Leadership Thought: What’s the Most Important Part of Your Meeting? You Might be Surprised by the Answer.

Dear Friend,

What’s the most important part of your meeting? Most people would say, "of course, it is the agenda." It's  what you have come to the table to discuss. And while the agenda is important, and I certainly would not want to minimize or undervalue its importance, I believe there is something even more important.

A number of years ago I was a young pastor to a church of high-octane leaders. Most of the elders, and there were 24 of them, were busy executive types who were used to getting things done quickly and expediently. There was always corporate flavor to those elder meetings, where  Robert’s Rules of order was always front and center. When 7:30 came those leaders were ready to jump in, get to the business, and get home as fast as they could.

I will never forget one of those meetings. The agenda was lengthy, and it looked as if the meeting could go well past 11:00 pm. I knew the board was eager to get started, but I knew in my heart that there was something more important to be done than completing our agenda.

To the surprise of some, and the chagrin of others, I announced that I felt the need to spend the first half hour of our meeting in prayer. Now I know you might think such an announcement was not an unusual way to commence our meeting, but for this church of business first leaders, it was a major departure from the way they were accustomed to conducting the business of the church.

I mentioned to them that we had so much to do that evening, that if we didn’t first spend an extended time in prayer, we might be there past midnight. Some of them didn’t take too kindly  to my counter intuitive announcement

Having announced a departure from our standard meeting, I led them to the sanctuary where we spread out on the floor, and on our hands and knees, we spent time together praying for our church.

I was anxious, wondering what these leaders would think of their new fledgling pastor, but thanks for the strong presence of the Holy Spirit there was a spiritual breakthrough. Those leaders’ grumbling quickly turned into gratitude as we sped through and finished our lengthy agenda in record time.

It was Martin Luther who said, “I have so much work to do today that I need to commit the first four hours of my day in prayer.”  Prayer must  never be just an item on the church agenda, it should be the church agenda. It has been said that the church will only move forward if and when it moves forward on its knees.

It was S. D Gordon who said, “The greatest thing anyone can do for God and for man is to pray. You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. Prayer is striking the winning blow; service is gathering up the results.”

Today I am still friends with a couple of those elders, who were at that meeting almost 30 years ago, and they still remember and talk about the lesson learned about the most important part of a church meeting.

Those words “I’ll open with prayer and then we will dive into our meeting, so we don’t waste anyone’s time” are long gone from my vocabulary, and I hope they are from yours as well.

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom

P.S. "God does nothing but by prayer, and everything with it.” John Wesley