How do you pray for 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.