How to Pray for Our Bishops
by Jim Elzerman

My wife and I recently attended the Bishops' School of Renewal at Spring Arbor University. It truly was a time of renewal for us, and the highlight of the event was the opportunity to get to know our bishops better. None of them sought it, but when called upon by their peers and confirmed by God, they willingly took on the mantle of leadership.

True leaders think on their feet. Our bishops displayed this ability as they stood in front of us fielding question after question regarding their vision for the future of the Free Methodist Church. One questions that wasn't get asked publicly at Spring Arbor, but to which they responded via email was: "How can we pray for you?"

Responding for the Board of Bishops as a whole, Bishop Haskins offered the following list of prayer requests.

1. Pray that God will help us in our journey to know Him and to make Him known.
2. Pray that we will learn to better lead through vision and relationships.
3. Pray that we will maintain focus and energy for the things that are most important to God.
4. Pray that God will give us wisdom as we preside over the annual conferences, both here in the US and overseas. (Bishop James asks for special prayer as he visits our Korean Annual Conference this month.)
5. Pray that God will help us to be faithful to Him, our spouse and families, and our calling.
6. Pray that we will remember that we are first and foremost, shepherds.

Bishop Krober shared some additional, more specific prayer requests for the coming months.

1. For our own lives with spouses and personal integrity. As with any elder, tiredness can lead one to get sloppy and thus more open to temptation.
2. For our work in preparation for General Conference:
   a. Plan for the new format for Deacons
   b. Bishop's job description re-write
   c. Membership refinement
   d. World Conference issues re: Annual Conferences being or not being seminal to Methodism
   e. Reformatting of the Book of Discipline
3. Five more Bishop's Schools for Renewal - two in April, one in September, two in October.
4. Strategic Planning work by the bishops for presentation to General Conference (i.e. the primary things we will try to do in the 2003-2007 quadrennial to raise up the next generation of godly competent leaders.)
5. For renewal within the ranks of FM Elders, Deacons and CMC's.

Remember to keep our bishops — Roger Haskins, Joseph James, Leslie Krober, and Richard Snyder — and their wives in your prayers daily as they are on the front lines leading the Free Methodist Church to become an apostolic movement once again.