Pastoral Prayer For Staff Ahead of Easter Weekend

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The last year has been long and arduous. We’ve experienced hurt, loss, uncertainty, shock, and oh yeah, a global pandemic. Looking back, the last year feels like it lasted a decade. So much life and so many experiences have been lived out in such a short time. We will never be the same after this last terrestrial turn. While there are many good reasons to lament, I’m heading into this Easter week immensely thankful. Of all of gratuitous number of reasons for gratitude, one of the greatest is you. Heading into Easter week, there is no other staff, no other group of people, I would want to proclaim the Gospel with. We’ve been through thick and thin together and are leaning in to make name of Jesus famous. As we all gird up for a heavy and long week of ministry, the staff care team and I wanted to offer a written prayer over you as an encouragement for Easter week.

Pastoral Prayer for the Staff of Pleasant Valley Baptist Church

God,

I thank you for the honor to serve alongside such incredible brothers and sisters. When I think of them I understand the Apostle Paul’s warm words in Philippians 1:3-11 and can’t help but proclaim them over the PV staff.

I thank You, God, in all my remembrance of the PV Staff, always in every prayer of mine for them making my prayer with joy, because of their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that You who began a good work in them will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about them, because I hold them in my heart, for they are all partakers with me of grace. For God, you are my witness, how I yearn for them with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that their love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that they may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

I thank You, Lord, for the way You have sustained us this year. The past year has been hard, but Lord, You’ve been better! As Saint Augustine said, “God, our hearts are restless. Help us find our rest in You.”

Father, I pray for the holiness of the PV Staff. Help them fight sin and find their joy and satisfaction in You. Help them know that they are first Your children before they are ever staff members. Help them endure hardship and hurt as they shepherd the flock of PV. When sheep bite or wolves invade the flock, help them not lose hope for the church. May they minister out of a full well of worship. May they know that You are the one who brings the growth, not a particular strategy or plan. Help us rest on You in an ever-increasing fashion as a church staff. God, thank You for giving us the privilege to minister in Your name. You don’t need our help, and yet You graciously allow us to come alongside You as You change hearts and eternities.

As we head into Easter week, give us endurance. God, please give us wisdom, discernment, and joy. We pray even now for those who will join us. May they leave the services with the indelible mark of the Gospel stamped on their souls.

As we minister together, God help continue to deepen our love and fellowship as a staff. Help us not to be siloed but to view our work as true team work. May we view each other as integral to the mission of the church, not another department that doesn’t share our department’s vision. Help us care for one another not just as coworkers, but as brothers and sisters. Even if our time together at PV ends due to retirement or new opportunities to serve the Kingdom, our souls are not apart but will be united for all of eternity. We echo the words of Samuel Rutherford when he said, “I trust in God that the Lord who knit us together, shall keep us together.” May it be so, Lord!

God, help us have hope when things become difficult. Satan has given us plenty of reasons to despair this past year, but God You’ve sustained us. You tell us in Isaiah 42:3 that You will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoking flax. Despite the hurt and the pain of this past year, we believe the words of Richard Sibbes: “If Christ be so merciful as not to break me, I will not break myself by despair.” Help us cling to the hope of Jesus in these days. If You could turn the cross—the worst tragedy in the history of the universe—into the greatest good the universe has ever seen, then imagine what You might do through this past year. Whatever sorrow we have experienced is not eternal. Samuel Rutherford said it best: “Sorrow and the saints are not married together; or suppose it were so, Heaven would make a divorce.” We were meant for eternal joy. If we have Jesus, no matter how much pain we are enduring right now, no matter how dark the world seems today, this is not our ultimate end. One day, tears, death, pain, and heartbreak will cease forever in the presence of infinite and indestructible joy in Jesus. May we rest in that hope, Father.

God, serving You has often been hard. If we’re honest, it’s felt like a burden at times. The paperwork, the hard conversations, the occasional loneliness, the hurt, the pain, the sadness, the weight of eternity, and more can weigh us down. But Lord, help us see that serving You with You is meant to be a joy. With Jesus, it can (and should!) be a joy. It’s as Richard Sibbes said, “Christ’s service is the only true liberty. His yoke is an easy yoke, his burden but as the burden of wings to a bird, that make her fly the higher.” May You fuel our joy in serving You as we seek to help others find their joy in You by our service and Your Spirit.

God, I love praying for my brothers and sisters on staff at PV, but I know I’m not the only one praying for them. In fact, we know that someone of far greater prestige and honor prayed for us—Jesus Himself prayed for us and intercedes for us even now with His Spirit. In light of that incredible fact, we echo the words of Robert Murray McCheyene, “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room I wouldn’t fear a million things.  Yet distance makes no difference.  He is praying for me even now.”

God, I want to draw this prayer to a close by praying the very words the Apostle Paul prayed in his letter to the Ephesians. May it be true of the staff of Pleasant Valley for Christ’s sake. I love them more than words could express.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant them to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in their inner being, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith—that they, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that they may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Love,

Caleb Eissler on behalf of the Staff Care Team