Peterborough City Pastors Prayer Breakfast

Who we are:

A group of church leaders who have been meeting regularly since 1996, The group is open to anyone who is in church leadership in Peterborough and the surrounding region.

Where we meet:

The City Pastors Prayer Breakfast meets at Peterborough Salvation Army (in Bourges Boulevard, New England) every two weeks on a Wednesday morning at 8 am for 8.15 am.

What happens:

Arrive at 8 am and be greeted with a hot drink. Prayer starts at 8.15 am, led by one of the group, and can take a variety of forms. At 8.45 am breakfast is served and consists of toast and tea, or a full English breakfast, beautifully prepared by the staff at the Salvation Army. People usually leave from 9.15 am onwards.

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Peterborough Hope 2008 Planning Meeting - 25 July 2007

Meeting held at the Benedict Rooms, Peterborough Cathedral Wednesday 25 July 2007.

Present: Jonathan Baker (Peterborough Cathedral) – [Chairing the meeting in Dave Smith’s absence], Chris Moreton (Methodist Circuit), Graham Timson (Church on the Rock, Elim), Caroline Cameron (PCC), Matt Wild (CROPS).

Apologies: Carol Bailey (Salvation Army), Dave Smith (PCC), Teresa Brown (Shire & Soke), Simon Campling (CROPS), David Jennings (All Souls RC Church), Paul Larcombe (St Paul’s Church).

Jonathan Baker opened our meeting in prayer

1)                13 September – Roy Crowne at PCC

Caroline has made contact with Roy’s P.A. and has talked through a brief outline of what we are thinking will happen on the evening- what we want Roy to do as well as discussing the expenses for YFC.

The musicians for the worship part of the evening are coming together with a few still to be followed up but people are on the ball with this. Karen Smith on return of holiday will pull together a rehearsal for all involved and it is part of her plan to have a choice/mix of songs that will include something for everyone, contemporary plus hymns etc.

Paul Larcombe via (Graham) wanted to pass on a though regarding the publicity/flyers produced for the event. He felt that we had missed an opportunity to make it obvious through the wording that it was a churches together event, in that the Roy Crowne flyer could be read to be a PCC/Kingsgate event. Caroline reassured us that this had not been intentional and that the artwork had been amended for future printing & also on the Pdf. There was agreement from the group that this had been a collective oversight in that the core group jointly proof read the flyer prior to printing.  It was agreed that future publicity should reflect the Churches togetherness of the events etc.

Jonathan showed a sample of an adapted Hope logo that Teresa had played around with (based on what Northampton might use), that saw ‘Peterborough’ replacing:  ‘in our villages, towns & cities’ on the logo, the intention being to make Hope more local for people.

There was then some discussion as to whether those on the outskirts of Peterborough (Oundle, Stamford, Deeping, Bourne etc) might feel excluded / that it was a just a Peterborough thing. It was concluded that maybe ‘Peterborough area’ or ‘region’ gave more blurred edges and would still be accessible for those not in Peterborough who wanted to participate. It was suggested that Teresa might give opinion/thought as to how others are doing this in their areas.

It was also noted that we should use the more recent Hope logo (the one without 2008) on our future publicity especially in 2008 (in line with the national Hope artwork). 

In regards to Publicity for the 13 September – Chris Moreton raised the question as to whether we needed to do anything else to bring the non – signed up churches on board with Hope and especially for the 13th? One suggestion was to have people available to go and talk about what is happening locally with Hope to churches that wanted this.

Caroline commented that the 13 Sep was the key event to get people along to and find out about Hope. It was definitely agreed that we should do remainder emails with (attached Pdf’s of the flyer) in early September.  (JB to ask Teresa about this).

2)       31 December – Peterborough Cathedral

It was agreed that we are very much at the ‘blank piece of paper’ stage with this, but that it would be crucial to have some firm idea of what the evening would consist of by September so as to be able to publicise on the 13^th Sep at the Roy Crowne event.

In regards to P.A & staging the Cathedral have staging that would take a band (but not a choir) and it would be best to use the p.a system/team the Cathedral usually hire in for large events in that they are used to working with the Cathedral acoustics etc.

 It was felt that this needed to be an all age event that was engaging and inspiring. If it was to be prayer based, the challenge will be to cater for the different prayer traditions/styles that people from different churches are used to.

Ideas that came out for the content of the evening were:

Worship – a mix which included: a choir, some worship led by a band (The Point worship team – as a draw for young people), and a couple of Christmas carols/hymns on the organ.     

Stations of Prayer – spread around the Cathedral that had different focuses for Hope e.g. schools, the workplace, prison, community etc and have people who have a particular heart for or ministry with these areas to prepare some kind of prayer focus. This should at the very least be a sheet of prayer points and scriptures relating to the particular focus that people can use in their style of prayer etc.

Testimionies/stories - Ideally there would be short presentations by people, (especially those leading the prayer focuses that are hands on involved in ministry & Churches that have done Hope type projects to date) when all are gathered at the front to inspire them to then go and pray for these areas. It would be good to have the Christianity with it sleeves rolled up team share at this point also.

(NB: We would need to brief these people well to ensure that what they said was short, snappy, inspiring & with media [video/or pictures] to keep peoples attention & focus).

It was agreed that in the September meeting we need to tie down who is contributing, what the technical requirements are etc for making the media side of things happen.

Commissioning – for the gathered folk at the end of the evening. We need to think about how and who does this, but this could be led by the Bishop & city church leaders. After this part of the service (which closes the service) we would encourage those who want or who are able, to proceed out of the cathedral to prayer walk in different directions around the city centre.  

We would need to produce a leaflet/sheet that people receive as they enter the building at the start of the evening that has details of what is happening throughout the evening and explaining the stations, with guidelines & prayer pointers for the prayer walk at the end.

Graham Timson offered to bring to the next meeting, what Church on the Rock/Prayer for the nations have produced in terms of guidelines for prayer walking. These could be adapted / used for the prayer walk guidelines.

Chris also suggested we produce a shared prayer of dedication and commitment card that people can take away (or sign there as part of the service?) as their personal ‘signing up’ to Hope.

3)          Publicity

Not too much to say here but are we thinking local press, radio (Graham has a contact Hereward FM), Church websites etc.

Do we try and get a feature in the ‘Your Peterborough’ paper/magazine. Do we go for the Dec/Jan issue, if so what is our message, what are we wanting to promote or advertise. We need to identify what our highlights will be so we know whether or not to promote these etc.

4)           Prayer

We needed to have Paul here to comment so not much was said.

5)            2008 – high points for the whole city

Need to agenda this item for the next mtg. Though, in regards to the football ground idea (from which Teresa after contacting PUFC - has not had any response), if this is to be a no goer and we still want to do some kind of event like this, we need to think what else – Peterborough embankment? Or featuring at the Peterborough Festival?

6)           2008 – other events under the Hope banner

There was not much said to this item. Graham did bring an audio CD for an Italian speaker who might be brought to the city particularly for those in the Italian community. It was agreed that people/churches should run with these types of ‘culturally targeted’ events but need not come under the hope banner per se.

7)        AOB

We talked briefly about in all our plans for Hope (more so the actual projects) not duplicating what the city is already doing but about working in partnership. It was mentioned that as the Hope core group we need to facilitate the networking of Peterborough Churches with what’s going on through the local council, police etc.  

In thinking about listening to the needs of the city, Jonathan talked about a ‘mapping exercise’ that Ian Houghton, City Centre Chaplain has done to assess the immediate needs of the city centre. It would be very useful if this could be emailed round to the core group prior to the next meeting so that some discussion of this could take place to see if we would like to invite Ian to come and talk about this etc with the core group at a later meeting.

Dates of next meetings:

Thursday 20 September, 11 am, Southside Methodist Church, London Road, Peterborough

Thursday 18 October, 11 am, KingsGate (PCC), Parnwell, Peterborough

Future meeting dates:

Wednesday 14 November
Wednesday 28 November
Wednesday 12 December

These are all at the Peterborough Salvation Army in Bourges Boulevard, New England.

For more information:
Purpose Driven in UK
Hope 2008