Praying Without Ceasing
“We aren’t praying enough!” Jon exclaimed. [*] He then continued: “We are doing hard work and we don’t really know where we are headed. Shouldn’t we be praying more with our team?”
I was sitting with a vision committee steering team for their monthly meeting. They were doing all kinds of research to develop a narrative about the congregation’s context. They were interviewing ministry leaders, staff, college presidents, school board members, the mayor, and more. They were digging through 100-plus years of history and discovering remarkable stories of faith, risk-taking and witness to the gospel. It was exciting and crazy and messy. Yet for Jon, something was missing!
And he was right.
Where does prayer fit in? Is it simply the customary thing we do at the beginning or end of a meeting? Or is prayer something more? I think the safe vote is that prayer is something more! I’ve written about this before, yet there’s more for us to learn and practice about prayer.
So here are some things to consider as prayer practices for leaders in congregations:
Take your meeting agenda and turn it into prayer. Rather than talking about an issue, pray about it.
Use the Lord’s Prayer as a model for attending to God’s direction and leadership. Acknowledge God, commit to God’s kingdom and will as being the one thing that matters in your decision making, practice gratitude for today’s provision, ask for forgiveness and for God’s mercy regarding temptation. Frankly, such a framework would serve well in many leadership meetings.
Follow the well-practiced path of work and prayer. For centuries, the Benedictine tradition’s motto has been ora et labora – prayer and work. It was a way of speaking about the whole of life as engagement (work) and listening (prayer). It was as natural as breathing in and breathing out. You need both to live well, and church leadership teams need action and reflection – work and prayer – to thrive.
As a leadership team, learn to pray for indifference. The prayer of indifference, or detachment, is a prayer practice that seeks God’s will and God’s will alone. To pray the prayer of indifference is to pray for God's desires, not your own. In other words, you are asking to be detached from your wants and wishes in order to perceive God’s desires. Let’s admit it: far too many church meetings are about what everyone in the room thinks is best – not what God desires. To pray for indifference about my own preferences, positions me to be able to discern God’s will instead of my own.
Pray Scripture, or even the prayers found in Scripture. If we believe that God is active and working in the world, then centering our meetings with Scripture presents us with an opportunity to grow in paying attention to God’s voice.
So much more could be said here. Yet, as Jon said in that steering committee meeting, we aren’t praying enough! And like Jon, along with Hannah and Nan, the other leaders of this steering team, we began exploring and practicing prayer. [*] My guess is that things will be different at their next monthly meeting – because when God shows up, praying people are paying attention!
Blessings on your ministry!
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[*] I’ve used pseudonyms to honor these people’s privacy.
