that live within a mile of you. Pray about ways that you can welcome them into your home or some place near your home to get to know them better.  
    7. Using that same map, pray for all your friends that live more than a mile from you but still within driving distance of the church. As you think about moving from your home to the church, are there any ways that you can invite those you know to be a part of that journey. Think about days other than Sunday when you visit the church or gather with other members of St. Timothy.  
    8. Inviting family members to church with you can be some of the most difficult invitations to extend. Ask God to show you who would be open to an invitation and how you can share that request with them.  
    9. There are many ways to invite others to join the activities at St Timothy, but sometimes we don’t know where to start.  Spend some time in prayer asking God to give you the words to say to a friend or family member that you are wanting to invite.  Then write down what you have heard and keep it for when you are ready to extend that invitation. 
    10. St. Timothy sold a parcel of land that now is the site of homes. That land was once used for campfires, kickball, volleyball, balloon launches, kite flying. While remembering all the fun we’ve had in that physical location, pray about ways that we can invite our neighbors to join in the fun that we continue to have at St. Timothy. What types of activities can we open up to our neighbors and how can we make it easy for them to say yes when we do invite them.  
    11. Members of St. Timothy live all over the Metro Detroit area. Take some time to pray about what God may be inviting you to do in your local community. What sort of things is God prompting you to do to serve and love your neighbor? 
    12. Sometimes we don’t invite people to church because we don’t know if they would be offended or even interested.  Spend some time in prayer asking for courage and wisdom so that God can help you work through your discomfort of invitation. 
    13. Part of the discernment process is to be made aware of what you don’t know. As we have come to the end of this particular quarter of prayer about invitation, what has God revealed or made known to you about the role of invitation in the life of the church? 

  • 6.1.2025 Bulletin