Taize Evening Prayer

Each Thursday, 7:30 pm
Each Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. a group of people from a variety of area churches gathers at Diamond Hill  for a half-hour service of song, prayer, and meditation. This service takes its inspiration from the Taize community, an ecumenical Christian community in Burgundy, France begun by Brother Roger Schultz to offer hospitality, refuge and reconciliation in the aftermath of World War II.

Soon, more people from all over Europe came to pray with Schultz and the brothers of Taize, leading them to develop a style of worship that would be accessible to people of different nations and spiritual traditions. Today, in any given week, thousands of young people from all over the world gather at Taize. The brothers strive to be a source of spiritual grounding for the people who visit so they can go back to their own communities with a deepened sense of God's purpose for them.

At Diamond Hill, as in France, the core of the service consists of elegantly simple modern chants sung repetitively or in a round.  For Brother Roger, "singing is one of the most important forms of prayer. A few words sung over and over again reinforce the meditative quality of the prayer. They express a basic reality of faith that can quickly be grasped by the intellect, and that gradually penetrates the heart and the whole being."

A brief reading of Scripture, a  period of peaceful silence, and time for intercessory prayer complement the chants. There is no preaching, no monetary collection, no attempt at recruiting church members. It is simply a time to come together in prayer.

Many people who attend Diamond Hill's Taize service have commented on the rich spiritual atmosphere of the services and their serene and soothing simplicity. It is a wonderful midweek opportunity to feed the soul.

If you are looking for some refuge from your hectic world and some time for quiet contemplation or a worship experience in which there is no sermon and nobody telling you what to believe before you’re sure you believe it, then we invite you to join us each Thursday evening.