Item one.. Let's Pray

Yesterday was my first day of my new schedule at SW Baptist Church. Since this is my first staff position at a church I'm not sure how things will be different from my other jobs. I mean, when I was growing up, the churches I attended didn't have staff. I went to small churches that had bi-vocational pastors. So, any type of meetings that had to do with church business came in the form of the "sesion de negocios," or "church business meeting." Now, if anyone reading this was raised in a traditional Hispanic Southern Baptist Church then you know why I was nervous when Pastor Mike, Pastor of SW Baptist Church, called a staff meeting for Monday morning. Old school church business meetings are infamous for being cut throat.

But as Pastor Mike started talking during our meeting, I felt like I was back at my non-profit office planning the weeks activities. We were breaking down Sunday's service and asking ourselves what we can do to better serve the members. We talked about future plans and about what I need to do to research the probabilities of our church pursuing certain projects. It was a great meeting and I felt like I was right back in my element doing the things I know how to do. You see, I had no idea what to expect. I was nervous. I didn't know if my skills running a non-profit would help me in the church. I know a church technically is a non-profit, but I've been working in non-profits for a long time and I've been going to church for a LONG time. I never saw the two being run the same way.

I think one advantage for SW Baptist is that Pastor Mike has a great business background. He runs his meetings like a business. We are talking about project points, creating action plans, assigning deadlines, and delegating assignments to other leaders.

But even though he runs his meetings like a business, there was one meeting objective that was completely different. You see, in this meeting there were several points that we had to cover. The first point was PRAYER! And I don't just mean, "hey let's pray to start our meeting..." I mean our first and most important point of the meeting was to pray. We went over prayer requests and we prayed. We didn't pray for our meeting, we prayed for the church, the people, and for each other. So many times, even in the church, we don't' recognize the importance of prayer. As someone who has been a part of praise teams and other ministries, I always treated prayer as just a ritualistic thing we did before each practice or before each meeting. Prayer was never an important part of practice or the meeting. We never said, "hey, during the first 30 minutes of practice all we are going to do is pray. Pray for each other and this ministry." Sometimes we're so lazy getting to the church on time that we don't have adequate time to practice or meet, much less lay aside time to pray.

I know this is not anything very deep, and it probably didn't make anyone of you stop and say, "wow, I never thought of that." I guess I was just happy to see that prayer wasn't something we did just to start our meeting, Prayer was a part of the meeting. And, it was the thing we spent the most time on. I guess all I can hope for is that of any of you are dreading your next business meeting at church, maybe you can make prayer a major part of that meeting.

Item number one on the agenda.... Let's Pray.