Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Each episode, host Joshua Johnson engages guests who challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh perspectives for embodying faith in today's complex world. If you're curious about how cultural shifts impact your faith journey and passionate about living purposefully, join us as we explore deeper ways to follow Jesus in everyday life.
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Shifting Culture
Ep. 353 Phil Sokell-Miles - How God is Moving in Prayer Spaces in Schools
Phil Sokell-Miles has spent nearly two decades helping students encounter God in the most ordinary of places - schools. As part of the 24-7 Prayer movement, he helped pioneer Prayer Spaces in Schools, a global initiative inviting children and young people of all faiths and none to explore prayer, reflection, and life’s big questions in safe and creative ways. In this episode, we talk about how the movement began, why creativity can open us to the Spirit in ways words sometimes can’t, and what it means to serve schools as places of blessing rather than mission projects. We explore how prayer becomes a way of belonging, how the Holy Spirit meets us in quiet spaces, and how creating room for presence can transform lives. A conversation about childlike faith, holy imagination, and the God who meets us right where we are.
Phil Sokell-Miles (formerly Togwell) lives in the North of England with his family (wife, daughters, foster-mums/babies, lodgers and dogs). Phil trained and worked in all sorts of Youth & Community settings before joined the 24-7 Prayer movement as it’s first UK National Director. He now leads 24-7’s Prayer Spaces in Schools initiative, and he recently published 'Sticky Note Prayers', which tells the story of Prayer Spaces in Schools. Phil runs (a lot), and he still plays Pokemon Go.
Phil's Book:
Phil's Recommendations:
Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools
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He's trying to articulate an experience, an encounter. It made me feel whole. Surely, that's what prayer is about in more than all of the other stuff that we do when we pray. Surely it's about being remembered, reconnected, reconciled, brought back into wholeness. You.
Joshua Johnson:Paul, hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, Phil Sol miles, believes that prayer can open doors we didn't know existed for nearly 20 years. He's helped create those doors, spaces and schools where children and young people can pause, reflect and encounter something sacred. What began as a simple experiment within the 24/7 prayer movement has become a global story of creativity, presence and transformation. In this episode, Phil shares how prayer spaces in schools grew from a handful of classrooms in the UK into a movement spanning dozens of countries. We talk about what happens when we trade control for curiosity, when we stop talking at people and start creating space for them to meet God for themselves, he reminds us that prayer isn't a formula or a project. It's an invitation to belonging, to being known, to being made whole. This is a conversation about the Spirit's quiet work in unexpected places, and how simple acts of hospitality can open hearts to the love of God. So join us and discover what God is doing in prayer spaces and schools. Here is my conversation with Phil. Sokol miles, Phil, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on thanks for joining me.
Phil Sokell-Miles:It's wonderful to be here. Joshua, thanks for inviting me. Excited
Joshua Johnson:to dive into sticky note prayers, her new book about prayer spaces for schools. This, this 24/7 prayer movement that has actually gone around the world, and we see these prayer spaces in schools, that young children in schools are able to go into these spaces and pray and actually connect with God, which is an incredible thing, incredible movement. How did it start? Like, where was your What was your origin story into these prayer spaces for schools?
Phil Sokell-Miles:Yeah, it's a great question. I've been I got caught up with the 24/7 prayer movement right at the start. For those who are aware of 24/7 prayer will be aware that it's it all feels accidental. It all feels like it kind of happened to us rather than happened because of us. I was working as 24 sevens, first national director in 2004 2005 and one of the best things about that role was the emails, the phone conversations with churches who were running 24/7 prayer rooms. And, you know, people were experiencing the presence of God in their churches. Surprise, surprise, you know, and lots of incredible things were happening. And one of the fun things were was that these prayer rooms seemed to be escaping from churches and popping up in other places, like, you know, the party island of Ibiza, magic mushroom festival in Mexico, in the British Houses of Parliament. You know, in some third spaces, missional spaces, these prayer rooms were popping up, but none of us expected them to pop up in schools. And that's exactly what happened in the 2007 2008 academic year, we heard four stories from around England, unknown to one another. I think it was GK Chesterton that said that coincidences are God's spiritual puns, which I quite like we had this coincidence of four people, people who'd had experience of 24/7 prayer room in their church, who then took the principles, the ideas, the kind of values, into schools. And so this was a mix of high schools and what we call primary schools, kindergarten, church schools and public schools. And so I was fascinated. I trained as a youth and community worker. I, you know, young people is in my blood. And so when I heard these stories, I was like, I want to find out more about this. And so we invited the people who'd organized it to come to London. You know, we paid their train fare. We just want to talk. And we spent this day Joshua. I just, I vividly remember it. We spent this day asking questions, scrutinizing, what did you do? What happened? What did the children say? What did the young people say? Especially those that weren't Christians. What did, what did the staff say? How did you get permission in the first place? You know, all of this stuff, what was in the room, you know? And the only way I can describe it is it just felt holy, you know, I I had a shiver down my spine for most of the day, which I have right now as I'm telling you this story. It's, it's, it's like my early warning system. It's like, this is Holy Spirit. Shiver, shiver. You know, Phil, pay attention. I know you're rubbish at listening. Pay attention. You know? It felt holy. It felt like, it felt like we were being invited by the Holy Spirit to steward something. It was like, I've started something, don't mess it up, you know, do good with it, because this could be really exciting. And the critical question that day was, is this reproducible? You know, because sometimes remarkable things happen in a certain place, because, you know, it's a moment, it's a particular person, and it's not reproducible and and we have to accept that, but for some reason, it just felt like this was a first fruit, a seed that had been sown, and we were being invited to steward it.
Joshua Johnson:So the stewarding, what did it seem like to you that made it reproducible instead of just a moment?
Phil Sokell-Miles:Yeah, I think so. One of the unique opportunities in here in in Great Britain is that we have an education system that requires schools to offer spiritual learning. Anyone listening to your podcast, who's who's a teacher from the UK will understand this acronym, SMSC. It stands for spiritual, moral, social and cultural learning. And all schools, whether they're church schools or public schools, are expected to deliver SMSC. And that's one of the things that the government checks in you. You cannot be an outstanding school unless you deliver on this stuff. And even amongst those first four, that was one of the bits of feedback that teachers had given to those organizing the prayer spaces. And so immediately we realized this isn't like an added thing. The schools are recognizing that this is helping them to deliver something that they're expected to deliver. You know, so it already felt like this is integral and and to be honest with you, that that's become embedded in how we view prayer spaces in schools. We we want to find ways for this to be a blessing to schools, to serve schools, and that's our our appeal. When we do training with churches, we said to them, don't kind of kind of barge your way in to try and add something. Find a way to be a blessing. Find a way to serve. And so yeah, that. I think that was our key bit of learning here. And you know, surely that's the way of the kingdom, isn't it to get to go and do good, to go and rather than viewing schools as a kind of mission or fishing expedition, you know, let's, let's try and do things out there in the community so that we can hook children and young people and anyone else that we can drag back into our church, structures, products, projects. How about we go and be a blessing? I think it was, oh Keith green in his book no compromise, where he said, Jesus says, Go and make disciples. He says, Nothing about coming back. And I love that, you know, and that that felt embedded right at the start. Let's go and be a blessing to school communities without any intention of coming back. Let's go and do goodness, do kindness, do generosity, do hope, do forgiveness, do creating spaces to make it easier for children and young people to communicate with God. Let's go and do it there and be a blessing there. And it seemed like the doors were open. Now, obviously that's different. In other nations, education systems are different. So one of the first questions that that we enter into with people in other nations is, what's your education system like? What are the doorways to serve, to go and be a blessing? What's the culture like, what are the needs, what are the ways that we can add value to school communities and go and seek first, the Kingdom amongst these school communities? Frankly, Joshua, when I started, when we first started doing this, I thought, There's no way this is going to work anywhere else in the world, because we have a really unique front door opportunity. Now, 17 years on, we've had prayer spaces in 37 different countries, including the US, including in a public school in the US, and what we found is that Holy Spirit is opening doors that no one can shut in remarkable ways. It looks. Interestingly, the doors are different, but the models the same. So the same prayer activities, the same rough structure. It's just the language that we need to learn. We need to learn the language of our culture and our communities, but the message is the same.
Joshua Johnson:So what is the message? Then, if you're like training people to start prayer spaces for schools. What are these prayer activities? What does it look like to have a prayer space?
Phil Sokell-Miles:Yeah, so typically, prayer spaces are temporary. They run for a day, a few days, up to a week. There are some schools, some settings where they've become permanent, but that's not really the model that we would recommend starting with, start with something temporary. It involves using a space could be indoors, could be outdoors. The climate here in the UK isn't brilliant for outdoors, but you know, they're occasionally prayer spaces in tent with the new bows outside. So temporary a physical space that's set aside and filled with a series of interactive, creative activities, really simple activities that invite pupils, students, teachers, parents, all sorts of janitors with everyone seems to get involved, to reflect And or pray, and that's important. So I've got our mission statement written down here, which is prayer spaces enable children and young people of all faiths and none. That's really, really important to us to explore spirituality, prayer and life's big questions in a safe and a creative and an interactive way. So prayer spaces, they're not, they're not prayer rooms for Christians. That's that's not what we're trying to do here. There's, of course, there's a place for that. I want to encourage every Christian to pray more and find, find ways, as Paul says, Pray in in every possible way, in every possible occasion. But that's not the model that that we've that we've developed prayer spaces, and they're not always called prayer spaces. In in Vienna, they get called Soul spaces. In Salzburg, in Austria, they get called alive in Milwaukee, it's called a quiet space. You know that there are different names for these things, but the content is the same. It will be a series of maybe eight to 10 stations, you might we might call them activities for children and young people to express something of what's going on inside them. So it could be an activity about letting go of worries or asking big questions. That's my personal favorite one. You know, the instructions next to this activity will be whether you believe in a God or not, if God was sitting in a chair at this table, what's the one big question you'd like to ask? And there will be some torn up bits of cardboard and maybe some string hanging from the ceiling, and some pegs. And so the kids would write their big questions and peg it onto the string, you know. And some of the questions will be really funny, you know. Some of them are, you know, their head questions. They're like, I don't understand how God, how can you listen to everyone's prayers all at once? Does everyone go to heaven? You know, do? Do all religions mean the same thing. Some of them are kind of theory, theology, head questions. Most of them are heart questions. Most of them are God. Why has my granddad got cancer? You know, why are my parents fighting? Why don't they love me? Why am I always alone? You know, in fact, one of the most honest question type prayers I ever read was on a little I vividly remember it on a green piece of paper. This child had written me on the outside and had drawn a smiley face, a smiley emoji, me on the inside, drawn this sad face, this sad emoji. You know, what we found is that the children and young people, the stuff that's going on in their lives is really, really close to the surface. You know, you look at children and young people, and you think they've got it all together, or they're hardened, or they're resistant. Our experience of 17 years of running hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prayer spaces in all kinds of settings is that children and young people are roughly the same. They're all broken on the inside, and they're all desperate for a safe space where they can express process of stuff in their lives, and for many of them to try praying if they're if they feel coerced or pushed or required or there are some rules to this prayer, then they will steer clear. But if they feel invited to express the stuff on the inside of them in a way that means something to them, and there are loads of stories I could tell if we have time, then our experience is that they're itching to get. Started. It's not an exaggeration. Joshua, I could still count on the fingers of one hand the number of children and young people I've seen refuse to participate in a prayer space in 17 years. What
Joshua Johnson:do you think it is that the invitation and creativity of these prayer spaces? What do you think that does to kids, as opposed to, like, coercion and rules, and we have to get this? Oh,
Phil Sokell-Miles:wow. How much time have we got? You know? I just, you know, I sometimes wonder if, if Jesus did wander into some of our church meetings, whether he he'd be looking around, scratching his head, going, what? What are you doing? What? What is this? Why is it so difficult for for people to be themselves? Here in Mark 10, we read that story of Jesus getting indignant with the disciples. That's how the NIV puts it. Jesus was indignant with his disciples and said to them, Let the children come to Me. You know, it would have been, Let the children come to Me. He was indignant. He was angry because something was going on and we don't know, because the narrative doesn't tell us. But for some reason, it was difficult for children to get to him. And I I've often reflected on that story, and I wonder, are we making it difficult for children and young people to come as they are, not to come as we want them to, with the right words and the right clothing? And I've met so many children and young people, many of whom who call themselves Christians, who express such relief in a prayer space because they can be themselves. I've also met some Christian young people who come into a prayer space and look around for a while and then come and say, Where can we pray, though, and and I think that's because the this they're so schooled into a particular way of praying. Praying involves long, coherent sentences filled with as many Bible verses as we can fit in, you know, because God likes all that stuff, you know, like, and I'm, I get into it. I, you know, I spend my I have my quiet time in the morning, I go for a wander on the beach, and I talk to God in and I say all the things I think I ought to say. And I sometimes wonder if God is kind of, you know, resting his chin on his hand, and he's sort of looking at his watch, kind of, come on, Phil, I'm going to go make a cup of tea when I come back, can we talk about the fact that you argued with your wife yesterday, and why haven't you got to that bit yet? Because that's what's really going on exactly.
Joshua Johnson:I want to hear some stories from what's happening around the world, but I want to hear a story about you where a prayer space helped you connect with God and ask questions that you weren't asking before that surface something that you weren't expecting.
Phil Sokell-Miles:Oh, I wasn't expecting that one. Joshua, okay, yeah. As I mentioned to you before we kicked off, I I had a sabbatical last year, and I was expecting I like running. I was expecting to just run a lot and read a lot, because I like reading too. And I really wasn't expecting that the Holy Spirit would have a plan for these three months too. And part of that I spent over at a retreat center in the Lake District, of going there. So my parents were divorced when I was quite young, and throughout my teens, my early 20s, I've wrestled with kind of knowing God as a father and projecting my unhealthy expectations of father into all sorts of relationships, work relationships as well. But, you know, over the years, I feel like I've prayed the prayers and done the work and talked to people and, you know. And if you'd asked me at the beginning of last year, Phil, how are you doing with all of that stuff, I would have said, Joshua, I'm I'm doing great. You know, I genuinely feel like I'm fine. Clearly, I wasn't as fine as I thought. And so entering this sabbatical time, and particularly this this retreat, it felt like the Holy Spirit just took my hand and spoke to me quite deeply through different passages in Scripture. This is really personal. Now, I wasn't expecting to do this, but so the passage where Elisha and Elijah are talking, and Elijah's traveling from town to town and and Elisha is following him, doggedly following him. And Elijah keeps saying to me, stay here. I need to move on. And Elisha won't let him go. And eventually Elijah says to Elisha, you know what? What do you want? And Elisha, I just want you to bless me. And you know I want to. And as I read it, I felt like he was saying, I just, I want to be whole. I want it's not I want stuff to Make Me Amazing. It's just, I want to be blessed. Blessed. I want to be whole. And I started weeping reading this passage because, and this is me reading something into the passage that isn't even there, but it felt like the Holy Spirit was revealing to me a father and a son and and a son, just longing to be whole, longing to be blessed. And I realized that's, that's, that's, that's the cry of my soul right now, as you want to be whole, I want to be blessed. And, you know, so that's a that's a little snapshot. I I'm convinced that prayer is the place where we discover who we're meant to be. It's not the place where we do transactions with God. It was never meant to be that that's a part of prayer, a tiny facet petition, intercession. It's a part of prayer, but prayer ultimately, is about belonging. It's about discovering that I'm a child. It's about climbing onto Abba's lap and just sighing because that's where I belong, and that's the most important bit about prayer. All the other stuff is bonus, you know, that's the most important bit of prayer. And and I think that people in 24/7 prayer rooms have experienced that for 25 years, you know, they've gone in with their prayer lists and suddenly realized that God is less interested in that and more interested in saying, I love you. I've been looking forward I love you. Just, just listen. Just let me embrace you and and I think that's what children and young people have been tasting, experiencing completely unexpectedly. You know, for many of them who don't even know who God is, and yet, they come to the end of an hour in a prayer space in a school trying to articulate some kind of experience. You know, I've just scribbled down this quote here. It's one of my favorites from a prayer space, and we've got this on video. When we did a little video thing couple of years ago in the UK. We went to interview teachers and kids as well, and we got their permission. And if you get to see this video, that you've got to watch this, because there's this boy. He must be 10 or 11 years old, and he's clearly trying to put into words what he felt. And this is what he said, I sort of feel like it made me feel like whole. It filled in the gaps. Now I haven't done justice to it, but that's those are the words he says, and he's stuttering, and he's sort of looking away from the camera because he's trying to articulate an experience, an encounter. It made me feel whole. Surely, that's what prayer is about, in what, more than all of the other stuff that we do when we pray, surely, it's about being remembered, reconnected, reconciled, brought back into wholeness, because then we can change the world.
Joshua Johnson:That's beautiful. I think some people, when they're thinking about prayer spaces, they're like, if you're coming from a certain subset of Christianity in America, I think some people will think, man, you just have a prayer space. Everybody's welcome. How does this actually point to God? How can people connect to to him. What would you say to people where you're you, you've created something where people from all faiths are welcome and they engage. People without faith are welcome. They engage and they discover God, the Creator. What do you say to people who are they don't understand that it's for everyone.
Phil Sokell-Miles:Oh, wow. I'm nervous in answering this question, Joshua, because I feel like some people who listen to this podcast are going to write me off after this. Others will be delighted. But I can only describe my experience of 17 years in school, and bear in mind that hosting a prayer space is not a teaching environment. There are always Christians that host prayer spaces, whether those in our context, volunteers from a local church. It's easy for us to do that in other places. In Germany, most of the prayer spaces are hosted by Christian teachers. In fact, the very first prayer space in Germany was hosted by a 14 year old student, but we can get on to that if you like. But So prayer spaces are hosted by Christians, and so we set up these activities and and the activities are very human, letting go of worries, asking big questions, offering forgiveness, processing grief and loss, expressing gratitude. They're all none of this is exclusive to Christianity, nor is it exclusive to any sort of religion, spirituality. These are fundamentally human experiences, and each of the activities will invite the students to express their hope or their wish or their prayer. You know, and like I say, Our experience is that it's remarkable how many children, young people, want to pray so they're hosted, but they're not. It's a very light touch. It's it's hospitality in action rather than teaching. These are learning experiential places rather than a teaching spaces. Now, the remarkable thing is the feedback that children and young people express towards the end of their time, and we always try to make time for this and listen carefully, is extraordinary. You know, children and young people who describe when I came into this room, I didn't know if I believed in God or not, but now I do, and I'm left scratching my head, going, how did that happen? You know, there's post it notes, and there's cardboard hanging on bits of string, and there's a tent in the corner, and there's a bowl that you drop stones into over there, and, and I'm kind of going, Yeah, how did that happen? And the only conclusion I can come to Joshua is the Holy Spirit is really good at this stuff, and the Holy Spirit is eager to get started. I was a pain in the first couple of prayer spaces. I got to host, one of which was in my daughter's school. I was interrupting every these were, this was a high school. I was interrupting every student, every active I was buzzing around like, Oh, do you like that activity? What did you write as your big question? Oh, is there anything you'd like to ask me? You know, this was my frustrated evangelist in me, desperate to dive into every conversation and interrupt. And it took me, sadly, a couple of prayer spaces to get the hint from the Holy Spirit, that it's very good at this stuff, and it's like I can take a step back, you know, I think it was Henry now on in his book The wounded healer, who said, he said something like this, I am afraid that in a few decades, the church will be accused of having failed at its most basic task, offering people creative ways to commune with the source of life. I think I've got that quote right. I'll say it again. I am afraid that in a few decades, and he wrote this a few decades ago, the church will be accused of having failed at its most basic task, offering people creative ways to commune with the source of life. I think we thought our most basic task was something else, ie, dare I say it, telling people stuff. Now there, of course, there's a place for telling, teaching, preaching, proclaiming. Of course, there is a place for that. That is a critical part of how we communicate the gospel. But maybe it's not our most basic task. Maybe our most basic task, as Henry now on said, and I would suggest, Jesus demonstrated, is creating environments, making spaces, setting up situations where people can bump into the presence of God and be left with lots of hunger and thirst. It seems to me, that's the way Jesus functioned with the crowds. Of course, with his disciples, he's unpacking scripture and he's challenging things, and he's getting into the talking. But with the crowds, he seems to do all sorts of weird things, you know, if he feeds them Miraculously, he slaps mud in someone's eye. He tells stories that are a little bit vague, and even his disciples don't know what he means by some of them. Sometimes, you know, he does things. He creates environments that leave people hungering and thirsting for more such that they keep following him. They don't fully understand who he is, and he certainly doesn't preface all of his parables. Was just so, you know, just so you're not confused. I'm the Messiah, you know. Just, you know, before we get into anything else, just a few bullet points. You know, he doesn't do that, and he wanders off before they have a chance to answer his to ask their questions. And so I think we're more bothered about this stuff than Jesus is. And let me just just tell you a couple of stories. And like I say, there might be a switch off moment here. I visited a Primary School in East London. About 70% of the kids in this school Muslim so, you know, high Muslim population local area, and this school set up a prayer space in the in the hall. They set up all sorts of activities around them, and they clustered them into four zones, which is generally works better in a kindergarten. And so we had a team member on each zone, just to explain to the kids what the zones were about. I went to visit on the Friday just to go and check in and see how it was going. And I went and sat myself at the thank you the gratitude zone. And they had a few activities there. One of them were involved, just big sheets of paper on the floor where the children were involved. Invited to write or draw if they wanted what they were thankful for, and if they wanted to, they could use this to express prayer. And so I sat there for this whole day watching these lovely kids, these beautiful kids, write and draw their thank yous, and many of them were prayers. And the fascinating thing was, a lot of the prayers that the Muslim kids, these Islamic kids wrote, were really affectionate. I love you, Allah, thank you for loving me. I feel so safe with you. Really affectionate, expressive prayers. Now, you know, I don't know about you, but I don't know a great deal about Islam, and at the end of the day, when the the head of re came and helped us pack down and we had a little debrief session. I said to her, Look, you know, I'm I'm interested. I'm curious about some of these prayers. Is that is, is this how some of these kids would usually pray? And she's like, Oh, no, definitely not. You know, at the end of the school day, most of our Muslim kids would go to the mosque, and the boys would be taught this, and the girls would be taught that the postures and the rhythms and the words for prayer, and they certainly wouldn't use this kind of stuff, and they certainly weren't using these kinds of words, which leaves us with a fascinating question, what's going on now? Here's, here's my, my thinking around this. I think these little kids are entering a place where the Holy Spirit is present, and they're sensing it, something about that every human being is made in the image of God, made to commune with the source of life to use, Henry now and words every one of us, irrespective of our background, our religious upbringing, anything like that, there's a spirit within us that wants to cry. Abba, you know? And I think what's going on is these kids are entering this space, and their spirit is waking up, is hungering, thirsting, and they're simply using the language that they know, that desire is making its way through their body to their fingertips, you know, and they're drawing on the language that they know. And so we're if that's the case, we're left with this puzzle. Is God in heaven? Has he got his fingers in his ears going, la, la, Lila. I'm not listening until you get my name right, or is God in heaven going, Yeah, I love you. I really love you. I'm glad you sent something. You know, I think so many children and young people are like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus that they they spend that hour in the prayer space, placing stones into bowls of water and fizzy tablets into jars of water, and writing on post it notes and bits of torn up cardboard and laying in silence in a in a in a tent, in a gazebo, or whatever they're doing, and their hearts are strangely warmed that they're experiencing something because Jesus has drawn alongside them and and perhaps they don't even recognize that it's him at the end of that lesson. And does it really matter at that moment? I don't think so, because a journey has begun. They will remember that moment for the rest of their life, just just to give you one example, and then I'll finish really long answer to your question. We had a beautiful story just just a few months ago, from Northern Ireland, a young girl. She's about 10 years old. I'll call her Ellie. She's really good runner. She's a really good 5k runner, and she was out for that's why you like, yeah, absolutely. I zero in on stories about running. Absolutely. Did you know Eugene Peterson was a long distance trail runner. I love him to bits already. So yeah. So Ellie, she was she was out for a run with her parents, and they're running alongside the coastline, and all of a sudden, she ducks off the path down some steps onto the beach and down to the shoreline and and grabs a couple of handfuls of sand and starts to let it trickle through her fingers. And her parents, understandably a little bit puzzled about this. We were, we were on for a PB here, you know what you doing. And so her mom walked up alongside her, and she you okay? Is everything all right? And she said, Oh yeah, Mom, I just suddenly aware of, I feel worried about lots of things at the moment, and I remembered an activity we did in the prayer space in my school two years ago, and I realized I just wanted to feel lighter, so I thought I'd pray. So these, these moments, these experiences, are carried viscerally, far more than words. What we you know we know that we know that we the things we smell and taste and touch, you know and hear, their memories are attached to those far more strongly than words, and so I think that's why Jesus does what he does so often. He does things. He doesn't just say things. He gives he creates experiences. He creates moments. For people to encounter, commune with, the source of life. And I think that's what's happening in these prayer spaces. So is it any wonder that those seeds bear fruit later on? The Holy Spirit is cultivating these seeds far more than we are. You know, we, we feel like we. We have to chuck in a few bullet points at the end, by the way, that was Jesus, and He died for you, and He rose again, and, you know, and I'm sure Jesus would be like, going, don't worry, you'll be all right. Don't worry, we're cultivating that seed. It's okay.
Joshua Johnson:So what does that look like? I think, for for me, if I'm if I'm wanting to facilitate a prayer space in school help kids interact with these creative prompts to pray. My first instinct after that is, I want to figure out how to companion them after the prayer space as well. I don't want just to leave them there. What does companioning Then look like for people after they're they're done with this prayer space? Yeah.
Phil Sokell-Miles:So here in the UK, we get inquiries all the time from local churches and from schools. Now, schools contact us direct, saying we want a prayer space. We've heard about this prayer space thing, if it's churches, our first response is always, are you already in a long term relationship? Are you dating this school? You know is something happening here. Because, if your intention is just to run a prayer space for one week, and in a, as I said earlier, as a kind of fishing expedition to try and bolster the children's work or the youth work, please don't do it. You know, it's, it's, it lacks integrity, for a start. And also, I just, it's, it may be damaging, you know, because a prayer space is a place of safety where children and young people often talk about the stuff that's going on in their lives. And if we're kind of waving goodbye at the end of the week, see you next year. I just, I think that lacks integrity. So our encouragement to churches is prayer spaces are a really brilliant way of accelerating or or even kick starting, a relationship with school, but, but it's not the goal. The goal isn't the prayer space. The goal is this trusting relationship, serving blessing relationship. And there's all sorts of other ways that you can serve and bless schools. Prayer spaces just happen to be really effective, and perhaps for such a time as this, more than ever before with with the well being needs, the mental health needs, the trauma that many children and young people are experiencing, prayer spaces in schools are so valuable, so needed, a place to be still, a place to process this stuff a place to ask spiritual questions. So they're incredibly effective, but like any tool in the wrong hands, they can be misused. And so we we really try and encourage church local Christians, even local teachers. Don't do this as a one off, but use it as part of a way of serving, blessing, encouraging, and so all sorts of things can can spin off in we've heard of alpha courses starting in schools or lunchtime clubs, big question clubs, chaplaincy programs after school. Clubs in Milwaukee, after doing an initial prayer space, it's actually turned into a weekly thing every Wednesday and Thursday. Darnell and some of the volunteers from from his local church are in that school. The school decided this is so valuable for the students in this public school that we will give you a room. It's on the corridor next to the sexual education stuff, which Darnell finds very amusing, you know, but there is a room. It's called the quiet space, and it is available every Wednesday and every Thursday for students to be referred by the psychologists, the social workers in the school, the tutors, any student that this would be of benefit to off, they go to this place. And so some prayer spaces have become, become permanent. I think that question of what's next is really, really important, and I would encourage churches and schools to consider that before they even run their first prayer space.
Joshua Johnson:I know in the United States, I'm like, Hey, there's something in Milwaukee. I think that's fantastic, because a lot of people in the US are going to go, Hey, there's separation of church and state in public schools. You can't really do anything with religious education or anything, so prayer spaces is going to be really hard to do in schools. But hey, it's happening, and that's good. So in places, maybe like the US, or in other places in the world where you found where it's not like the UK, where there needs to be some spiritual education, what works when we go in with relationship with the school, like, how do we get something started when it doesn't seem an easy path? Yeah,
Phil Sokell-Miles:it's a great question. And I think the answer to that has changed over the last 567, years. I feel like the tone of the question has shifted from a sort of, this is really, this is going to be really difficult. I can't see how this is possible to we really need this. Let's figure it out. You know, I think that has that's shifted. I've noticed even in my conversations with people in the States, you know, six, seven years ago, people were sort of leaning back, folded arms. This is very unlikely, because of our political, cultural, you know, setting, whereas I'm having emails, Zoom calls twice a week, at least with people in the States, whether that's students or parents or teachers church leaders. And I think that's because the need is great. And the interesting thing is, children and young people seem to be the same the world over. The education systems are different. Church culture is obviously different, but when you translate the prayers, the hopes, the fears, the anxieties, the big questions for God, they're pretty much the same the world over. And that I find interesting. There's the same anxieties and struggles, but there is also, dare I say it, there's a there's a growing hunger for church, for Jesus, for faith, for prayer. It's, it's, and it's not tied to and it's not an interest in institutional Christianity, but it is an interest in Jesus and prayer, and something that means something. So I'm very interested in the States, particularly in what student led prayer spaces might look like, and we've had quite a few conversations with students. I did last weekend, I was on a call with a 17 year old student in Portland who is very interested coming to the 24/7 national gathering. Wants to talk about this, and it was great to be able to say to her the very first prayer space in Germany was started by a 14 year old student who came to one of our conferences. This was in 2012 she came to one of our conferences with a school teacher and a youth worker. They flew over to London, listened to all the stories, listened to the seminars, and I sat with her at the end. Her name's Izzy, and there's a whole chapter in my book about her. And I said to her, what do you think? And she said, I love this, but there's no way we could do this in my school. I only know a couple of other Christians, and I there's no we can't have outside volunteers come and help out. Four months later, she sent me an email describing the prayer space that she'd run. It's for her friend in her school. I've used much of the email verbatim in the book, because it's so fun. It's just a 14 year old. Her final line was, it's so cool. I now no longer think anything is impossible for God. She told this brilliant story. I know I'm digressing here, but so she hosts, you know, she welcomed her own friends into the first first hour in this prayer space. Really embarrassed, awkward, you know, really outing myself as a Christian here. And so describe the activities, big questions, letting go of worries, saying sorry, all that kind of stuff. And all of her friends were sort of stood awkwardly as well. And for the first 10 minutes, they sort of shuffled around and just looked at things and and Izzy wondered if, if anything was going to happen. And then gradually, they sort of softened up. And she said, by the end of that first hour, there were post it notes and torn up bits of cardboard with all sorts of prayers written on them. And her friends were saying to her, I just love this. This is great. This is I I've always been interested in God, but I've never known where I can ask these questions. You know, she was just like mind blown by by what had changed almost immediately, and she at the end of her email, she's told this amazing story where one of the classes, a teacher, had brought a class in for the session, and the students had gone round and explored, and then he'd taken them back to another classroom and done a little bit of feedback with them, and asked them how they felt and what did they think. And one of the questions he asked was, Do any of you pray regularly, you know, in your in your daily life, and there was lots of kind of laughter, and, you know, nobody prays. And then this one boy, I think he was a 1314, year old boy, stuck his hand up and said, I pray the Lord's prayer every night. And some of his friends were looking at him. Are you crazy? You pray the Lord's Prayer. I bet you don't know it. Do you know it? Go and do it now, at which point this boy got out of his chin, stood up in front of all of his friends and started to pray out loud, the Lord's Prayer, and the laughter just immediately fell to silence, and they listened as he recited the Lord's Prayer. And as he finished, the whole class erupted in applause. It was a holy moment, you know, and there are just loads of remind. Remarkable moment stories like this. So in answer your question, I think, I think it will be really interesting in the States in particular, what student led prayer spaces look like. We have heard some little stories. Pockets of people that are doing lunchtime clubs and using a few prayer activities haven't got use of a whole room for a whole week. But why not just get a couple of activities out in a lunchtime club? We heard a story from a good, good friend in Kansas City was invited by a Christian school to set up a prayer space for the teachers. You know, teachers are stressed under a lot of pressure, and so that's what they did. They went to serve this school by setting up, just for one day, a whole load of prayer activities, and some of the volunteers from the church were there too to offer prayer for the teachers if they wanted that. What was really interesting was some teachers from other schools came to visit. And in particular, there were a handful of teachers from public schools who were looking at the activities and speaking to Katie, who's organizing and saying, We love this. We really need to figure out how to do this in our schools. And I think that's the interesting thing. Is the prayer space model, when, when teachers see it, when when pupils see it, they're like, Oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be, and we really need this. So we need to figure out how, where the door to prize open, you know? And that's, that's the key in every nation. That's what I find. I'm looking for, is teachers. I've got, I'm kind of going look, here's a video, here's some stories. I know that you're going to think this is going to be valuable for your student. It's not proselytizing, we're not coercing, we're serving. We're blessing at a cultural moment where kids need a space to process what's going on in their lives, and they need a safe place to ask their questions about faith and prayer. This will do that. You guys need to figure out how, what's the language that we need to what are the doors?
Joshua Johnson:I think that's really good and helpful. I want to know how this approach in there and prayer spaces, kinds of shifts and changes the way we do youth work and youth ministry,
Phil Sokell-Miles:yeah, and that's a great question for all the youth workers out there. Yeah, I just, I think we've been locked into a model that has served its time, maybe where we do everything from the front we do unto young people and I, and I just wonder if there, there's a time coming, and is now here where we trust the work of the Holy Spirit. You know, I as a 15 year old in in school, that was my kind of coming to faith moment. I've been part of church for a very long time, but I just lived a double life, like a lot of kids do, I think, you know, and it was as a 15 year old, there was a moment of reckoning. It happened between me and God in my bedroom. And and I realized it's either it's all or nothing, really. And, and I went back into my school absolutely determined, I want to live for Jesus, but I'm going to need some friends. And God gave me some Christian friends at the time. And we we started praying before school every day, and we did crazy things. We went out and talked to people out in the playground and field outside, and we did a march for Jesus. This is old school properly, you know, with with a guitar and all that sort of stuff. And we led a lot of our friends to Jesus. And I think we saw about 150 students come to faith during that couple of years. And and I, I just know this stuff works. You know, Holy Spirit can be trusted. And we, we perhaps need to take a step back and and just try and get a sense of what is the Lord doing, and join in with that, rather than try and control it. It's that. It's how I felt on that first day. We need to steward this and not mess it up. We are so good at labeling things and trying to control things and and the Holy Spirit tolerates that for a while. And then I think the Holy Spirit kind of goes, I don't want to play anymore. I'm going to go and do something else. Yeah, this isn't doesn't feel alive anymore. And so I think, I think we're in a moment when the Holy Spirit is doing something. There's the breath of God. There's something happening right now, and so we just need to honor, you know, to honor the Holy Spirit and make a lot of space for that. And I, I do. I'm attracted to creative things because I things that are less tethered to words sometimes seem to have a little bit more life to them.
Joshua Johnson:What hope do you have for sticky note prayers and what's an invitation for people when it comes to prayer spaces for schools?
Phil Sokell-Miles:Do you know what? I loved writing this book, but because I loved capturing the stories, I spent months and months phoning people, having zoom calls with people, coffee conversations with people, basically going I've been retelling your stories for. Years, can I just check that I'm still telling true versions of and it was wonderful for me because I got to hear loads of stuff that I'd completely forgotten and I didn't know about. And so this book is full of stories. It's stories from start to finish, as you can probably tell from this conversation, Josh, I just stories are what bring me to life. You know, he's just so obsessed with bullet pointing things. I just think stories are the way forward. Anyway, the book is full of stories. It's also draws on some research that we did. We realized that we didn't really understand what was going on in prayer spaces in schools, and we needed some clever people to help us with that. So I went to meet a professor at York St John University. I was fairly intimidated. His name was Julian Stern. What a name. Hey, for a professor, I would think I was worried meeting him just because of his name, but he was a lovely guy, and he spent a year researching the impact that prayer spaces were having on children's and young people's spirituality. And so a big chunk of the book is really based around the research he did, which has really informed our sort of philosophy, our theology of prayer spaces in school. So a lot of that is in the book illustrated by stories. There are. There's a few really mad miracle stories in there, Joshua, which I don't, I generally don't tell because I think we can be really distracted by miracles. You know a 10 year old, nine year old boy that writes on a post it note about the the rash on his skin, that it really upsets him, and then within an hour, the rash is gone. Nobody lays hands on him. Nobody has prayed for him. Nobody's given him a in the name of Jesus, prayer to pray, but he's written something. I don't even know what he wrote in that post it note, but, and we've fact checked and verified these stories. I I prayed an utterly faithless example, prayer to a teenage girl in a prayer space. She was clearly uncomfortable about the prayer space she'd visited, and didn't want to go and do any of the activities, and she was standing next to me on crutches, and I said to her, Look, what have you done to your foot? And she said a horse had trodden on it and broken the metatarsal in her foot. Apparently, ballet dancers and footballers break these bones regularly, and people who get trodden on by horses. And so I, you know, sensing her discomfort, I just said, Look, I could pray for you and I go home, if you like. And she's like, that's a bit weird. I said, No, prayer is really simple, and here I'm being really honest with you. All I wanted her to do was to hear a Christian pray a prayer that wasn't weird. And so I just did, hey, Chrissy, it just be like this, dear God, you know that Chrissy is in pain. You know about that broken metatarsal? Be really cool if you fixed it, because a Chrissy wouldn't be in pain anymore, and also she'd know that you're really interested in her, amen. And she sort of, I My eyes were open. I was looking at her as I said those words. It was a faithless prayer. And she sort of looked at me and laughed, and her friends laughed and went, Oh, if that's a prayer, yeah, you can pray for me. And I laughed and went, Well, I kind of just did, let's leave it at that. That was the Thursday. On the Monday morning, I got a call from the head of our head of PE physical education who was organizing the prayer space. She was a Christian, and she left me a voicemail saying, Phil, did you pray for a girl called Chrissy? Because she all the pain went of her and her foot that night, and her parents were really puzzled, and so they took her to the hospital for a scan, and they had a second scan, comparing it to the first scan, there was a broken metatarsal in the first one, and there wasn't in the second one. And so she's jumping around saying, I've experienced a miracle. So there are stories like that in the book, but there are also loads of miracles that I think are more important, and they're the ones where a child or a young person entered a prayer space hating themselves and left loving themselves. Those are the daily miracles that I think will last a lot longer. So the book's full of that. And my hope is that people, whether they are students or parents or teachers, read it and think there must be a way for me to do this where I am. There's got to be a way to do this and and I would love to have conversations with anyone to help them.
Joshua Johnson:Well, Phil, I have a couple quick questions here at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give
Phil Sokell-Miles:I was really earnest about a lot of things. I knew everything as a 21 year old, and I'm embarrassed now about some of the things that I dogmatically believed and proclaimed, I think I would say to my 21 year old self, spend more time listening to people and to God. There's a lot more to hear if you listen carefully. My middle daughter is profoundly deaf. Half, and she can't hear anything at all, but she was fitted with cochlear implants. They're in the miracle of technology. When she had her first one, when she was two and a half, and we went to a specialist Hearing Center, and the manager there, I'm cutting a long story short here, but the manager said to us, she can hear now with these cochlear implants, she just needs to learn how to listen. And I I feel like there's a profound life lesson there certainly a prayer lesson. We hear loads of stuff all the time. We are we have these mobile phone things, and it just churns out stuff all the time. We're not very good at listening. And I wish I'd learned to listen earlier.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, it's good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend.
Phil Sokell-Miles:Or I'm reading Tyler staton's book, praying like monks, living like fools, which I absolutely love, so I would definitely recommend that. And I'm also reading a book by Christine westoff called about the voice of God, which is all about learning to listen to God's voice. So I definitely recommend those
Joshua Johnson:good recommendations. Sticking out prayers is fantastic. You said it. There's lots of stories. It's inspirational. It's fun, and man, so incredible. What God is doing all around the world through prayer spaces in schools. It is incredible. So I really want people to go and get this book. It is available. How can people get the book? And where can they connect with you? If they're interested in prayer spaces, how can they connect?
Phil Sokell-Miles:Thank you. As far as I'm aware, it's so it's out on the ninth of October. It's on Amazon. You can get it from there. I think it's also being stocked in Barnes and Noble so there in the States, is a great place to go and get your books. You can connect with me at my email address, which is Phil. At prayer spaces in schools.com, surprise, surprise. And the website, www, dot prayer spaces in schools.com. Has loads of kind of basic information about what prayer spaces are and how they function, and connections then to our national coordinators around the world.
Joshua Johnson:Perfect. Well, Phil, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for sharing story after story of what God is doing in prayer spaces and how God has worked in your own heart, in your own life through prayer connection with him. And you know, if we could just set up some ways, creative ways, so that we can commune with the source of life, that is what we need to do. And so, yeah, thank you for helping us get to a place where we can connect with God in deeper ways. So thank you. Thank you. You.
