When you start a new ministry, as I did, you wear many hats from the outset.
There was the actual work of training and developing children’s workers in churches, producing Polish language Bible teaching materials, managing the finances, and recruiting the financial and human resources needed for the ministry.
Some of those things I knew nothing about. Praise be to God that the ministry grew and expanded outside of Poland and in 2001, following the direction of the Board, we relocated our family to the United States to develop work outside of Eastern Europe.
As the ministry expanded into Latin America and the Middle East, God provided a gifted leader to oversee the finances and administration of the ministry. Then it became apparent that we needed a leader to help run the growing ministry work around the world.
We began to pray for God to bring us that kind of leader. We prayed for months and continued our ministry expansion including sending a team to the Children’s Pastors’ Conference in Kansas City.
The couple that staffed our display was working to network with children’s ministry leaders and had a large glass jar where people could leave their business card or contact information and thereby register for a digital camera, which was state of the art at that time.
A winner was drawn from the jar and received the camera. We also got contact information for over five hundred children’s ministry leaders.
The following week we sent them a letter asking them to consider raising up a short-term ministry team in their church to serve with EGM overseas. We also featured our ministry leadership opportunity in the letter.
Three days after the mailing I was driving to a meeting when my phone rang. On the other end was a children’s pastor from a large church in St. Louis. He told me that he had received eight identical letters from our ministry. He decided that God might be trying to get his attention, so he called.
We discovered later that seven of his church’s leaders who had attended the conference with him used his business card with their name on the back to register for the camera draw. Our staff never saw the name on the back and did not notice that his name was on the list eight times. Oops!
That was my introduction to Joe Cox who served as the Vice-President of International Ministries with our organization for years. He had a tremendous impact and truly was an answer to prayer.
One of the key elements in leadership prayer is calling, developing, and empowering people. Jesus was the Master!
Jesus' Example of Prayer in Leadership
One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. (Luke 6:12-16)
My first seminary course was an extension course where I could just get my feet wet. It was a class on the Pentateuch. I went to the class expecting to join a cohort of gifted young leaders with some “second half” gifted business leaders experiencing a ministry calling.
At the beginning of the class, introductions were made, and I discovered that my cohort was made up of people that were curious about the Old Testament and had some discretionary money to use for a seminar. Several others were unemployed with some free time.
There was a strong contingent of stay-at-home moms looking for a theological night out. We even had two plumbers who did not work in the evenings. I remember thinking, not in my most humble moment, “Is this the best we’ve got?”
As the quarter unfolded, I discovered that appearances were not all as they seemed. I came to respect and value a great many people in the group and was reminded that Jesus sees potential and capacity that a normal leader cannot discern.
This is evident in Luke 6, when He calls the Twelve to be His closest followers. They were likely unaware that they had been called into the greatest leadership development program in history.
They would be used of God as world changers and have an enormous impact in their own lifetime and throughout the ages to today. A cursory look at the group is not awe inspiring.
They were not well educated, lacked financial resources, did not come from “good” families and were not “emerging” leaders in any sense. They were from the working class, uneducated and possibly illiterate and from the backwaters.
However, Jesus saw capacity and potential in each one and oversaw their development as leaders. Of interest to us is the calling that is preceded by prayer. One of the most important types of leadership prayer has to do with calling or selection.
Effective leaders look for God to give them guidance in selecting and developing emerging leaders.
We decided to organize what we called “Family Fun Week.” It was to be a four-day summer event for the whole family.
Families would meet at church for a shared meal. There would be games, activities and then a guest speaker for the adults and a special program for the youth and children. The only problem with my idea was that we had no church kitchen or dining area.
I recruited three leaders--Sandy, Nancy, and Leslie to run the event. We had roughly eight hundred-fifty people sign up. I was worried and led the prayer ministry while the three women organized and ran the event.
Through their amazing leadership and work, the event was a huge success and all I can remember is that one night they served taco salad made in enormous garbage can sized containers to eight-hundred-fifty-people.
Later, I joked that if Nancy, Sandy, and Leslie had been in charge of the allied forces during World War II, the war would have been won six months earlier. The event was even bigger the next year, and I was relieved that God called me to Poland!
Not only is leadership prayer crucial in selecting leaders, but it is also an essential element in their development. We see this in the “high priestly” prayer of Jesus.
“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. (John 17:13-19)
This is a portion of the extended prayer and is dedicated to the disciples. These were the leaders that would carry the message of God’s Kingdom reign to the corners of the earth.
Jesus was nearing the cross and knew that a new season of leadership was about to begin for the Twelve. Jesus prays for their protection against the evil one (vs. 15). He also prays for the sanctification of the leaders (vv. 17-19).
Sanctification is the process of being transformed into the image of Christ. It is growth in personal godliness, a key to effective leadership.
Jesus prays that the truth of God’s Word will bring continuing transformation in their lives as leaders. He prays for protection as they come face-to-face with leadership challenges, particularly those fueled by the “evil one.”
Effective leaders incorporate prayer into the development of emerging leaders that God has allowed them to identify.
We had finished several days of training and the Pastor of the church in Ensenada was giving his last thoughts to the weekend dedicated to training and developing children’s ministry leaders in their church.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, he explained to the group of about fifty that the church wasn’t sponsoring this “training” for “volunteers.” He said that Sunday School was ministry and that he wanted people to serve who were “called by God.”
When he finished his enthusiastic message, he asked for anyone called by God to step to the front at the altar for prayer. Our team members, including two businessmen from the States felt the call and we all went up to join about forty Mexican leaders.
He asked us to bow our heads and he began to pray. Then his voice seemed to be moving around the room and then his voice came near to me and suddenly……. I felt his hands on my feet.
Filled with the spirit he was moving from one leader to the next blessing at the feet of one called to the harvest in children’s ministry. People were moved to tears, blessed enormously and certainly supported in prayer by their Pastor.
Effective leaders pray for emerging leaders and their development.
Next week we’ll continue our look into the role of prayer in Jesus’ leadership.
Join EGM-US!
If you're serving in a church in the United States, you can be part of the exciting new launch of EGM-US by hosting a vision meeting in your area, attending a training, or just contacting us for more information about how this could benefit your next generation ministries by contacting us contacting our team at (951)587-3825 or [email protected].