Prayer for the Church of 2055

What are you praying for your church to be like in 30 years’ time?

That’s the question that was posed to the children of Moorlands Church in Lancaster as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations.

A lot has changed since 12 people started the church in 2005 – there has been political change, rapid technological advances, and a global pandemic, amongst other things.

But those dozen founding members would be delighted to see that in that time, Moorlands Church has grown to 250 people meeting each Sunday morning, and an ambitious building project is now underway to enable the church to expand and multiply gospel ministry in Lancaster into the future.

Prayers for 2055

So, what are the children of 2025 praying for the Moorlands Church of 30 years’ time?

A slide into the baptism pool and people arriving on hoverboards were some of the more imaginative prayers.

Other answers included:

• “Still love listening to Jesus” (Gus, 3);
• “Keep singing lovely songs about Jesus” (Jemimah, 6);
• “Keep growing for the right reason so that the good news of Jesus’ salvation will go out to all the world” (Hannah, 13).

These are some wonderful and encouraging prayers that we can all pray for our churches!

A celebration time capsule

During a weekend of celebration, the prayers were written down and put into a time capsule along with:

• Photos of the church over the years
• Flyers from this year’s sermon series
• A local newspaper, providing a snapshot of the culture in 2025
• A sermon preached at the commissioning of the new church building in March 2025
• A Moorlands Church pen (everyone loves some merch, right?)

The time capsule was finished with a letter written “from Moorlands Church of 2025 to Moorlands Church of 2055”, read out on the day by Danny Rurlander, Moorlands’ lead pastor since the work began in 2005:

“We pray that at least ten more people would be sent out for a lifetime of full-time gospel ministry; that Moorlands church will be well known in Lancaster and beyond as a community of inclusive welcome and penetrating gospel truth; that several healthy, Bible-loving churches will have been planted in needy places; that you will be more concerned for the lost than your own comfort; that you will be looking outward at the many who don’t know Jesus in Lancaster, labouring to fulfil the great commission to make disciples of all nations.

If these prayers have been answered it will be because - in the grace of God - you will not have lost heart in gospel ministry or forsaken your first love.

We pray that the next generation of our church will have the same prayerful dependence on the word of God that we have, so Moorlands Church might continue to grow and thrive as a display of God’s glory in Lancaster for many years to come”. 

What a wonderful way to set out a vision for the church: in the form of a written prayer for the future, from one generation for the next.

The church’s plan is for the time capsule to be dug up and the letter read at the church’s 50th anniversary to see how God has answered these prayers.

Who knows: maybe a 33-year-old Gus and his mates will be there to read it again!

But what we do know is that God has been faithful and will continue to be faithful to his people.

Let’s pray with Moorlands Church for the work of the gospel to continue in Lancaster and beyond!