God's business God's way

I had breakfast with Dave Evans on Thursday. Man, my head was swimming with all the ideas he was throwing at me! Not only does he talk a blue streak, but there's a lot of good ideas in that blue streak. The big idea was that God is present in everything and everywhere and our job is to see him and cooperate with what he is doing. Jesus said this in John 5, that he only did what he saw the Father doing. And that's the secret of being a "contemplative in action" (Ignatius of Loyola's phrase, founder of the Jesuits).

So the question is: why do we act in most of our planning meetings as though God isn't present? And I'm talking about church meetings, too. We may start and end with a prayer, but we don't think that God is much concerned with the way that we do business or how we conduct ourselves. Surely he just wants us to get the work done. Isn't efficiency and productiveness the name of the game? Or is it?

What would our meetings be like if we really believed that God was present in our meetings, that he was at work in each of us, and in our group that's meeting? That he might be more interested in making us more Christ-like than in creating a list of action items? That the more Christ-like we are (both as individuals and as a group), the more likely we'll be able to figure out exactly what we're supposed to be doing? And the greater the likelihood that we'll be able to do it?