{"id":19173,"date":"2026-01-14T15:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/?p=19173"},"modified":"2026-01-14T15:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T15:28:18","slug":"cochairs-blog-14th-january-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/2026\/01\/14\/cochairs-blog-14th-january-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"CoChairs Blog &#8211; 14th January 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Why the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Still Matters to Me<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Every year, when the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity comes around, I notice a quiet shift in my heart.<\/p>\n<p>As a Methodist, I love our hymns, our emphasis on grace, our insistence that faith should be lived out in the world. However this week gently reminds me that God has never been limited to my tradition\u2014or yours. God has always been bigger than our labels.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve prayed in rooms where the words felt unfamiliar and the rhythms weren\u2019t my own. And yet, something deeply familiar was still there: people longing for Christ, people hoping the church can be a sign of healing in a fractured world. In those moments, I\u2019m reminded that unity doesn\u2019t mean erasing who we are. It means showing up as we are and trusting the Spirit to do the connecting.<\/p>\n<p>John Wesley\u2019s generous instinct\u2014\u201cIf your heart is as my heart, give me your hand\u201d\u2014feels especially alive during this week. We don\u2019t have to agree on everything to pray together. We don\u2019t even have to resolve centuries of difference. Sometimes unity begins simply by listening, by blessing rather than judging, by choosing love over suspicion.<\/p>\n<p>What I appreciate most is how practical this unity can be. When Christians pray together, it becomes easier to serve together. Hunger, injustice, loneliness\u2014these don\u2019t care about denominational boundaries. And honestly, the world doesn\u2019t need a divided church arguing with itself. It needs a church learning how to love well.<\/p>\n<p>For me, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is less about grand statements and more about small, hopeful acts: lighting a candle, sharing silence, speaking Christ\u2019s name alongside someone who says it a little differently than I do.<\/p>\n<p>And every year, I walk away grateful\u2014still Methodist, still rooted, but a little more open, a little more humble, and a little more convinced that God\u2019s grace is already at work, drawing us closer than we think.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Leonora<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Still Matters to Me Every year, when the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity comes around, I notice a quiet shift in my heart. As a Methodist, I love our hymns, our emphasis on grace, our insistence that faith should be lived out in the world. However this week gently reminds me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[643],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cochairs-blog"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 04:29:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19175,"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19173\/revisions\/19175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwib.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}