As we are in appointment-making season, Bishop Shelton has encouraged all of us to pray for the Cabinet, clergy and their families, and congregations. We will be sharing prayers over the next few weeks and encourage you to share them with your church.
Read the next prayer in the series written by Rev. Laura Johnson.
God of grace, we pray for pastors in transition as they experience a variety of strong and disparate emotions in this season of change.
God of our yesterdays, we pray for these pastors as they remember their tenure of ministry in their current appointment. Fill them with gratitude for the holy moments that revealed your grace at work in, through, and around them. Fill them with joy over the lives they saw transformed by the light of your love. Bring to their minds the occasions in which you led them, taught them, anointed them, and blessed them to be your agents of love, hope, and reconciliation. Comfort them when regret assails them over mistakes and lost opportunities. Console them when their heart aches over memories of conflicts, disappointments, and unrealized dreams. Give them your peace when grief overwhelms them as they prepare to say goodbye to people they have loved and served wholeheartedly. Grant them the courage to look upon their tenure of ministry at this appointment with eyes of grace, trusting that you work all things for good for those who love you and are called according to your purpose.
God of our today, we pray for these pastors as they live in the in-between. In-between the farewell lunches and nice-to-meet-you coffees, nurture their spirits. In-between the transition documents they create for the next pastor and the ones they receive from the pastor they will follow, ease their stress. In-between packing up their belongings and making preparations for a new office, a new home, and a new community, sustain them with your abiding Presence.
God of our tomorrows, we pray for these pastors as they look ahead to their next appointment. Bless their hope as they imagine what good you wish to accomplish through them. Bless their hearts of love that are open, ready, and willing to serve new people. Bless their excited eyes of faith that eagerly look for your possibilities and rejoice over the evidence of your grace leading their way. Bless the joy with which they will step into their new appointment, especially the joy that coexists with grief and anxiety. Bless their courage to trust in who you have created them to be and bless their confident servanthood that will reveal the heart of Jesus.
God of grace, we pray for these pastoral colleagues in transition as they embrace this season of change. Meet them in all the strong and disparate emotions they feel. Bless them with the assurance of your compassion, your presence, and your enduring faithfulness to them and to the Church of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Image: Unsplash / Pablo García Saldaña