Contemplative Prayer
Companioned Prayer - A Prayer of Reconciliation and Renewal
A Personally Meaningful Experience
"I felt that God was present; His glory penetrated me. I know Jesus' love was total."
"My spiritual journey has taken on a new dimension. I feel God's call and Christ's love. Each time I pray with my companion, I feel like God has touched me."
"When I let myself listen in this contemplative way, the Holy Spirit gently guides me to new revelation, to new understandings that are very personal to my situation. God is with me in this prayer."
When enter into this prayer we find ourselves in a personal relationship with God. We are often surprised by His personal love for us and His gifts of grace. We come to know that He is living and a part of our personal lives, our needs, our hopes and our joys.
Our faith is awoken from within. We are called to new being, as a child of God. We find His love to be transforming. Each time we pray we discover anew our life in Christ.
What We Do When We Pray
In Companioned Prayer the traditional contemplative blending of devotion, alert listening, and faithful waiting come together with personal and private prayer issues.
In faith we take our personal prayer to God, holding it in His love, and wait for some inner movement or discernment. We stay with this as it unfolds and leads us to a new personal understanding given from His mercy and grace.
Then we rest in God's presence, felt and known from within, and acknowledge His personal gift to us.
Prayer Partners and Groups
We practice this prayer with others in an intimate community of faith. In small groups or with a prayer partner, we companion one another in our prayer journey. This helps us surrender into our prayer experience without concern for format or progress. Yet even as we are companioned, our personal prayer subject and experience remain private.
In this companioned small group approach to personal contemplative prayer we discover that we are a community of living faith. We find that our presence to each other is crucial to our journey with God. We become a vital community within Christ's living presence.
Prayer Ministry
Companied Prayer groups and partners also have the ability to share Christ's love and healing with other people in need. We can offer to companion individuals in their time of trail and challenge. No training is required on the part of the person in need. The prayer companion provides the guidance in the prayer. Healing and new direction occur directly from within the person's prayer experience as a gift from God; not from any advice or action provided by us.
This Companioned Prayer outreach is an optional yet natural extension of Companioned Prayer group ministry. Through it we find the good news of the living Christ and His healing presence being born within the very needs and brokenness of our human family. Together we are all gifted and changed through this prayer ministry.
Please join us in this ministry to others. Or, if you would like someone from this ministry to come to your home or meet you in the church, please let us know.
Sponsorship
Learning this prayer is easy. It has specific steps or movements that can be easily followed.
Members of Trinity Church’s Contemplative Prayer Ministry are available to sponsor the formation of new Companioned Prayer groups in your church or organization. We can provide introductory presentations, small group leadership, retreat leadership, or outreach ministry training. Additional comprehensive written resources are also available.
Simply contact an ongoing Companioned Prayer group ministry to get started. We will help you with the rest.
The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California
Trinity Church, Folsom
Rev. Charles Cornell, Rector
(916) 985-2495
Contemplative Prayer Ministry
John Ward, Coordinator
"Out of his infinite glory, may He give you the power through His Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then planted in love and built in love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and length, the height and depth; until knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:16-19