Recovering Prayer and Discernment in Our Agendas and Strategies

by Nikki Toyama-Szeto

What is the role of prayer and spiritual discernment as we look to the future of our organizations? How does engagement with scripture inform not only our mission, but also our plans and strategies to achieve that mission?

OFTEN, OUR “CHRISTIAN” PLANS are created by really smart people doing really smart things and thinking really smart thoughts. But are our organizations’ strategic plans and vision statements just secular work wrapped in Christian clothing? Add “by the grace of God” and do we have a preamble to a commanding and measurable future described in 150 words or less?

Christians acknowledge that no one really knows what will happen tomorrow. Our calendars save space for various meetings, and we have an idea of what could happen, but in reality, what will happen is in the realm of only what God knows.

What is the role of prayer and spiritual discernment as we look to the future of our organizations? How does engagement with scripture inform not only our mission, but also our plans and strategies to achieve that mission?

Many Christian organizations have received helpful tools from the business world as ministries have grown more complex. In some ways, it’s a return of the favor, as the business world has learned much from the church about “vision,” “mission,” and how “values” can be lived out. However, in this exchange of great practices, the processes tend to scrub out the subjective, the emotional, and other factors inherent to humans that can throw off good planning—the highest values being objectivity, strategic purpose, and growth. 

Oftentimes, the spiritual practices of discernment and listening to the Holy Spirit—which inherently carry risks of subjectivity—get evicted from the Christian planning process.

Other Christian organizations reject practices from the corporate world. There is a camp that views reliance upon such methods as a non-starter. They believe the practices are borrowed from an economic model which is incompatible to a ministry setting. 

Some promote a spiritual practices-only model, preferring the perceived spiritual purity of a process removed from secular influence. Others might feel nervous with the seemingly mystical nature of such a model. In my own opinion, this approach works well if people account for a significant power dynamic that is created when humans claim to hear from God. (I believe humans do hear from God—but making this type of statement doesn’t really welcome a robust discussion or debate.)

In most circles where I run, the tendency is towards an overreliance on the business model. Below I highlight a few ways that organizational leaders can insert a “pause for Jesus” moment into their planning cycles.

Learning to Make Room for the Spirit

I wish I could tell you that if you create space to listen to God, then your organization will meet more of its objectives and experience greater productivity—in essence, that spiritual discernment and dependency on God will solve your problems, result in growth, and satisfy multiple bottom lines. But the work of the Holy Spirit is more mysterious than that—and the accounts in heaven differ from the accounts we keep here on earth. 

However, I do believe that discernment practices and making space for the Holy Spirit to speak has benefits. For example, it can lead to the transformation of those in the mission, as well as a transformed mission. 

The experience of the Holy Spirit’s breath into a planning process is extraordinary—it is like surfing. You swim to an area, where the waves are known to be present. You watch and try to point your board in the general direction that the waves are moving. You could paddle using just your own strength, and if you’re strong, you might be able to move pretty fast. But the trick is to be in the right place, pointed in the right direction in order to catch the wave. At the moment when the surfboard is being pushed by the wave, you start to speed up. You try to stay upright on a small, very breakable surfboard, but as you keep your balance, you feel the tremendous power of the wave surging below you. If you’ve caught it correctly, the board propels forward—you just need to hold on.  

Like the wave, the Holy Spirit is not in existence for you and your one surfing ride—but is moving in power, with or without our acknowledgment. It’s a gift of grace when we get to catch the wave.

Exodus 40 shows a picture of the Israelites relying on God’s direction through the cloud to determine whether they should go or stay. When the cloud lifted, they moved forward, and when the cloud descended, they stayed. I’d like to think that I too would be willing to be so hands-free with my strategic planning if I had something so clear, so undeniably God, as a cloud rising and falling. 

But if I’m honest, I’m not sure that even if I had something so tangible, I would have the eyes to see it or the will to follow if it was leading me in a direction drastically different from my own desires. 

On the other hand, the smallest shred of evidence that supports what I would like to do takes on Mary-like apparitional status. My ability to self-deceive is really quite extraordinary. This being the case, how can I trust myself to discern the Holy Spirit’s movement when I know myself to be unreliable?

Listening as (and through) a Community

One way to resolve the reliability factor is through communal discernment—listening to God with others. Listening to God through scripture serves as a reliable anchor. I was first won over to the intentional, community-based discernment process as a young campus minister, feeling rather overwhelmed and in desperate need for God’s guidance. 

What started as a one-time prayer discernment gathering has now become a regular practice for our family. Each major life transition and decision—most notably decisions to move our family, change ministry assignments, or switch jobs, are marked by having a listening prayer community. This is a group of people to whom we lay out our thoughts, processes, and personal journey to this point of decision-making. The group then spends time in silence listening to God and/or reading scripture. Then, there’s a time of sharing and the group prays together.

I believe that God speaks to people through others. And while others can be wrong (and their word should not go unchecked), I find that the wisdom that comes through a community of people can ameliorate my propensity for self-deception. Scripture also serves as an excellent vehicle through which God speaks. It is the anchor to the discernment that comes through a community. 

At the same time, prayer and discernment doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility of decision-making. This is not a fatalistic practice where one does nothing and says, “Well, God told us to do it…”

Rather, discernment is the reassertion that God is a God who desires to be known. God reveals himself and makes himself known in many ways. Our God is a God of clarity, not confusion. God invites us to join in the work he is doing because it is his joy to do so, not because he needs us (Acts 17:24-25). Scripture can always serve as a good “check” in a discernment process. God will never direct us in a way that is contrary to his character—God is always true to himself, and never-changing (Heb. 6:17-19a). Jesus is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow (Heb. 13:8).

Listening individually and communally for personal guidance is familiar; however, bringing the same posture of listening and expectancy for God to speak to processes within organizations can seem incongruous. In a system designed to assess the environment, create strategic opportunities, and plan and control for risks, introducing something as subjective and mystical as “listening to the Holy Spirit” seems to eliminate all the efficacy of the dispassionate planning system. 

But as ones who are told to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind (Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27), it seems incongruous to the integrated Christian life to devote all attention to some (mind, strength), and leave the other parts (soul, heart) at the door. And surely, if the great achievement of our Christian organizations can be explained away through an excellent environmental assessment, correct reading of opportunity, design of a robust strategy, proper resourcing, and choosing the right indicators to accurately measure achievements, then what difference is there in the Christian missiological enterprise than that of any other well-intentioned, well-designed organization? 

If not for the intervention of God’s hand in our work, would we be able to accomplish what we’ve done on our own strength? If so, doesn’t that seem a bit small of God? Perhaps there are ways to point our surfboard in the direction to catch a wave that is the Holy Spirit.

Bringing the practice of listening to the Holy Spirit into the planning process may include periods for group discernment and listening. The goal is to create an organizational culture that pays attention to the leading of the Holy Spirit while also using the best diagnostic tools of modern-day planning.

Let me share an example. For five years, I worked as the program director for the Urbana Mission Conference, a gathering of sixteen thousand young adults from over one hundred countries assembled to understand more about God’s work around the world. Crafting the program is an intersection between understanding the current state of world mission, discerning what God is doing in different generations, and researching cultural trends in the larger society.

At one point, we were deep in the planning process and the various leadership teams for Urbana had spent several multi-day periods studying John 1-4 over the previous eight months. After soaking in scripture, with no other purpose than understanding the passage and listening, the work began in earnest. 

For Urbana 2009, we had a communications team that was studying the passage to understand the key message which would eventually become the pre-conference messaging. From that, they came up with a phrase: “He dwelled among us” (John 1:14b). It was put forward as one of several potential themes. The next day, I had conversations with our prayer team and our scripture manager, Lindsay Olesberg, who was returning from a conference that focused on the same scripture. 

As I shared the proposed theme, she confirmed it, saying that the theologians had identified that verse as the thesis for the book of John. Soon after, I talked with our prayer team onsite, led by Lina Sanchez-Herrera, and she mentioned that as the team was conducting a prayer walk through the convention site, the music “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel” was playing. This theme of “God with us” (Emmanuel) or “God dwelling among us” seemed to emerge. 

All of these interactions happened within a 36-hour timeframe. It was this short timeframe that made it seem that God was revealing his intentions for Urbana 2009 to the various communities that were trying to listen through scripture, prayer, and their planning processes. 

Becoming an Organization that Listens

For busy North American organizations, silence and waiting are ways we’ve contextualized the spiritual antidote to our cultural idols of busyness and productivity. The conscious laying aside of the work to prayer and stillness is a way of exercising muscles that help us to listen to the Holy Spirit.

International Justice Mission’s president Gary Haugen cautions against “prayer-less striving” and has sought to create several prayer stopping points. Each work day starts with “stillness”—thirty minutes of individual prayer and reflection. No work; no email, calls, or appointments. It’s a rather striking experience to walk through the office and hear just how loud 150 people being silent can be—there is almost no movement, and oftentimes the automatic lights shut off because everything is so still and quiet. 

At 11 a.m., work stops again for thirty minutes of corporate prayer at all of our offices around the world. Quarterly, IJM staffers takes prayer retreats. A few other retreat days and trainings, targeted at staff spiritual formation, also occur throughout the year. These planned periods of stillness help cultivate quietness of spirit, so that we can more readily hear the voice and invitation of a God who is always present and beckoning us.

Integrating prayer and discernment into the rhythms of an organization can take many forms. Some leaders will interweave prayer and discernment by pausing when a discussion is getting cloudy. They stop to ask God to clarify the questions at hand and/or provide insight in the discussion. At times, particularly when the topic feels removed from the spiritual life, I will light a candle as a visual reminder that God is present in these discussions about financial policy, dress code, or other organizational necessity. 

At other times, intercessory prayer teams have come onsite while key strategic planning retreats are happening, or key decisions are being deliberated. Teams will build in breaks during the strategic planning process for leadership to pause together, pray through the plans, and listen as a way of having a transparent spiritual check point. There are multiple ways to weave in prayer and discernment into the life of the organization.

Being intentional about spiritual discernment can feel like hard work. It can be hard to listen and engage in a process that involves waiting on God. It can be hard to balance listening with the faithfulness of moving things forward. To be honest, sometimes in the waiting there doesn’t seem to be clear guidance from God—and the mark of a good leader is the ability to lead in ambiguity. Anyone can make good decisions when all the information is in front of him or her—but a good leader discerns when to move ahead, and when to wait for more clarity. 

Listening to the Holy Spirit through Our Past 

What are the ways in the past that God has worked in and through your organization? Where are the places in our histories, in the “heroes” of our organization, where God has spoken, intervened, or redirected? 

These may become pointers. When we reflect on the past, we are able to see more clearly the hand of God working, the signs and revelation of God that we missed the first time through. Reflecting on these moments can help us become more familiar with the way that God reveals himself to a particular community.

Bring your full self to the process. We are not called to be disembodied discernment rods, channels of the Lord’s will to those around us, genderless, race-less, and timeless. Jesus was God embodied to a particular people, in a particular culture, at a particular time—so too our experiences and perspectives given to us as image bearers of God might be part of the toolkit that God has given us to discern his will.

Although I don’t think we should empty ourselves, I do believe that sometimes our experiences can be God’s invitation to see a situation from a different perspective. Discernment in community can become a helpful forum in which our experiences can inform our decisions while guarding us from self-limitations, blinders, and willful deception. 

Moving from What to When

Sometimes, the big question is not what but when. There are many different, good, and robust ways to get at the actions, programs, and strategies needed to fulfill the mission of an organization. I believe we do a good job of getting to the what we should be doing. But I would like to advise organizations to ask the question of when as well. 

What are we looking for that will inform us as to the right time to move ahead? Before he started IJM, Gary Haugen sought out one hundred people to commit to praying for the organization. Of course, God is a God of abundance and so he provided 101 and IJM was started. 

In the course of our planning, providing the space to go beyond what to when is not only good, but necessary—not doing so would be like trying to catch the wave after it has passed.

. . . .

Nikki Toyama-Szeto serves as director of the IJM Institute. She consults and speaks for a variety of campuses, churches, and organizations. She has written two books: Partnering with the Global Church with Femi Adeleye and The God of Justice.

Copyright 2016 EMQ All rights reserved.  Not to be reproduced or copied without written permission from the editors of EMQ.  Published EMQ Jan 2016 Vol. 52 No.1 pp. 84-90

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