1. Anxiety round decision making: Every week people make tough decisions in their working lives and they are preoccupied by this. There was the person who was going to work the next day to tell some employees they would be made redundant. He was distressed, but wanted to carry out the role in a way that reflected his faith; the pastoral conflicting with the managerial, as so often.

2. How to do more with less: public sector employees especially felt there had been deep cuts to budgets since the 2008 banking crash which meant they had to do more in the same amount of time. One police officer was worried about morale in the team she led, felt this herself and wanted to lead in a way that honoured God; she knew there were no easy answers.

3. What happens when your job impacts your faith: one news editor said that the images that came into the newsroom from around the world – the kind that never make it to news bulletins because they are so upsetting – was damaging her faith in God. In an image saturated world, some people have to look at the images – like the police – or filter these images – like online content moderators. They are seeing the worst of life in a way previous analogue generations did not.

4. How do you cope with your job when your values are compromised by it: one women who worked for the UK Foreign Office said she could not cope with its policy over Gaza and yet had to help work it out. Leadership take you to places you would rather not be and for which others may judge you, even as you seek to do your best and keep your conscience.

5. Family health is front and centre: people worry a lot about the health of their family and it figures regularly in the prayer requests. There is a lot of ill health and mostly we don’t think about this in others, unless they tell us. Treatment in an over-burdened health service takes a long time and stretches the patience and faith of people as they wait. Several people living with dementia have wanted me to pray for those who will look after them as their minds deteriorate. Their sense of selflessness, in thinking of others even more than themselves, is deeply affecting.

6. You never stop being a parent or grandparent: anxiety surrounding children and grandchildren is prevalent in people, especially when these children become adults and parental control slackens. Health, jobs, marriage breakdowns, debt, addictions, homelessness all feature. Elderly people, with limited capacity to help, worry greatly for their grandchildren, especially in such a turbulent world.

7. Work-life balance: this is especially prominent among parents of young children who hold demanding jobs and want to be the best parent they can be for dependent children – especially when those children are primary school age or younger. Though fathers expressed this, it is significantly more present in mothers who are seen as the primary care givers and feel this pressure. They want to work and they need to work, and guilt unfairly accompanies them on the way.

8. Children have a lot to worry about: the recurring prayer requests are for exams, as they know how influential these are; for friendships, because these are often volatile and change shape easily; for transition, as leaving school to join an older school or attend further or higher education are huge life events that adults easily overlook despite having been through them earlier in life.

9. I don’t know what God wants for me: people are eager to know God’s purpose for their lives but often feel they are not living it. The successful thirty-something barrister who had a nagging sense that God had another thing in store for her; the person who hated their job but felt trapped in it. Significantly, retired people often felt they did not know what God wanted of them now. The refrain we often hear is that retired people are busier than ever, but the regularity with which this prayer request is made suggests otherwise.

10. I want to be a witness for Christ: this spans the generations. The boy who wanted to know how to share his faith with his eight year old classmates, right up to the woman over a hundred who wanted to be a witness to her faith in the care home she lived in. You never stop being a follower or a witness to Christ.