A Prayer for General Synod

By Rev. Dr. Patricia A. Singletary

Congregations are invited to pray for General Synod during congregational worship the week before General Synod or on the Sunday during General Synod. This prayer can be used during worship, or it can be used for individual or small group prayers during synod.  

Most Holy and Eternal God, our Father, we lift up to you the gathering of General Synod.

According to Ephesians 3, O God, we ask you to grant each person at synod strength through Christ Jesus, according to the riches of Christ Jesus’s glory.

We ask that, through faith, Christ may dwell in their hearts, that they become rooted and grounded in love, that they may be able to comprehend with our sisters and brothers in the faith, the width and length and depth and height of Christ’s love for us. We ask that they may be filled with all the fullness of you, most Holy and Eternal God, our Father.

We thank you that Christ Jesus can do exceedingly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.

Heavenly Father, Jesus told us in Matthew 18 that whatever we bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth is loosed in heaven. In Jesus’s name, we bind the will of each person at General Synod—each psalmist, each speaker, each official, each representative—laborers and co-laborers in Christ, and their emotions to the Holy Spirit.

We pray for each person participating in this General Synod. May every attitude be an expression of the fruit of the Spirit as explained in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Your Word tells us if anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask you, and they will receive wisdom, according to James 1:5. We ask for wisdom in every decision General Synod must make.

With the words of Isaiah 40, we pray, O Lord, that you renew the strength of those who wait upon you. Let them mount up with wings like eagles. Let them run and not be weary. Let them walk and not faint.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for the performance of your Word in our lives, and in the Reformed Church in America.

In the name of Jesus, amen!

The Rev. Dr. Patricia A. Singletary is the first woman pastor of the Elmendorf Reformed Church, the oldest church in the village of Harlem, New York, established 1660. She earned her M.Div. and D.Min. from New Brunswick Theological Seminary. She is the founder of the PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens) movement and is the founder of Harlem’s African Burial Ground Task Force, through whose work the City of New York is now planning to establish a memorial site, cultural museum, and affordable housing site in that area.