As we continue to recognize Spiritual/Pastoral Care Week, we want to take a moment to thank all of the spiritual leaders who have walked through our doors. Our sponsored retreat ministry relies on these leaders as they present and guide our many retreats at the Center. Our Spiritual Direction Institute trains future spiritual directors/companions. Our conference groups often include spiritual leaders too and they utilize our space to train or offer respite to those who serve. We are so blessed by the presence of the all of these individuals and we offer this prayer for God to continue to bless them and their ministries as they enlighten to world around them.
A Prayer for Servant Leadership
Lord,
We thank you because you have raised up, anointed and appointed people to serve and lead your Church.
What an honour and privilege it is to be entrusted with this responsibility.
Reassured by the knowledge of your abiding presence, may our leaders continue to have the courage to reach out and support one another, to stand firm in what is true, to decrease when others should increase and to lead with vision and compassion.
Lord, we thank you for your enduring presence and perfect wisdom that illuminates the thoughts, decisions and actions of our leaders, for your endless patience, compassion and love.
Help our leaders to remain focused on you, to live and to lead as humble, grateful, assured, and generous servants.
To live and to lead as an example.
To live and to lead as faithful followers of Jesus.
As we pray for our leaders, we also pray this prayer for ourselves.
In our relationships with one another, help us to have the same mindset as Jesus who, despite being in very nature God, humbled himself to full humanness. To serve others. Not for personal gain but so that others would know you.
By your grace, may our example, our words, our actions and our reactions point people to you too.
Help us Lord, we pray!
Amen
(Offered by The Salvation Army International)