Praying for Ten at Ten

There isn't anything normal about ministry work. In fairness, there isn't anything normal about ANY of our work these days, regardless of what we do. 

But that's true of ministry work no matter what the world around us does. Ministry doesn't have set hours or a manual to cover every possible scenario. 

This is the first time in my life I've ever been part of a church team officially - as in on the payroll. And it's a strange thing to accept a job less than one week before everything about that job ceased to exist in normalcy. It's a strange thing to only have three days of training. It's a strange thing to try to do that job remotely and balance between doing as much as you can to be productive and yet not stretch the precarious church budget by working too many hours. 

It's a strange thing to suddenly be apart from all your co-workers and have absolutely no idea what's happening with any of them or their facets of ministry. 

Last Monday morning, as I emailed with one of the other staff members, I mentioned how the weekend had been overwhelming for me. She said the same was true for her, and it made me wonder...in this ministry we're all doing together, are we stopping to pray for each other? Sure, we're all praying for our people. We're lifting up the people who are in our direct ministry groups and those whose names appear on our prayer list. 

But what about each other? Are we praying for each other?

In that moment, the Lord gave me an idea to pray for Ten at Ten. There are nine of us on the full time staff roster (if I include myself) - and if I add in our church congregation, there are ten. So I set two alarms on my phone - one for ten in the morning and one for ten at night, and when it goes off, I stop what I'm doing and pray for all ten of us. 

I let the staff know I was doing it and invited them to send requests my way if they wanted. Some did and some did not. But regardless, I am praying for all of them, specifically by name, twice a day.

Lest you think I'm some super-power praying woman, I will confess that sometimes I don't know what to say when those prayer times come. And I'm honest with the Lord about that. Sometimes I feel like I just keep repeating the same words over and over. But I repeat them anyway. 

I don't know what the prayers are doing - and I may never know. It's not the point anyway. The point is to do what I can. I may not be able to see these people every day. I may not be able to know what's happening in their ministry spheres. I may not be able to support them the way my job description says I should. But I can pray...for Ten at Ten.