We're so pleased you're considering hosting an EA Sunday at your church. Feel free to make it your own and celebrate your membership of the Alliance and the unity of the UK Church in a way that best suits you and your congregation. But here are a few ideas for what you could do as part of your service.

1. Hold a joint service

We're all about unity at the Alliance. Why not consider inviting other Alliance member churches and their congregations to hold a joint service? It's an amazing depiction of the unity of the local Church and a great way to get to know the neighbours. You can find Alliance member churches using our church search on the right-hand side of our homepage: www.eauk.org

2. Explore unity creatively

 There are lots of creative ways for exploring the importance of unity for the local, national and global Church. You could:

• Make your own 'church unity bunting' – ask members of the church to draw themselves on one of the pieces of bunting and string them together showing how each person is a valuable member of the church family
• Create a 'church unity paper chain' – each member of the congregation is given a paper chain link at the start. Ask them to write their names on it and decorate it during the service. At the end of the service, staple them all together to demonstrate how you are each connected within the body of Christ
• Ask the congregation to see how many different Christian denominations they can name
• Why not commission your congregation's best bakers and host an EA Unity Bake Sale?
• Take a group photo/selfie and post it on social media with the hashtags #EASunday and #unitedchurch. Don't forget to tag us on Twitter: @EAUKnews

3. Show a video

 Videos about the Alliance

 Take your pick from these two short videos that explain a bit more about what the Alliance does: We are for you and Come With Us.

 What kind of Church?

In a time of rapid secularisation and declining church attendance we need to be discussing the Church. This video series is our attempt to begin that discussion. The series is accompanied by seven different videos each tackling a different subject, presented by Fred Drummond, our Scotland national director and director of prayer.

 Everything has changed

 Liminal

 Encounter and engage

 Holding lightly

 Gathered

 Scattered

 Dare to dream

4. Pray for us

Coming soon: our director of prayer, Fred Drummond, has written a prayer that you could pray as a church as a sign of standing with us in unity.

Please pray for the unity of the Church as a whole, reflecting on Jesus's prayer in John 17:22-23: "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Our ultimate aim in the work that we do is that the world might believe in Jesus. Please pray that many across our nations would come into relationship with him. Pray that we might be bold in declaring our faith. Pray for the opportunities to come and for hearts to be open.

You may find some useful prayer points in the Talking Jesus booklet we produced last year following a joint research project between the Alliance, the Church of England and HOPE.

Please also pray for our new project, The Great Commission – a new evangelism hub that launches this autumn. We would love loads of people to come to a living faith in Jesus.

5. Take up a special offering

Why not consider taking up a special birthday offering for the Alliance? If you can't ask on your 170^th birthday, when can you? We're so grateful to all our member churches, organisations and thousands of individual supporters who give so generously to our work. We couldn't do any of this without you.