A Prayer for Church Leadership

It's Morning, Jesus
Grant it today, Lord
That your church may display your glory to the world.
May it be that your body be continually washed and perfected
this day in the midst of it's engagement with the world.
Grant it that your leaders, lead out of the strengths and virtues you have designed for them, imparted to them, pefected in them.

I pray for all church leaders today in this little part of the world where I minister; I pray for the ministers and elders and deacons of the local bodies of Christ.

I confess to you that many in our town are injured because of the failure of church leadership; that many of a younger generation are hostile toward your church because of the failure of leadership to first live out in their own lives the qualities to which they call others to aspire.

Lord, guide us by your word. A chuch leader in your divine plan is:
temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect.

"the husband of one wife": the leader must be devoted to the woman to whom he is married;he must do the work of "husbanding".

"self controlled". The leader that is respected and honored must control his own passion and appetities. He must be the master of himself, his mind, will, and emotion. He must not be a glutton of food, or of power, or of position.

"respectable". The leader must be someone to whom a child can look, and observing body, mind and soul, say: I want to be like that. Hearing tone in his words, sensing spirit in his private speech, a child must be able to say: I want to speak like that.

"not addicted to much wine". The leader must not be a man of addiction, not just to alcohol, but to the internet, to nicotine or caffeine, to food or any other thing that takes mastery over him.

"hospitable". The leader must welcome strangers; he must have an eye for the marginal; he must be open to community and pursue it, not as a recluse.

"able to teach". The leaders know the word of God and how it speaks to the issues of his day:

"not violent but gentle"
"not quarrelsome".
The leader must lead with patience, kindness, gentleness, longsuffering. He must not "lord it" over others.

Forgive us Lord. We confess that the legacy of many of your churches in our town is that they are quarrelsome bodies. Grant us leaders that can lead through sin, through hurt, through tragedy, through challenge, with the fruit of the spirit. Guard and redeem our local churches from the quarrelsome legacy of their past.

"not a lover of money".
The leader must know where the true treasure of the Kingdom resides. He must be a steward of the kingdom, not himself.

"he must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect."
The leader must be an elder in his own home. At his own breakfast, lunch and dinner table, he must model these qualities before the family that sits down at the table of life with him. In the front yard and back yard of his own coming and going, in the family room with television and internet, he must be shaped by you. His children must be able to follow his example, or how else can you trust the children of the world to his example?

Grant it, Lord Jesus, that your church leadership display your glory to the world.
Give to us an obedience to who you are; accept our imperfect obedience as a penitent obedience through your perfecting grace.

Amen