Coordinating 40 Days of Prayer for Synod

For five years, leaders and members from across the Christian Reformed Church in North America have been helping to call people to prayer for the denomination and its annual decision-making gathering, synod.

Synod has always been an occasion for prayer, seeking God’s guidance and discernment in the assembly’s discussions and decisions. In 2022, recognizing several unusual challenges facing the denomination, and especially synod, CRCNA leaders planned an intentional and coordinated call to prayer that would begin 40 days before synod and last until the day delegates gathered to deliberate.

“The 40 Days of Prayer for Synod started as part of a year of prayer for the CRC,” explained Jon Hoekema, prayer shepherd for the CRCNA. “The original prayer initiative gathered many people to pray, so we continued it into the next year, and it is still continuing.”

Each year, 40 prayers are compiled and then shared one at a time (daily by email) to guide and encourage people to pray for God’s presence and leading for the denomination, congregations and councils, pastors and leaders, synod delegates, and the deliberations and decisions made at synod.

So how do the prayers come together? Who writes them? In a communal sense, you do! Early in the year, in January or February, invitations to potential prayer writers go out, asking them to consider contributing a prayer to the project. Names are suggested by Thrive regional connectors, campus ministers, pastors, and CRCNA staff. We also prayerfully make selections from names in the Yearbook.

An important consideration involves making sure that the final group of writers represents the many voices of the CRCNA. “The CRC family is beautifully diverse in many ways,” said Hoekema. “As we put these prayers together, we want it to be a reflection of the beauty of our family. So we are very intentional about inviting people of different ages, ethnicities, abilities, locations, and languages to have their prayers included.”

This means inviting CRC-connected people from different parts of North America and the world, asking church leaders to recommend writers who are children or seniors, reaching out to Friendship groups or With Ministries, and checking with campus chaplains about recruiting college or university students to write.

As writers commit to joining the project, they each choose a passage of Scripture from a list curated by Hoekema to reflect on and inspire their prayer. Invitations continue to go out until all of the 40 days are filled. Writers usually have one to three weeks to write their prayers.

In March and April, writers send the prayers to CRC Communications staff to be compiled. Each one is formatted for consistency, and the whole collection is carefully copyedited. Finally each day’s prayer is prepared to be emailed to everyone who has signed up to receive them.

The prayers can be emailed daily or weekly, and this year we plan to offer a downloadable, printable PDF for people who prefer to be offline while praying.

Recognizing the importance of prayer, we are making several prayer initiatives available to CRC members and friends, including a pre-synod prayer gathering and prayer walk, early morning prayer at synod, daily prayer videos on social media during the week of synod, prayer intercessors at synod, and worship and prayer during synod.

“Praying for synod in various ways reorients ourselves toward God’s work and will. It brings our heart and desire for God’s kingdom to come and be evident in our gathering, and it calls upon God to lead and then bless the work we are called to in our little corner of God’s kingdom,” said Hoekema.

Learn more about praying for synod and sign up for online and in-person prayer initiatives here.