This prayer happened in a meeting of our Committee on Ministry Leadership Team a few mornings ago. It was clear right away, with Rev. Marcia’s prayer, that the Team was coming from a spiritual place they had not been before. It was as if God were saying, as in Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19, Revised Standard Version)
Just to make sure we did perceive it, as we began to talk with each other, Rev. Marcia said again how important it is that we let go of our preconceptions. We did. We heard new truths from one another. We heard deep caring for one another.
“We don’t want to be adversarial in our ministry,” said one. “We are all struggling; let us set ourselves up to help each other,” said another. We proposed new approaches to ministry and began to name the new resources that will be needed. Members of the team are listening and speaking from a whole new world of spiritual imagination.
“It will take time,” another committee member said. Yet thanks be to God, our Committee on Ministry Leadership Team has already begun to do its ministry in a profoundly more loving, healing, courageous, and liberating way.
The members are following in the spiritual pathway of Jesus, who said of his own calling,
“The Spirit of God is upon me,
Because God has anointed me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
God has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed.”
Luke 4:18 (New King James Version)