A growing group of youth leaders is asking this key question: How do we truly partner with parents in our youth ministries? Answers to these questions generally range from parent training meetings to involving parents as volunteers to sending out weekly e-updates and prayer requests.

All of these are good ideas, but I’ve been especially inspired by my church’s student ministry team’s efforts to weave ministry to and with parents into the fabric of its theology, philosophy, and programs. More specifically, the paid staff has decided to focus on parents in the midst of their rhythms and schedules.

Daily our church’s youth ministry team is committed to praying for parents. Whether individually or corporately, they ask God to work in and through the families in our church and community. They have reported to me that it’s a real joy to tell parents they’ve been praying for them and celebrate together the work that God is doing. If your church changes nothing else about how you involve parents, this is a fantastic idea.

Weekly our youth ministry communicates with parents by email, giving them updates about teaching series, questions that are bubbling to the surface in small groups, and prayer requests.

Monthly our student team intends to send out a training piece to parents, whether it be an online article from a great resourcing organization or an audio interview that one of the pastors has done with a local school counselor or therapist.

Now comes my favorite idea: Annually our youth ministry team does parent conferences. Their rationale is that if schools do them, why can’t the church?

This is optional, and less than 50% of students’ parents sign up for these thirty-minute slots. But our team devotes one week each year to these conferences so parents can sign up at times that work with their school and family schedules (weekdays, weeknights, during Sunday morning worship, etc.). During those conversations, the pastors (and small group leaders, if appropriate) share how they see God working in and through those particular students. Interestingly, one of the major themes during last year’s conferences was the message to parents that what their kids and their families were experiencing was normal.

What do you and your team do to build the encouragement and equipping of parents into your schedule?

I do think there are some meaningful places to have parents involved but I’ll admit this hasn’t always been a strength in ministries I have led. But there are a couple things I’ve done over the years that I think have been great and paid off in good ways for the family, the church, and the youth ministry.

Family Rafting. I have a background in outdoor-adventure-based ministry. One thing that attracted me to a church in Los Angeles fourteen years ago was the church’s willingness to provide the resources to start an outdoor ministry. We started rafting primarily as a way to connect families. I think there were about eight years in a row that we did Memorial Day family rafting trips. The goal of those weekends was for us as a ministry to serve families and give them a great opportunity to have fun with one another as well as connect with other families. There were several families who never missed this weekend. I often hear from them how great it was. You don’t have to do a rafting trip, but some type of overnight event where parents and students are engaged in something they wouldn’t normally do is a good thing. For us, rafting worked in a unique way because neither the parents nor the students were in charge. They all had to work together to get the boats down the river. Everyone was out of the comfort zone and normal world.

Parent Committees. In my Presbyterian world, we do a lot of things by committee. In the ministries I oversee, we have five committees, all made up of parents. These are generally places that we use as sounding boards and filters of ideas we come up with. It works pretty well, and we do listen to the parents.

Parent Chaperones/Volunteers. At my current church, we do this better than any other place I’ve been. Starting with fifth graders, we do a couple summer mission trips to Mendenhall, Mississippi, that we encourage parents to come on with their students. We find this helps us get these younger students signed up. Many of them have never been on this type of trip before, so they think it’s great to have their parents with them. We also find that it is really meaningful for parents. We’ve found that in our church there have been some significant recommitments and positive decisions from parents in their own spiritual lives from these trips. This model of inviting parents continues in our older grades too. We tell parents they are welcome to come on any trip we do, and we try to make sure we set things up so we will always have space for them.

Parenting Classes/Seminars. We look at parents as part of our ministry and make sure we provide resources, classes, seminars aimed specifically at them. This is why, for a long time, we had a part-time marriage and family therapist on staff who regularly met with parents and was always available to them. We try to make sure we bring in guest speakers who can help show parents the importance of the youth ministry and help them figure out how to best partner with us.

There’s a lot more you can be doing for parents. However, while parents should have a significant role, there are also appropriate times when they don’t. We want them to feel they are important and cared for, but we also sometimes just want to be with their kids. As a dad of three, sometimes I feel like my role is just to cheer on the youth workers who love them. I will tell you, though, that something I love is when those youth workers contact me just to tell me how they love my kids and the great things they see my kids doing.

We have attempted to provide a variety of parental involvement opportunities since one cookie-cutter mold doesn’t fit everyone. It is important to get to know the parents so you can make sure they are in the right place for them to serve. We provide parents with a contract that clearly outlines expectations we have for their roles and the responsibilities they are required to meet in order to provide clarity and avoid any misunderstandings.

The first way to become involved is in a volunteer role. Some activities that fall under this area include assisting with weekly tasks, supervising the parking lot, purchasing supplies, or cleanup. We attempt to think about the following types of questions here: 1) What values are important to them? 2) What do they enjoy doing? 3) How can they incorporate this into new service opportunities?

The second way to become involved is by beginning to interact with students more regularly. Training parents on how to make students feel cared about is stressed here. Activities that fall under this area involve preparing specific meals, providing transportation, and participating in training events. Questions to think about here include: 1) What do they need to do? 2) What small steps can we take to bring them into the life of weekly events? 3) What can we do to make them feel welcome?

The third way has to do with helping them develop both as parents and leaders. We want parents to be equipped to take initiative and feel as though they can make a positive difference in the present and future. We take steps to create a safe community where parents can find support and accountability among fellow parents. Activities that fall under this area include monthly events where parents have time to share what is going on in their lives and how they can take more active roles in the lives of their students and the ministry. Questions to think about here include: 1) How can we help parents to reflect on the past, in order to learn from it? 2) How can we encourage parents to follow on their goals?

The fourth way centers more around building stronger relationships. The priority here is to help develop healthy parent-student relationships that take work and need to be set as a priority. Our ministry has sought to create activities where parents and students can be outside their comfort zones in order to be vulnerable and learn together. Some things we have done in the past include retreats, service trips, and rite-of-passage activities. Questions to think about here include: 1) What types of activities are conducive to learning? 2) How can we incorporate parents who can help take ownership of this?

Our ministry developed these intentional practices over a number of years in the belief that if we are not more intentional about helping parents feel welcome to participate, we will be missing out on what God desires to do in our community.

As a teenager, I didn’t know my mother without knowing her suffering. As a result, things like the common cold or flu were no longer acceptable reasons to complain in my mind. It was almost as if I couldn’t be sick enough to justify staying home from school, church, or any other obligation. No one told me this, but witnessing my mother’s illness caused me to reevaluate the things I thought were worthy of complaint. As miserable as I am, there is someone more miserable than me was the thought running through my head. Suddenly my pain, heartache, and suffering took a permanent backseat to the pain, heartache, and suffering of the world around me.

Part of this was a healthy awareness that drew me away from a self-absorbed, adolescent state of mind. On the other hand, I was left with an unhealthy ability to ignore myself for the sake of others. Not addressing the suffering inside myself taught me the invaluable lesson that intentional ignorance of self only results in more suffering. My perspective on the existence of suffering and how to address suffering in a healthy way was shaped by my mother’s suffering, the suffering of those who loved her, and my suffering as a result of losing her at a young age.

The present suffering in my life shapes my internal climate. It shapes the stability of the emotional and spiritual platform I operate from as a leader. One of the consequences of having past suffering in my life is that I have lived through what happens when suffering is left unresolved. Unresolved suffering does not remain dormant. It expresses itself in uncontrolled, irrational, and reactionary ways. As a teenager I experienced this through different forms of self-mutilation. As a leader I experience this when, instead of exemplifying a Christian response to a current situation, I react without thinking.

Essentially, anything that is a part of the leader becomes a part of that person’s leadership. Recognizing this encourages me to work toward resolving suffering inside myself because I don’t want to operate from an unstable and unpredictable internal platform.

Future suffering is the anticipated suffering. I’m not addressing future or anticipated suffering because I want to suffer. However, as someone constantly working toward resolving suffering inside myself, I acknowledge that I am naturally preparing for a new season of suffering. When we open ourselves to deal with what has happened and what is happening in our lives, we allow God to prepare us for what will happen.

As a result of my personal approach to suffering, when I recognize that one of my kids is experiencing a form of suffering or when the community is experiencing suffering, I approach the situation much differently than I would otherwise. First, I don’t ignore it, and I don’t let anyone else ignore it. Period.

Second, I am intentional about articulating the importance of accepting suffering in one’s own life and for the members of the community to support one another in accepting their suffering. What I commonly run into with my kids when they are suffering is what I said when I was a suffering teenager: “It’s not that bad. Really, it could be worse. Someone somewhere has it worse than I do.” The truth is, that is an unhealthy and hypocritical state of mind to live in, or to believe is acceptable.

Third, I take the time to discuss issues of death, suicide, mourning, transition, and other situations that bring about feelings that could be marked as suffering. I want them to know that God didn’t ignore it, neither should they, and neither will we.

Taking the time to address suffering as people, as leaders, and as ministry communities can be overwhelming, difficult, and scary. I encourage you to try it anyway. Why? Because it’s godly, healing, and loving. I promise.

Being fired was one of the best things to happen to my career.

In the time it took me to move from a performance-based evaluation to being let go, I plumbed the depths of my calling. It was a painful, frustrating, and rewarding experience. I got back in touch with the reasons I began working with young adults. Never had I intended to work at the church of what’s happening now or to build the best programs or to have the biggest events.

Inside of all this soul searching, I found out something about myself. My passion lies in awakening possibilities in teens and in those who work with them. If I’m not doing that, what’s the point?

As I pondered the many new opportunities from my previous church’s outplacement service, I began to build a new way of doing youth ministry that fed my soul. It wasn’t that programs were bad; they just weren’t necessary if I was doing the things I loved.

Reading through the gospels, I realized that there are few—if any—stories about people being changed from sermons. More the norm was a transformation that grew out of a personal encounter with Jesus in the context of a small group or one-on-one encounter. Why was I spending so much of my time working on a broadcast message when it was the less effective method? Presentations took a back seat to building real relationships.

At the same time, God was working on my perspective of the gospel. A friend put new thoughts in my head when he told me, “What you save them with is what you save them to.” If I bring teens into the church through attractional, bait-and-switch methods, they have little grounding in the actual good news of Christ. My understanding of the gospel moved toward a personal message that confronts specific pains in our lives instead of a ticket through the pearly gates.

As I solidified these paradigm shifts in my life and ministry, a new person emerged. Previously in the interviewing process, I researched churches and figured out what I thought they wanted. Now I shamelessly went in and told them who I was and what I was about. I was absolutely convinced of the kind of work I should be doing. After I was hired, I sought the lead pastor and told him my problems instead of waiting to be called in.

The effort I spent in ministry became more focused and concrete as well. Instead of spending 80% of my time finding a better ice breaker, I developed deep bonds with teenagers. At some point, I stopped preparing and started doing. My time with students became more dynamic instead of a static, one-sided meeting. Surprisingly, more and more of my time went into prayer and personal development. It made me more effective.

All of the suffering I went through changed me. It made me a passionately focused agent of change for youth and their families. As I look back through these times of hardship, I know God used them to sharpen me into a better instrument for his kingdom. Suffering is the best gift I have received from Jesus. It makes me more like him.

Conversely, I can’t tell you how many times I wished I could have traded in my pastoral role for my old corporate job. Yes, that career was unfulfilling. Yes, the longer I did it, the more bored I was. But at least it didn’t hurt so bad. When I was betrayed, I could speak up. When I was wronged, I could relay my issue to a human resources professional. And when I failed, I could deal with being passed over for a promotion or a raise. Sitting in a small group of my peers, I could talk about my job sucking or my boss being a jerk and get empathy from people in similar situations.

But in ministry the stakes are so much more personal. And it’s a very private struggle. The isolation and lack of camaraderie are ultimately what hurt the most. All too often when you reach out with a struggle, you are rebuked or even belittled. At least for me, this meant I carried a lot of burdens. Suffering became part of my ministry.

In truth, this personal suffering was enough. I understood it as part of the calling. But what caused unnecessary suffering was the impact of my vocation on my family. My wife couldn’t just be a wife and new mother. She had to carry the mantle of pastor’s wife and receive unlimited and unwanted advice from the hens of the church. When our kids misbehaved, we felt the judgment from fellow congregants.

Early in my ministry, I allowed the weight of suffering to shape my attitude and self-image. If I were made of Play-Doh, my body would have been flattened. But, as I’ve gotten stronger, more used to the weight and its impact, I’ve learned that there is a healthy suffering that just comes with being a follower of Christ, which I can deal with.

But, there is also abuse that comes my way that I no longer permit to have the impact it once did. I’ve become like a junkyard dog in protecting my family and the families of my ministry friends. That’s the weight of ministry I no longer allow to shape them.

Some friendship seeds were planted but ended when people left to start church plants or moved away for new jobs. Others sprouted up quickly but were later revealed to be shallow and hurtful, destroyed by gossip and insecurity. Still others were choked out by the frantic busyness of life. Between jobs, kids, responsibilities, and ministry, friendships were relegated to the background of life.

Slowly but surely, a few friendships took root, and the roots sank deep. Some of these were fellow youth ministers at other churches. Some were fellow pastors in my own church community. Some of the deepest were the very people I was called to lead and disciple—my volunteer team and interns. It surprised me to find that my best friends at my church were those I served alongside.

With relationship comes risk, however, and there are a few that stand out to me:

A deeper level of hurt. The deeper you go in a relationship, the deeper you can wound and be wounded. When we initially arrived at our church, another couple seemed excited to be friends with us, quickly inviting us into the deep end of the friendship pool. We eventually learned that the motives behind this friendship were impure, and what appeared like the seed of friendship sprouted a root of bitterness. The couple eventually left the youth ministry. It wasn’t just a lost friendship; it was a lost ministry partnership, and students experienced the painful ripple effects.

A potential lack of respect. When you’re buddies with the team you’re leading, one’s sense of authority can quickly dissipate. A friend of mine recently had to confront his best friends and roommates about their attitudes as volunteers in his ministry. They were operating with a sense of entitlement, showing up late to meetings or not respecting some of the boundaries because he was viewed as their friend first and their leader second.

A closed community. I’ve seen plenty of volunteer teams who really like hanging out. They love each other so much so that they forget to spend time with the teens they’re called to disciple. The mingling before a worship gathering finds itself filled with cliques, only these are now divided between student and staff. Others may interpret “we’re close” as “we’re closed.” Without a sense of awareness, a team can become self-involved.

The risks in these friendships are weighty, but so are the rewards.

A shared mission. C.S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves that friendship stems from a common interest or insight, that friends must journey together toward something for their friendship to blossom. There is a clear common interest between pastors and volunteers: We all want to see young people grow closer to Jesus. That mission binds us together, gives us something to spark passionate conversations, and allows us to support and encourage one another in our endeavors.

A team camaraderie. When your team genuinely loves each other, it makes ministry fun; really fun. Some of my favorite moments in recent memory are the times I spent laughing and sharing life with members of my ministry team. Like any family, we have our dysfunction and quirks, yet we transcend these as we emphasize one another’s gifts and strengths. The love we share spills into our students, who see our deep friendships and strive for a similar sense of community with those around them.

An expression of the love of Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes this about Christ in The Cost of Discipleship: “He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality... Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves.”

If Jesus is our mediator, what better place to find true friendship than with those who are also pursuing him? He is the source of all healthy relationship, and thus our partners in the gospel should become our dearest of friends.

Joel graduated from Multnomah University with a B.S. in Bible & theology and youth ministry. He is currently the high school pastor at Red Mountain Community Church in Mesa, Arizona. He and his wife, Katie, live in Gilbert, Arizona, with their two children, Copeland and Eloise. He blogs at http://joelmayward.blogspot.com/.

A good friend of mine who was a youth pastor at his church for more than four years was seriously burned by one of his closest friends who was a member of the youth staff. Because of their close friendship, the lines that separated youth pastor from volunteer started to become blurry. This volunteer started to make major decisions without consulting the youth pastor, which ultimately resulted in great division among the students. It wasn’t long before the volunteer left the church, along with about twenty of their students, and started attending another church up the road. My friend told me that their close friendship made confronting his volunteer that much more difficult and awkward.

Another caution I would offer to the youth pastor is in the area of accountability. I am not saying anything new when I say that ministers need to have relationships in their lives where they can be brutally honest and open with a trusted friend. They need to have relationships where they don’t have to be on and are able to hang out with people who are not parishioners in their church. My heart aches for pastors who do not have one or two relationships in their lives where they don’t have to worry about being judged or thrown out of their congregations because they shared something they thought or felt.

It becomes muddy and messy when youth pastors confide all their thoughts and feelings with someone within the church or a member of the youth staff. Even though youth pastors may feel as though they trust someone completely, when you share intimate details of your life with someone in the church, you are giving that person potential ammo to use against you at a later time. There have been times I thought I was sharing something in confidence, only to find my vulnerability used against me later. I know that sounds overly cautious, but pastors need to watch their own backs. I’m sure you have your own or have heard stories.

Finally, the last word of caution I would offer regards the gender issue. The work of ministry naturally causes people to draw closer to one another. We must be aware of how close we allow ourselves to get with members of the opposite sex. It only takes a few years in ministry to hear stories of pastors or youth pastors who do not create healthy and safe boundaries with the opposite sex and end up falling into sin.

So, while there is not a black or white answer to the question, any and all youth pastors must use some level of caution and wisdom when it comes to initiating and sustaining friendships with their volunteer youth staff.

Jason is an associate pastor in Independence, Missouri, where he primarily works with youth and young adults. He thoroughly enjoys speaking and teaching God's Word and has done so at a handful of camps and retreats over the years. Jason always keeps his disc golf discs in the trunk of his car just in case the opportunity to play should suddenly arise. He occasionally jots down some of his thoughts at www.JayMcPherson.blogspot.com. Jason is married to Rachel, and they are expecting their first child in June 2012.

Part of this is for the simple reason of needing to keep your sanity. Ministry is an amazing privilege, and it can be life giving and a joy to be able to walk alongside people on their spiritual journeys. But it can also be hard. And draining. And frustrating. And there will be days when you hate it. On those days, you need friends and people outside your faith community with whom you can relax, be yourself, vent, and not worry about the repercussions. If you don't have those people in your life, it's going to drive you crazy, and you'll probably internalize a lot of stress, frustration, and anger, and that's not healthy or sustainable.

It's also healthy to have plenty of friends and acquaintances who aren't connected to your faith community or to any faith community. These are the people who will keep you honest, who will help give you a reality check every once in a while and provide much-needed perspectives that you wouldn't get from those in your churches and ministries.

There can be some real rewards of having close friends work as volunteers of your ministries. For one, it's a gift for our youth today when you can model what authentic Christian friendships and relationships look like. Serving in ministry with your close friends is one way to do that.

It's also an added gift to enjoy the people you're serving with; being in ministry with people who know you well can make it more fun and can help you get through those times when ministry gets hard.

But there are risks in having those close friends work with you in ministry. Your friends aren't perfect people (nor should you expect them to be!), and sometimes they'll do things that you disagree with. They'll be late to youth group, forget to show up, plan a game that isn't the smartest, or share things with students that may be inappropriate or that don't fit with where you'd like to see the ministry be theologically.

Having to discuss those types of things with volunteers is never easy; you don't want to offend, and you certainly don't want to lose them as volunteers. But it's even harder when the conversation has to happen with your best friend. I think there is the potential to want to let things slide or not have the important conversations that need to be had when these situations arise.

On the other hand, hopefully you have the type of relationships with your friends where you can be frank and to the point, and they'll totally get where you're coming from. That'd be great. But the reality is that those types of conversations have the potential to be pretty awkward and can hurt friendships. And when you're doing the tough work of ministry, you need all the friends and support you can get.

Being able to minister with your friends can be a real blessing, both to you and to the students in your ministry. But I encourage you to choose wisely which of your friends you ask to help out; depending on the strength and personality of your relationship, it could be a real blessing or a real frustration to your ministry.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus modeled an intentionally prayerful life. As a leader, I try to follow this path because I have found out that when I stray from this, not only do I begin to lose my footing, I begin to lose focus of who God is. Prayer is times spent with God, worshiping, praising, confessing, and petitioning.

As I was taught by my fathers and mothers in the faith who blazed a trail before me, I seek to pray regularly for myself, my family, my mentors, my fellow leaders and members of the ministry, families in our community, fellow disciples, the lost, and those in influential positions. My core desire is to become more like Jesus and continue to build on the movement he initiated thousands of years ago.

I often pray that God will send more supportive people into the lives of those in our ministry. I pray that God will continue to create a loving community of disciples who embrace newcomers and help guide me on how to better care for those in our ministry. I seek to pray for this ministry with others. I have a group of people I rely on for support and insight, a prayer team made up of those outside of the ministry context who resonate with what we are trying to accomplish.

My prayer life overflows into the ministry, since during all of our meetings there are opportunities to share how God has been directing each person. I discuss the importance of prayer often, touching on issues ranging from the challenges of finding time to being open to what God is saying. The meetings also provide an opportunity for me to pray for individuals, as well as be prayed for. I write down every prayer request that is stated during each meeting, which I seek to go over each night as I close out the day.

On another level, fasting is also a large part of how I pray for the ministry. More specifically, the first weekend of each January and July are set apart for prayer and fasting for direction for the ministry. This has proven to be extremely fruitful and a source of encouragement, especially when times get tough.

I hope this will encourage you wherever you are. Early in my life as a disciple, I sensed that the discipline to be intentional about prayer was one thing, but the ability to come to God, open to whatever took place during that time, was quite another. On my journey, I constantly have to challenge myself to truly listen to God and have faith that he will be watching over those he brings into my path.

My prayer is that my fellow youth leaders and I would be leaders and people who are deeply rooted in Christ. The simple truth is that if we expect to effectively and faithfully lead and guide our students, we need to be people who continually secure our roots in Christ. We secure this foundation through a continual coming before Christ and asking that our hearts, minds, and lives be guided and directed by the Spirit. My guess is that every single student leader or pastor out there (who is honest) can share about times they have tried to minister to students when they themselves have neglected their own relationship with Christ and how frustrating and difficult that can be.

As youth leaders, we pray for our students’ families. I am a firm believer that parents are the number one influencers and shapers of students’ faith. Unfortunately, as I reflect on my local church, most of our students come from homes that are familiar with brokenness (divorce, abuse, neglect, etc.). Many of our students have also been raised in homes that lack any sort of Christian education or Christlike examples. Therefore, I encourage my youth staff to pray regularly for their students and their families.

We strive to pray for our students by name. Just this past week, our student ministry had the opportunity to get away from Kansas City and head out to the thriving metropolis of Pomona, Kansas (population 940), to go on a retreat. While I thoroughly enjoyed the speaker, the constantly lit fireplace, and the abnormally warm winter weather, the highlight of the retreat for me was a prayer time we had together Saturday night. After our small group time was wrapping up, I asked the students if they would allow me to pray for them by name. Even though we make it a discipline to pray for the students corporately, there is something powerful and special about praying for students by name, especially when they hear and participate in the prayer.

When we pray for our students by name, we are able to recall and recount their individual and unique stories and pray accordingly. As I began praying for Malachi, here is a student who hasn’t even turned thirteen yet. He has two solid parents who are deeply committed to raising him in the faith. My prayer for Malachi is that, as he navigates the seventh grade and begins his first year of ice hockey, he would seek to put Christ at the forefront of his life and strive to love others as Christ calls him to do. When he is faced with the challenge to join in the locker room talk, I pray that God would help him to speak words of love.

Sitting next to Malachi was Daniel. Daniel is almost eighteen and has had no more than a half dozen conversations with his father in his lifetime. Daniel’s life has been marked by instability and constant abandonment. He somehow ended up coming to the youth group when his sister attended a VBS at our church last summer. When I pray for Daniel, I pray that he would seek to know, love, and serve Christ. I also pray that Daniel knows he has a heavenly Father who loves him and is proud to call him son. Lastly, I pray that God would remind him that he is a heavenly Father who promises never to leave or forsake his children.

As youth leaders and pastors, it is important that we adopt the discipline and practice of prayer for ourselves, our youth staff, and our students. May we all strive to be leaders and ministers who make prayer the foundation of our ministries.

Jason is an associate pastor in Independence, Missouri, where he primarily works with youth and young adults. He thoroughly enjoys speaking and teaching God's Word and has done so at a handful of camps and retreats over the years. Jason always keeps his disc golf discs in the trunk of his car just in case the opportunity to play should suddenly arise. He occasionally jots down some of his thoughts at www.JayMcPherson.blogspot.com. Jason is married to Rachel, and they are expecting their first child in June 2012.

Inside this discipline, there are times for me to pray prayers of praise, proclamation, and petition. It is here that I pray for the people of the ministry I serve. These prayers, however, are never on behalf of the ministry itself (organization, programs, structure, budgets, etc.); they are only on behalf of the people in the scope of the ministry.

I suppose someone could say this question implies people rather than programs. However, too often I have heard prayers spoken that have more to do with the success of the person praying than with hope for and healing of people within the ministry.

Just last week I heard this prayer from a youth pastor: “…and God, help this ministry to grow in numbers so that the world may see our love for them.” What? The numerical growth of your ministry is directly related to how the world sees your love for them? Really? I think just maybe the “world” may know how much we love them by our faithfulness to serving them.

Too many people concern themselves with prayers that are, in the end, for them. So when a question like, How do you pray for your ministry? arises, it makes me want to strongly differentiate between prayers we pray for ourselves and prayers we pray for the people around us.

Most often, I find myself moved the most by praying prayers of confession as it relates to the people I serve. Here is an example of one of those prayers:

Heavenly Father, look upon our community of faith, which is the church of your Son, Jesus. Help us to proclaim his love by loving all our fellow creatures without exception. Under the kingdom reign of God, keep us faithful to Jesus’s mission. Forgive us for not always choosing to preach the gospel to the poor, blind, oppressed and brokenhearted. Amen.

Telling God the truth about my unfaithfulness in taking gospel action awakens one of the greatest gifts of Christian spirituality: forgiveness. It is within this forgiveness that I experience God’s mercy. It is God’s mercy that inspires me want to be more generous with others.

Do I pray for my ministry? No. Do I pray for those whom the ministry in which I serve touches? Yes. Does the question How do you pray for your ministry? really imply the people within? Perhaps. But perhaps we still could progress in our prayer practices with a strong distinction made between prayers we pray for ourselves and prayers we pray for the sake of others.