2013 Clergy Session Prayer

The context for this prayer: I have been the "shepherd" for candidates for ordained ministry during their interviews. When those who have been approved come before the Clergy Session at our United Methodist Annual Conference, the shepherd is called upon to offer a prayer before we vote in affirmation of the recommendations by the Board of Ordained Ministry (which comes from that day of interviews noted above). This is the prayer I wrote this year.

As your children, friends and partners in the gospel by the grace of baptism and sanctifying grace, O Lord we come to you in prayer for ourselves, for all your creatures and for your world.

Called and gifted for your service, we see the intersections of powers and principalities that cut and break lives and communities: greed, selfishness, lust for power, racism, sexism, hatred, violence and deception. Grant that we may participate in your healing and renewing of all creation, trusting that with you all things are possible.

Whether in small towns or large cities we see the shattering of your will in creation and blessing of all you have made. And we see the power of grace in enabling us to choose the good in so many ways: the countless people who deliver Meals on Wheels, who tutor in schools, who march and pray and write for justice and peace, who clean up the neighborhood park, who pray with their neighbors in illness or tragedy, who plant and share the abundance of their gardens, who understand their daily work as a vocation in service to you no matter the status conferred by the world. In these and more, your light shines as from many cities on many hills.

Bless these who stand before us, with grace in commissioning and ordaining, that they may join in your healing work and in proclaiming the good news of your realm that is both a present and hoped-for reality. In their strengths may they serve the flourishing of your kingdom with humility. In their weakness, may your strength carry them and make known your love and power more and more.

"Lead us in being a people that follow after the things that make for peace, love and unity. Pour your love into our lives, such that we shall love all and desire the good of all" (Margaret Fell Fox, 17th-century Quaker leader).


Amen.