I don’t know any church or ministry leader that would say that they intentionally ignore God. We routinely talk about being dependent on God. So in what ways do your leadership decisions reflect the influence of the Holy Spirit? How does God shape and set your priorities?

There are a variety of behaviors that signal that we’re leading mostly from our own strength with little reliance on the Spirit. One of the places where this tendency is most apparent is in the ways that we engage in prayer around important organizational decisions. Have you ever seen any of the following scenarios?

• As the meeting begins, the leader says, “Let’s open with a quick prayer and then we’ll get started.”
• A leadership team is wrestling with a difficult decision and is clearly divided on what to do. Someone says, “We just need to take a vote.”
• The team engages in a vigorous debate about pros and cons, but when it’s time to pray (if they pray at all), the energy and intensity drops noticeably.
• You don’t ask how God has spoken to individual team members about the decision because you suspect that no one has really prayed about it.

It’s easy for me to make this list because I’ve fallen into each of these traps at different times. The first one, in particular, is both a pet peeve when I observe it and one of my biggest weaknesses. The quick invocation signals that prayer is obligatory, but the real work is what happens after we pray. It allows God in the room, but just barely.

I truly believe in the power of prayer and in God’s ability and desire to guide our decisions. I not only believe in it – I’ve seen it in action. Of course, the role of prayer in important decisions is a principle that comes directly from Scripture. I love the description of the Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15, specifically verse 28 which describes the resolution of a heated debate with these words: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …” Can you use that phrase to describe the important decisions in your church or ministry?

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