House of Prayer helps participants prepare for Lent

At one of the stations in the House of Prayer at Souderton Mennonite Church, participants can take a cup of M&Ms, then pray about a different thing in their life for each of the pieces of candy.

Other stations include ones where you can tie knots in a quilt while praying or attach ribbons to a giant globe while praying for the mapped countries.

With the addition this year of stations created by organizations such as Keystone Opportunity Center, Ten Thousand Villages, Bridges of Hope and North Penn Women’s Clinic, there will be new stations, such as ones with baby names to pray for the children, a brick for prayers for those in need of housing, a grocery bag for those without enough to eat or liturgies in other languages to help focus the prayers on services for people speaking many different languages.

This year’s House of Prayer, held in the fellowship hall of the church at Wile Avenue and Chestnut Street, is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24, through Sunday, March 5.

“The purpose is to prepare for Lent,” said Joshua Jefferson, the church’s youth pastor.

It will include about 45 interactive and multisensory prayer stations grouped in sections, including one section for each of the four seasons, he said.

Another of the areas is a children’s section.

“That will also be very interactive for them — a way to get messy and have fun and also turn their attention towards their relationship with God,” Jefferson said.

“In the center of the whole room is a gigantic, walkable prayer labyrinth,” he said.

Seeds, bowls, maps, pictures, candles, cards and “even a coloring station” are some of the multi-sensory things at the stations that help give participants an opportunity to pray in a way that is fully engaging, he said.

“It’s a way to help people engage their whole spirit and their whole mind, not just a liturgical experience,” Jefferson said.

“The first time I brought my youth group here, our kids prayed for two hours,” he said. “They were closing up, and I told them, ‘We have to get going. You have to stop praying,’ which is something youth pastors should never have to say.”

The House of Prayer is free and open to the community, he said.

“They don’t have to be affiliated with our church and they’re not going to be pressured to join our church by attending this,” Jefferson said.

This year’s theme, “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” is from Psalm 34:8.

Participants can come and go at the House of Prayer at their own pace, Jefferson said.

There is only one time during the 10 days that a coordinated, collective service is scheduled — at 6:45 p.m. March 1, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent — but even then, people can follow the entire liturgy as a group or choose to go at their own pace and which portions to participate in, he said.

The Ash Wednesday service will include ashes for anyone who wishes, he said.

The involvement of the additional organizations in the House of Prayer this year could lead to people getting involved or volunteering with those organizations in the future, but the focus of House of Prayer is on prayer, not on recruiting volunteers or distributing information about the organizations, he said.

House of Prayer participants are invited to bring a friend, their own personal Bible if they have one, a journal — “If they’d like to spend some time journaling, that’s a valuable way of integrating what they might have experienced,” Jefferson said — and their favorite mug for coffee or tea. Fruit, candy and bread for communion will also be available.

What has become the House of Prayer started as six stations at a women’s retreat and has grown, Jefferson said.

As he prepared for his first year of putting together the House of Prayer, Jefferson said, he wasn’t sure yet how organized it would be.

“It might just be a big mess of places that you can get lost in, but that might be OK because the point here isn’t arriving anywhere,” he said. “It’s more of a meandering process, spending time and getting lost for a little while, just like you would in a good conversation at your best friend’s house.”

“It’s a way to help people engage their whole spirit and their whole mind, not just a liturgical experience.” — Joshua Jefferson, Souderton Mennonite Church youth pastor