A Call to Ministry is a Call to Prayer – Paul

Leadership prayer is crucial in the decisions leaders have to make every day, including tactics, plans and even money.

Having founded Every Generation Ministries, I was responsible for all of the fundraising. I had no experience in this area, and it was stressful.

We had staff in Poland, Hungary and Belarus and they had families depending on income from the ministry. Prayer was continuous in this regard and God was faithful.

God gave me introduction to new churches, individuals, and foundations. I had no idea that there were businesspeople in the US that had taken their personal wealth and placed it in a “foundation” for the sole purpose of giving away the money to God’s Kingdom work. 

One of those was an innovative new foundation in Philadelphia, focused on encouraging the philanthropy of others. This foundation would match any grant you received from another donor.

That news was more than I could imagine because we had just been awarded a $30,000 grant from a foundation in Colorado. The foundation in Philadelphia offered to receive the $30,000 gift for us and, in 90 days, double it to $60,000.

For an organization our size, it was like an Eastern European farmer with a horse and a plow being awarded an air-conditioned John Deere tractor. Being solely responsible for fundraising, I found this good news almost more than I could bear. 

This miraculous news was immediately sent to the Board of Directors, and I prepared for what was certainly going to be a GREAT board meeting.

During the board meeting, we talked about the grant, and to my utter shock the Board of Directors decided to decline the matching opportunity.

The chair and some of the other members had prayed and felt the Lord leading them to forgo the match. I confess, the match was so awesome, I figured prayer wasn’t even required! Clearly God had poured out His blessings on us! 

But the board held fast to its decision. I was crushed. We did—with gratitude to God—receive the $30,000 gift.

And a few weeks later, splashed across the front page of The Wall Street Journal, was news that the CEO of that doubling organization had been indicted for running a Ponzi scheme.

We would have lost every cent of our $30,000 grant. God had heard the leadership prayer of the Board of Directors, and He gave His guidance.

I was so busy doing my victory dance, my only prayer was thanksgiving, so I missed the guidance part. Oops!

Paul's Example of Prayer in Leadership

Paul, the missionary church planting giant relied on leadership prayer throughout his epic ministry work. Prayer was evident from the beginning.

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. (Acts 13:1-3)

In our earlier look at Samuel’s calling, we suggested that this kind of communication can be understood as prayer in the broadest sense of communication with God.

This was clearly the case with Paul on the Damascus Road. There was definitely communication and life change at that.

In addition to this dramatic experience, we find prayer as instrumental in the actual launch of Paul’s missionary work. In this passage, Paul is “set apart” (vs. 2) along with Barnabas for the work that God intended for them.

In response to that calling, the church laid hands on the two leaders and prayed for them, a kind of ministry commissioning. This is another feature of leadership prayer, namely the commissioning of leaders in prayer.

Our goal in Poland had always been to develop a Polish ministry. After five years, the staff was all Polish, the training and Bible teaching materials all Polish and the funding was coming from Polish sources.

Overseeing all the work was a Board of Directors made up of outstanding Polish leaders. The only non-Polish element was …………me.

This fact was delicately communicated to me by the Board and a search began for a Polish leader to take my role leading the ministry. After a Spirit led search process, God led a gifted Polish leader to serve.

At his first Board meeting and my last, we gathered around Andrzej and laid hands on him and prayed for him much like the passage above.

The emotions that rolled over me in that moment included sorrow at the end of a chapter in my life, a sense of tremendous joy in God bringing such a gifted leader, a sense of loss as saying good-bye to a ministry I launched, and enthusiasm for what was going to be a great future.

His call to ministry was in prayer. He states that clearly in Colossians 4:2-4. 

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

Leadership prayer is not something that takes place at the launch of a leader’s ministry and then they carry on from there alone.

A call to ministry is a call to prayer, meaning leadership prayer influences vision, planning and every tactic and decision along the way to realizing that vision.