Urban Abbey is a House of Prayer based in Sneinton-the old heart of Nottingham. We launched the physical location at the beginning of 2020. The base in Sneinton is the next step of a cross-denomination prayer journey that’s run for at least 4 decades in the city.
The house has 4 flats where residents of the community live, with another flat that’s being converted for communal use. As well as the residents, there’s a growing number of people who travel across the city to be part of the Prayer, Hospitality and Mission practices, which are the core rhythms of the community; and there’s a broader virtual community that commit to watching over the city, and praying daily for Nottingham, using a Daily Bell notification that’s sent out by Urban Abbey.
We work very closely with a strong unity movement in our city-Nottingham City Prayer-where a number of the Urban Abbey community are committed leaders. City Prayer has a good connection with about 150 of the 300 churches in the city, and UrbanAbbey is increasingly asked to support individual churches within that network, as we offer teaching and prayer.
We enjoy a meal together each week as a community, where we tell stories of what’s happening in our lives, and where we plot and plan what we’re up to next.
The community has a strong rhythm of daily prayer, a growing rhythm of hospitality, and we’re just launching into mission, where we’re seeing people from the area around us becoming disciples-there’s a sense of great excitement that we’re not even working with low-hanging fruit-the fruit is literally on the ground!
We’re just beginning! The story will unfold, and we’re excited to see what happens next.
