Hundreds of thousands of people have rediscovered the ancient monastic cycle of daily prayer through a Church of England podcast which has received more than a million downloads in just six months.
The Daily Prayer podcast, which is also integrated into the free Daily Prayer app, brings listeners together twice a day for short traditional services of Morning and Evening, usually led by the Revd Catherine Williams from Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.
The podcast, available both via the Daily Prayer app as well as all major podcasting platforms, has had just under a quarter of a million unique listeners since launching.
The atmospheric services follow the pattern set out in the Church of England’s Common Worship services, with readings recorded by people around the country and music from St Martin’s Voices, one of the choirs of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London.
The podcast, which was launched in March 2021, has now registered more than 1,000,000 downloads, with around 8,000 people listening a day.
Traditionally, the daily cycle of prayer was most associated with monastic communities but during the pandemic many more people have found support and a sense of belonging through online worship.