On Sunday morning, your church is gathered in one room. On Monday morning, the same people are spread across offices, classrooms, workshops, shops and homes, and most of what happens there never comes up at church. Jeff Fountain describes a simple practice from Britain that brings it into the service: This Time Tomorrow, or TTT for short. Fountain led Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Europe for twenty years and co-founded the Schuman Centre for European Studies in Amsterdam, home of his column Weekly Word.

In TTT, someone from the congregation is interviewed for a few minutes during the service. They answer three questions: where they will be at this time tomorrow, what challenges and opportunities they face in their work, and how the church can pray for them.

Fountain explains what each question does. The first reminds everyone that the church doesn’t disappear after the service: from Monday to Saturday it is scattered wherever its members live and work, and Sunday is meant to equip people for that. The second makes listeners wonder how they would answer, and how their own job connects with loving God and their neighbor and with making God known. He names the pressure to compromise at work and the small daily chances to respond differently. The third question puts everyday work on the church’s prayer list. Fountain remembers a service where the church prayed for a young woman as its new treasurer, while no one thought to pray for her job in finance, which carried far more responsibility.

The idea started in Anglican churches in Britain, but any church can use it. It works in small groups too, where everyone answers the three questions and the group prays for each other. In a youth group it’s easy to try: ask a student where they’ll be at this time tomorrow, at school, at practice or at a part-time job, and pray for them there. It shows teenagers that their faith belongs in their everyday life, not only at church.

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Read the full article: This Time Tomorrow by Jeff Fountain, on Weekly Word.
Watch an example from the Diocese of Leeds: This Time Tomorrow (YouTube).

More from Pulse

This article by Jeff Fountain first appeared on Weekly Word. Pulse published a German version in November 2024 (in German).