Beyond the Weekly Meeting
Intentional spaces matter. One thing I am realizing more and more in my life is how easily I let my environment distract me. When I walk into that one room in my house where I pile all of the stuff that needs to be done my mind shifts instantly to projects. When I step into my office at church, the email inbox on my computer screen beckons me like some kind of siren call.
If I am going to be intentional in prayer or deep work I find that I have to make space for it, not just in my calendar, but physically.
One such example that has shaped my thinking on this recently is a weekly meeting at the church that I help to pastor. There are two other pastors on staff and we meet together for prayer and planning every Tuesday afternoon. Our desire is to lead as a team in a way that feels countercultural to most of my church experience to this point in my life. In order to do that, one of our core commitments as a pastoral team is to pray as much as we plan.
By nature I am a doer. I like to check things off my list and get things accomplished. So my tendency in this meeting (and every meeting) is to jump straight into task management. Even with the intention to have a concentrated prayer time first, if we start this meeting in my office it’s really hard. In that space, I can see the giant whiteboard with all the ministry projects needing discussion. “Let’s talk about this one thing real quick before I forget.” And an hour later we are still doing work without any prayer.
So we made a simple switch recently that I believe is going to pay dividends in our time together. We start our meeting in the prayer room. It’s a physical way to signal to ourselves the real priority of our time. After we have spent time in prayer, interceding, and listening for the Spirit’s direction, then we move down to my office and start the ministry tasks. It’s amazing how much more smoothly the planning and decisions come when we start with time seeking the Lord’s presence first.
Often this prayer time can be an hour long, which may sound unproductive to some, but we believe it is actually the most important work we do together. Two weeks ago we spent about an hour in the prayer room which became one of the sweetest moments I’ve had in prayer for a long time. The presence of God was so palpable in our midst that we all ended up face down on the ground at the weight of his presence. And the task list was easy after that. Any weighty decisions we face feel less burdensome after experiencing the weight of His glory.
This new rhythm is teaching me something that translates beyond a weekly meeting. If I want to get serious about anything in my life I need to put myself in the right place, physically, to pursue it. Intentional spaces matter. How are you positioning your life right now to be intentional with what matters most?