In the past week or so, I have been relearning just how necessary prayer is in ministry. I say 'relearning' because it is something that I have always known, yet often seem to forget in practice. This is most unfortunate.
For the past few months, the attendance figures at both the jr. high and the sr. high youth groups had experienced significant drops. Entire groups of friends hadn't showed up for several weeks in a row. So while attendance numbers should not be the criteria by which ministry effectiveness is judged, it is still discouraging. It causes us to question if we are failing in some area, and it is easy to place the blame on ourselves, even if we are not at fault.
Last week, the youth pastor and I decided to pray through the lists of both the jr. high and sr. high kids who had attended events this year. We had done this earlier in the year, but had not done it for quite some time.
Whether or not it was the direct result of praying for the youth individually, we ended up seeing almost everyone show up to at least one of the four youth events we had last week. I don't claim to have the faintest understanding of how or why prayer works. It doesn't make sense to me why an Almighty God would want us to pray to Him, when He knows exactly what we need before we even ask. But even though I cannot understand it, the results speak for themselves. Would all of those kids have shown up last week if we hadn't prayed for them? There is no way of knowing. The fact remains that we prayed, and our prayers were answered. I was incredibly encouraged through this process.
And then I got to thinking about the role prayer plays in my own life. If the reason we saw attendance figures drop was because of a lack of prayer on my part, then that is pretty convicting. I think it may be possible that less youth were coming out due to the fact that by not praying as I should have been, I was not equipped or in a position to minister effectively to them. Prayer is a great way to stay humble and allow God to work through a person. It forces me to acknowledge the fact that apart from God, I can do nothing, no matter what my stubborn pride might lead me to believe. I believe that it is through prayer that God equips and enables me for effective ministry. Anyways, those are my thoughts from this past week. Hopefully they make some sense.
