For years, World Day of Prayer has gathered women, young people, children and communities around the world under its unique appeal of being united in prayer and actions of solidarity for peace and justice. It may be a local group worshipping together or a national wide educational campaign on a particular issue. With the strength rooted in a spirituality of listening, the first Friday of March brings to light this circle of prayer to visibility!

I have had the blessing of serving this international circle of prayer since 2012, when I was welcomed as executive director. I am deeply grateful for the blessings, learning, and growth that this community has given me. Now it is time to continue widening the circle and welcome the new executive director of World Day of Prayer International Committee. I am delighted to have the chance of sharing leadership with Katie Reimer until my term concludes on August 1st.

What has brought Katie Reimer to WDP is her own spiritual practice of “cultivating embodied practices and rituals in community.” For her, “worship and prayer connect us to God most profoundly when we connect deeply to ourselves, our neighbors, and all of creation.” Katie is “deeply moved by WDP’s central commitment to the power of women’s voices and incarnate experiences of God” and recognizes that WDP “has faithfully connected women committed to the way of Jesus across boundaries, creating an expansive ecology that nourishes abundant life. The vision of Informed Prayer and Prayerful Action speaks to the way of Jesus, who prayed from an intimate awareness of the struggles of the world, while also acting from a place of profound connection to the Divine.” (Extracted from Katie’s cover letter)

Katie recently completed her Master of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary in New York with a concentration in Inter-religious Engagement; after a Bachelor and Master education in piano performance. She is the founder, artistic & executive director of Mimesis Ensemble where she performs and records music from the 20th and 21st centuries. She has acted as artist in residence, song composer, life stream meditation guide, devotional video designer, song leader and choir conductor, worship writer and leader, and preacher in churches in New York City and across the United States, also at women and church national and international conferences.

Katie is prepared to listen, lead, and join this community of Informed Prayer and Prayerful Action. Let’s take our tambourines and with dancing and singing praise God like the prophet Myriam and the women, as God is journeying ahead of us (Exodus 15:20). Amen!

The World Day of Prayer International Committee (WDPIC) is currently searching for an accomplished person of strong Christian faith to lead the WDPIC as its Executive Director. Someone who can guide the movement into a new era and support the full cycle of the WDP service program elaboration, capacity building of the women’s network, actions for justice and peace, content creation for website and publications, production of new online initiatives, supervision of social media campaigns, and the management of financial resources. 

World Day of Prayer is a global ecumenical movement led by women in their communities. It creates an opportunity for building relationships, a spirituality of listening to each other and to God, a prayer informed by the context of women’s lives, and a prayerful action expressed by sharing resources with communities in need.   

Motivated by a common prayer on the first Friday of March, women lead workshops to learn about the focus country and to study attentively the Bible and the worship service. Together they plan the program for children in schools or churches. The interpretation of the annual theme in the local context and the envisioning of responses are creatively crafted and intensively promoted across the globe. The projects and organizations to support are selected carefully. Most of what we do is based on in-person events where building relationships is the first step in a long journey.   

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted how we work together to bring life to the WDP worship service but learning to be connected even when physically apart is the historical experience of women united in prayers. The predecessors of WDP brought news about women from different contexts and inspired by Jesus’ call to love, made it their cause for prayer. The missionaries traveled internationally by ship and the worship services were distributed by snail mail. The cycle took time to be completed, and gradually it changed as WDP leaders incorporated into the movement the new forms of technological communication they have learned to use. Once again, we are changing the way we come together to fulfill our goal of “Informed Prayer. Prayerful Action.”   ​