Join LAMPa United Lutheran Seminary (ULS) Intern Margaret (Meg) Folkemer for a weekly Compline Service. Since early pandemic days, Meg has been leading a compline or night prayer service every Wednesday evening live on Facebook with her  family.

According to Meg, “we started it as a simple way to provide connection with one another and to provide an opportunity for prayer and worship during the week. Back in those days, we were all still figuring out how to create Sunday worship services and other content to provide a sense of community and looking for ways to simply mark the days. I don’t think any of us realized that we would grow such a steady group of worshippers who, like us, find that moment of midweek peace to be so valuable.”

Folkemer is pursuing a call to word and service ministry and as part of that, she is doing a year of learning with LAMPa. Another aspect of her degree and candidacy is to do a project based in her primary areas of study. Meg’s area of focus is worship and music, so compline became a natural and clear choice to put at the center of the project.

“Now maybe you’re wondering what this has to do with advocacy ministry,” Meg observes, “but it is my strong belief that worship life is an integral part of advocacy and necessary spiritual care for both community and self. It is in our worship together that we feel the work of the Spirit around and within us, feeding us, providing us with respite, and giving us an opportunity to connect with one another. It is also our opportunity to turn our eyes and our hearts to issues of the moment as well as to those long-term issues for which we, as LAMPa partners, work tirelessly. Our souls may be fed and nourished through the word and through prayer, but may at the same time be challenged and inspired, too.”

Over this year, Meg has utilized various worship resources to guide those gathered in prayer around issues of systemic racism, the covid-19 virus, homelessness, and other social justice issues. She will be pulling these and other prayer and worship resources together for LAMPa’s website. Folkemer invites you to assist her in gathering that information so everyone may take the time to advocate through their worship and in their daily lives.

Meg invites you to join the Folkemers in compline (night prayer) worship, an ancient daily prayer office to close out your day, at 8:30pm every Wednesday on the St. Matthew Lutheran Church (York)’s Facebook page and on the Union Lutheran (York)’s Facebook page. You may also find compline on St. Matthew’s YouTube page as well after the broadcast.

Meg shares, “I pray that you all are having a peaceful, fulfilling, and joyful new year and hope that you will consider joining us on Wednesday nights!”