Home What We Do Events Global Gathering 2024 GG Session Documents Liturgical Morning Prayer - Day 1

Liturgical Morning Prayer - Day 1

Welcome to morning prayers. We are going to use the same liturgy each day this week. We hope that as it becomes more familiar it will help us to place God in the centre of our hearts and thoughts. It has been translated into French, Spanish and Indonesian. I will lead in English but feel free to read it in whichever language is easiest for you.

The blue parts are the parts we read together. The reader will read the Scriptures. After the Psalm, you are welcome to pray silently or speak your praises out loud in whatever language you prefer to pray.

Opening sentences (all)

One thing I have asked of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life;
to behold the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.

Who is it that you seek?

We seek the Lord our God.

Do you seek Him with all your heart?

Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Do you seek Him with all your soul?

Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Do you seek Him with all your mind?

Amen. Lord, have mercy.

Do you seek Him with all your strength?

Amen. Christ, have mercy.

Declaration of faith (all)

To whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life,
and we have believed and have come to know
that you are the Holy One of God.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,
King of endless glory.

Scripture reading:

(Leader) Joining with God’s people around the world we worship God with the words of Psalm 40

Psalm 40:5-6 (NIV) (Reader)

Blessed is the one
who trusts in the Lord,
who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false gods

Many, Lord my God,
are the wonders you have done,
the things you planned for us.

None can compare with you;
were I to speak and tell of your deeds,
they would be too many to declare.

Pause to pray either silently or out loud

Ephesians 2:14-18 (NLT) (Reader)

14 For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. 15 He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. 16 Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death.

17 He brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. 18 Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

Meditation (Leader)

Let’s consider the concepts of peace and unity. Christ has brought us peace. Have you noticed the relationship between peace and unity in these verses? Disunity is often both the cause and the result of conflict, therefore when Jesus brought us peace he also brought unity. His death destroyed the “dividing wall” that separated the Jews and the Gentiles and now those of us who have accepted Jesus’ gift of salvation are one body. He brought us from hostility to peace. Unity has come to us because Christ’s death brought the possibility for both groups to be reconciled to God.

Are there any “dividing walls” in your life? We have a choice to continue to build them taller or to start to take them down. Ask God to show you what step you can take today to start the process of reconciliation in that situation.

Pause for silent prayer

Pray now for people or places in conflict, that you know of personally, to be first reconciled to God and second with their enemies. That conflict could be physical but it could also be relational, emotional or spiritual.

Pause for silent prayer

Prayers for others

Let us offer our prayers for our families (Leader)*

Lord, we pray for the safety and protection of our family members. Keep them safe from harm and lead them in the paths of righteousness. Shield them from any danger and guide them through life's challenges.

Heavenly Father, we lift up any family members who are going through difficult times, whether it be illness, emotional pain, or other challenges. We ask for your healing touch and comfort to be upon them.

Pause to allow prayer for our families

Let’s offer prayers for those presenting today and the staff team in all their responsibilities (Leader)**

Our gracious God and Father. We approach your throne today, knowing that it is only through the name of Jesus that we can stand before you. We thank and praise you for your goodness. We come before you to seek your blessing on the Global Gathering 2024.

Grant that Pastor Simon who will bring your Word to us this week may do so with power and with great freedom. May he and the other presenters be filled with the Spirit. Speak to us, we pray. Speak to our hearts through the words of each person presenting and facilitating sessions today. May our lives be transformed.

Be present with the men and women who will lead us in worship. Grant that in all things they may seek to serve you. “Let everything that has breath” in this place praise the Lord together. May our worship be a sweet and fragrant offering to you.

Be with the men and women who are responsible for organising the Global Gathering and all those who are serving on the staff team. Thank you for the servant hearts you have given to them. We ask that you help them to be a blessing to many of your people this week. We ask that the Gathering will run smoothly and that your hand will be evident throughout.

We thank you for the staff and management of the hotel. We pray that we all can be a blessing to them, sharing your love, demonstrating your kindness and honouring them throughout the Gathering.

May we all seek your presence and glory in it together as we gather to meet you and each other this week. Amen

Offer your prayers for all those participating in the Global Gathering (Leader)***

Great God in heaven, you are in perfect union with your Son and your Spirit and so we pray that you would give us unity. A unity of one mind, one purpose, and of one spirit so that we can agree upon the one, true purpose for which we are meeting. We recognise that we all need you. Send us your guidance through your Spirit so that we can more easily be joined together in a common purpose and that all things would be done in a way that would bring you glory, Amen.

Pause to allow silent prayer for participants

Canticle (all)

Christ, as a light
illumine and guide me.
Christ, as a shield
overshadow me.
Christ under me;
Christ over me;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Christ as a light;
Christ as a shield;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.

Blessing (all)

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you,
wherever he may send you.
May he guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May he bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders, he has shown you.
May he bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.

Acknowledgements:

The liturgy and closing prayers are taken from the Northumbria community morning prayer. https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/morning-prayer/

* Prayer taken from https://www.christianity.com/wiki/prayer/prayer-for-family-pray-for-healing-and-protection-of-family.html

**Prayer adapted from https://www.challies.com/articles/a-prayer-for-a-conference/

***Prayer taken from https://www.patheos.com/blogs/christiancrier/2016/03/15/5-prayers-for-staff-meetings/

News

View all articles

Special Report - May 2025

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry

Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI

Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities. In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on. On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot. This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them. Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.