Banners for Sanctuary and Street: When Prayer Takes Shape

What if we could carry a prayer?

What if the words we speak in worship could leave the sanctuary with us—onto sidewalks, into marches, through protests, and into the public square? What if a banner could do more than decorate a worship space? What if it could become a visual prayer, a testimony, a reminder of what we believe, and a declaration of what we will work toward?

This fall, our community explored these questions through Banners for Sanctuary and Street, a five-week practice of creative contemplation, communal artmaking, and prayer for the people. Each week, participants created and transformed fabric banners for two worlds: the sacred space of worship and the public spaces where communities gather, organize, celebrate, mourn, and bear witness.

The project began with a simple conviction:

What we say in worship is also what we say at protests, marches, and parades.

Our faith does not belong only inside the sanctuary. Our prayers should shape how we move through the world.

Week One: Giving Color to the Spirit

We began with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Participants chose someone who embodies one of these characteristics. They could choose an ancestor, a saint, a wise guide, or even a nonhuman companion. Then they considered another question:

What color represents this person and the quality they carry?

With paint pens, participants filled the banners with color.

Each banner developed its own visual language. Participants connected a person, a quality of the Spirit, and their own creative response through color.

Between gatherings, Helms added more colors to the banners. Some colors reflected the liturgical seasons. Others expanded the palette that participants had already created. Each new mark added another layer to the communal story.

Week Two: Listening to the Guides We Don't Always Expect

The following week, we considered saints and guides who do not always comfort us.

Some guides warn us. Some ask us to stop, turn around, pay attention, or change direction. Sacred symbols can carry the same complexity. Fire can warm and destroy. Water can sustain and overwhelm. A single symbol can hold both invitation and danger.

Reflecting on Isaiah 43, we considered the ways fire and water can speak about God's presence.

Participants created fire and water banners.

Then came the squirrel.

As we reflected on the story of Zacchaeus, we wondered whether the squirrel—an easily overlooked creature climbing through the trees—might serve as a lesser-known guide. What if wisdom sometimes comes from the beings and ancestors we have learned not to notice?

Participants chose a banner and named a lesser-acknowledged saint, ancestor, creature, element, or wise guide. Then they turned the banner over and wrote a prayer on its back beginning:

“God of the ______…”

The prayers included:

God of the Water.

God of the Northern Lights.

God of Fire.

The banners now carried both color and prayer. Some prayers remained visible; others lived on the backs of the cloth, waiting for someone to turn the banner over and discover them.

Between gatherings, Helms continued to build the banners. She added fabric shapes of water, fire, wind, sun, and circles. She stitched new lines across the cloth.

The banners became layered bodies of prayer: painted, stitched, written, assembled, and continually transformed.

Week Three: Ribbon Prayers

In the third week, Helms brought two banners to the congregation: yellow for the hot sun and blue for the water well in the story of the Woman at the Well.

We reflected on connection—between head and heart, between thought and action, between our bodies and one another, and between human beings and the living world.

The invitation that week was simple:

Create ribbon prayers.

Participants attached ribbons that ran from head to foot across the banners. The ribbons became symbols of connection. Through our hands, we expressed our desire to remain connected to thought, heart, and grounded action.

We reflected on Jesus meeting the woman at the well with compassion and presence. We asked how we might meet God and one another in the same way: openly, attentively, and without fear.

The banners gave prayer a physical form.

Between gatherings, Helms continued to add fabric, stitching, and ribbon prayers. The work kept moving even when the congregation gathered elsewhere.

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Week Four: Finding the Words We Need

By the fourth week, the banners needed language.

As a community, we returned to our field guide. We read aloud the words and phrases we wanted to emphasize when we publicly bear witness to God's goodness and justice.

We could also add words if something essential felt missing.

Together, we chose:

Even the Tulip Poplar will cry out saying, “We can endure hard times. Stand strong together in the sun!”

Echo the voices of the silenced.

We are dust.

Give bread to those who are hungry and hunger for justice to those who are fed.

Now’s the time for healing everything we love.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. —Ella Baker

We are not afraid.

We will die for liberation ’cause we know why we were made.

God, hear our prayer.

And we chose the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kin-dom of heaven.

Blessed are the hungry, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness and justice, for great is their reward.

And finally:

This is the moment.

These words do more than express beautiful ideas.

They tell us what matters.

They tell us what to remember.

They tell us what to say together.

They give us words to carry.

Week Five: Making the Prayer Permanent

In the fifth week, we put our words onto the banners.

We stenciled the phrases selected by the community onto the cloth. Then, with spray paint, participants made the words permanent.

The act carried its own kind of power.

We began with color, imagining the Spirit through people, ancestors, saints, creatures, and wise guides. We added symbols of fire, water, wind, sun, and earth. We wrote prayers on the backs of banners. We stitched ribbons across their surfaces. We listened for the words our community needed to speak.

Then we made those words durable.

We prepared the banners to leave the sanctuary.

From Worship to the Public Square

After the fifth week, we displayed the completed banners during a Sunday Gathering.

Then we carried them into the world.

The banners have since traveled to protests, activations, and ritual gatherings.

This movement captures the heart of the project.

A banner can hold a prayer, but it can also move.

Many hands can carry it. A shared word can gather people around it. A banner can remind us who we are when we stand together. It can transform a sidewalk into sacred space.

The banners remind us that worship and public witness belong together.

When we say We are not afraid in worship, we can carry that courage into the street.

When we pray Give bread to those who are hungry and hunger for justice to those who are fed, we name both a spiritual longing and a public responsibility.

When we proclaim Blessed are the peacemakers, we do more than admire peace. We commit ourselves to the work of making it.

And when we say This is the moment, we remind ourselves that prayer does not ask us to wait for another world.

Prayer can prepare us to participate in this one.

A Prayer We Can Carry

The banners now form part of our community's visual vocabulary. They carry the marks of many hands, the colors of many guides, the words of our shared tradition, and the prayers we created together.

They remain imperfect by design.

They carry layers.

They hold stitches and paint, words and symbols, visible prayers and hidden ones.

And they move.

That movement makes them liturgical.

The banners do more than support worship. They help us practice worship. They help us remember, proclaim, connect, grieve, hope, resist, and imagine together.

The sanctuary gives us words.

The community gives those words color.

Our hands give them form.

Then we carry them into the world.

What we pray in here, we practice out there.

What we believe in worship, we bear witness to in the street.

The prayer becomes the banner.

And the banner becomes a prayer we can carry.