How satisfied are you with your 'prayer-life'? Does it feel like there's a gulf between your everyday life and your 'spiritual life' - with your daily routine feeling much more 'real' than, and largely separate from, time spent in church activities or prayer?

Perhaps you'd love to go away on retreat but neither time nor circumstances allow. Or maybe you feel 'It's all very well for monks or nuns who spend all day in prayer, but I've got a school run to make / train to catch / work to do...'.

If any of this sounds familiar then here's a week designed with you in mind. This is a rare opportunity for lay Christians and is open to everyone, young or old, new Christians or established ones.

The 'Retreat in Daily Life' gives an opportunity to spend time with God, exploring what prayer is about and how it might connect with everything else you are juggling while still carrying on your everyday life.

What does it involve?

This week will involve a few adjustments to your daily routine. There'll be an initial gathering of all involved in the week at 4.00pm on Sunday 16th May at St Paul's, Chipperfield, both to pray together and welcome God into the coming week and to explain and answer questions on the practicalities.

We'll gather again, a week later, at 4.00pm on Pentecost Sunday, 23rd May, at St Paul's Chipperfield for a service to acknowledge and celebrate all that God has been doing during the week.

Each day that week, from Monday to Saturday, you will meet for half an hour with an experienced prayer-guide (not your vicar) at a local venues to reflect on your (honest!) experience of prayer and how it's related to your faith and life.

You'll spend a further half hour each day on your own in personal prayer and reflection. Your prayer-guide will provide suggestions to help you structure this activity.

Why give it a go?

It's a great way to connect, or reconnect, your prayer-life to all that is going on in your daily life. It will encourage you to see where God is at work and to listen to God's voice in both the ordinary and the extraordinary that you encounter along the way.

Those who have engaged with this sort of retreat in daily life testify to the possibilities that open up: of encountering Christ's presence in their life - whether for the first time or in new ways; of growing to know themselves better, both in what helps them to pray and also in opening areas of their life that have somehow felt closed off to God before.

What sort of people might benefit from the Week? Do you have to have a high level of spirituality and Bible knowledge?

Be assured - the answer is 'no'!

• Come with open hands, willing to meet with God

• Come with full hands, weary from all the burdens you carry

• Come in joy or gloom

• Come full of faith or with no faith left at all

• In short, come exactly as you are!

If this sounds like something in which you might be interested, there are application forms at the back of church. If you'd like further information, please speak to Brenda Bell (01923 772482).

16 - 23 May 2010