Fair Trade: What can my church do? - Christian Concern for One World

Fair Trade: Prayer, Preaching & Study

Praying about Fair Trade

Collected Prayers from CCOW

Prayers from Asha Handicrafts

Materials for a Fair Trade Service

Prayer Powerpoints

A prayer for Bethlehem

December 18, 2023/by W15twC-Lh

Prayer – For Fairer Sharing

Fairtrade Prayer – Choices

Fairtrade Prayers – Confession

Other Prayer Resources

For many years, the Fairtrade Foundation produced annual “Church Action Guides,” containing prayers, Bible studies, and other helpful material. CCOW has a page where you can link to some of these. The Foundation also has the transcript (an order of service + the sermon) from an online ecumenical service held last year.

Methodist churches may also be particularly interested in the Fair Trade Covenant Service originally put together by Traidcraft. This, together with some of Traidcraft’s best prayer resources (prayers, whole services, etc with a focus on India, Chile and tea) are no longer on their website, but have been archived in the Diocese of London’s “Prayer and Worship Resources”.

CAFOD has a collection of reflections and excerpts from Catholic Social Teaching and prayers – around trade and Fairtrade.

Christian Aid has a prayer for a more fair and just world here.

The United Reformed Church’s Commitment for Life programme has a very helpful prayer from Dr Mark Dawson of Fairtrade Yorkshire.

Want to try something different? Why not do something that involves several of people’s senses? For example, following a suggestion by Peter Graystone, hand everyone a sample tea bag as they come into church. During prayer time, ask them to hold it, to sniff the aroma of tea, to pray for all who have grown, picked and transported the tea – and for justice in the tea trade over all. Or show a PowerPoint sequence of images as a focus for your prayers.

Preaching about Fair Trade

Sermon and Worship Ideas

Preaching about Fair Trade – or holding a service on a Fair Trade theme – can help people to make the connections between faith and trade, to understand something of why trade can be unfair, and to see how Fair Trade operates.

If you’re preparing a sermon in a church that uses the Revised Common Lectionary, it can be helpful to have some pointers that link the readings to Fair Trade themes. The Fairtrade Foundation historically included these in its Church Action Guides. For this year, we’ve reproduced one of Elizabeth Perry’s excellent ‘linked lectionaries’ for the 1st Sunday in Lent, which appeared in a Church Action Guide, now not accessible online, and have added one of our own.

CCOW is beginning to put together a “bank” of sermon notes and sermons. You can find some interesting ones online:

The Revd Dr Kevin Snyman’s sermon for the Fairtrade Foundation ecumenical service in 2021
The Revd. Dr Bruce Hamill, a Presbyterian Anabaptist in New Zealand, “Learning to Consume Rightly”
Dr Mark Hayes, Fair Trade sermon at Robinson College, Cambridge. Shares his own experiences of helping to set up the Fairtrade Foundation – obviously a unique perspective! – but also contains more general reflections on lectionary texts
The Revd. Simon Cutmore, A Sermon to End Fairtrade Fortnight 2011

We’d love it if you were to share your sermons with us! Please send them to coordinator@ccow.org.uk.

Studying about Fair Trade

Materials for Study

Might your home group want to explore the realities of Fair Trade and the reasons why so many Christians support it as part of their discipleship? The following materials could help:

http://www.biblestudytools.com/blogs/jesus-economy/4-reasons-why-fair-trade-matters-to-christianity.html

And after the service …

One of the best ways to support Fair Trade is to make products accessible to people in your church. There are many different ways to do this.

Using Fair Trade in Your Church

One of the easiest ways to promote Fair Trade is to use Fair Trade products wherever appropriate in your church’s daily life. So if you serve tea and/or coffee after services, you could have a policy that they’ll always be Fairtrade. But it’s not just tea and coffee! You can also use Fairtrade sugar, biscuits, juice, etc for refreshments, Fairtrade flowers in arrangements – even Fairtrade footballs for your children’s/youth groups. Look at our Using Fair Trade in Your Church sheet for recommendations on finding and using the products.

Selling Fair Trade

Selling Fair Trade products through a stall in the church or by placing joint orders from catalogues can help people become familiar with the products and the ideas behind them. Look at our Selling fair trade sheet for suggestions on how to do this in new and different ways.

As part of selling Fair Trade, you might want to hold special Fair Trade events at which people can taste or buy a wider range than usual – and through which you can reach out to people who might not regularly come to church. Look at our “Fair Trade Special Events” section for some ideas.