THOUGHTFUL souls at All Saints Church spent 24 hours in prayer as part of their ongoing commitment to become more prayerful.

Dozens of church-goers spent an hour each meditating on the beatitudes in a 24-hour marathon from 7.30pm on Friday.

People had signed up to do a shift in advance and groups of parishioners had clubbed together to create individual stations on different beatitudes to inspire worshippers.

Rev Tudor Roberts, team vicar at the church in Lydiard Millicent, said it was the third time the church had taken on such a challenge.

He said: “When the Archbishop (of Canterbury, Justin Welby) visited the church last year he highlighted three things that parishes should be working towards, including prayer, evangelism and reconciliation.

“We have been saying that we wanted to work towards being more prayerful and this is part of that commitment.

“You don’t have to sit on a pew hands clasped to pray in a conventional way, there are other ways you can pray, which is why we set up the stations. People can wonder around and take inspiration and use them to think about God.”

Tudor said the prayathon was particularly important since it took place on the second weekend in the period of Lent.