The Community Chats that began last year at restaurants around the greater Houston area have been so refreshing. It’s wonderful to hug a fellow prayer minister who we usually see in a Zoom window or whom we miss out on seeing in Bellville because we’re serving on different days. It’s special to have discussions in person as we refine our mentoring skills. 

However, there’s something different about sitting around a table in someone’s home — and then in their living room — that moves the conversation in a more intimate and vulnerable direction. That’s what the group — Daniela Barrett, Taylor Gahm, Kim Grant, Marnie Paffenroth, Carol Schwartz, Kathy Walton, and myself — experienced on the afternoon of June 26 as we gathered at Kathy and Scott Walton’s house in Bellville for our first summer Community Chat. 

We started with lunch and table conversation, then moved into the den, where Daniela led us in a sweet, rich time of worship, including one of her own compositions. There’s a particular kind of hush that settles over a room full of prayer ministers when the singing starts — and that afternoon was no exception. None of us wanted it to end! 

Carol Schwartz, a new core team member, led the group in a discussion of Honoring & Caring Well by Providing TPM With Excellence. And her core message was disarmingly simple: 

“The most loving thing we can offer a mentee is to stay out of God’s way.” 

Less Us, More Jesus 

Carol reminded us of something foundational to everything we do — Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor. Transformation comes through His revelation, not through our insight, our wisdom, or our intervention. 

“Our role is to serve the mentee well enough in the process that Jesus has room to do what only He can do.” 

Our job, she said, is actually less than we think it is — and more restful than we make it. 

She was honest about where we drift, and why. Most of us don’t drift because we’re careless. We drift because we care. When a mentee struggles, something in us wants to help. We feel their discomfort. We think we see the path forward. We want the session to move. 

That impulse isn’t wrong. But inside a TPM session, acting on it can shift a mentee’s focus from hearing Jesus to hearing us. 

So what does excellence actually look like? Not perfection. It looks like staying anchored to the process, and knowing what to do when we feel lost, which we got good tips for. 

Taylor put words to it in a way that stuck with the room. When asked what this looks like in practice, he said simply that it starts with being “faith-filled and doing his best”. We all agreed that we need to learn to “be present” and be “comfortable with quiet”. Two great reminders are there is “nowhere to get” and the guest in front of us was already walking with Jesus before they ever came to us for help. It’s a good reset. The mentee’s relationship with Jesus doesn’t typically start in the session, and it doesn’t depend on us. 

Refining Our Skills Together 

From there, we addressed a question that had been submitted in advance about how to handle a Solution Within a Solution. Everyone got to practice recognizing the solutions and how to maneuver from one solution to the next one. By the end, the prayer ministers felt more equipped to recognize and manage this dynamic better in future sessions. 

An Answered Prayer, in Her Own Home 

This kind of gathering means something a little extra this summer, since one of our own traveled a long way to be part of it. Marnie Paffenroth, one of our prayer ministers based in Florida, flew in for a full week of serving alongside us — which meant she got to trade Zoom squares for actual faces and actual hugs with ministers she’d only ever met on a screen. (You can read more about her week in her own words on serenityretreat.com.) 

Kathy, our host for the afternoon, shared her reflections of the gathering in her own home: 

“My aha was more Jesus, less me. So many times I just want to ‘say’ something and I realized that is often ‘me’ wanting to be heard and often could be interfering with what Jesus is doing. Love the vision of Jesus being so big in the room and me being so little. 

It was an answered prayer to be in community together. I have been praying to be a part of an honest, authentic, not afraid of truth, loving community. Thank you, Lord. 

Hosting is also an answered prayer. This is God’s house so any time it can be used to grow and benefit His kingdom — I get super excited. Hearing the praise echo through the walls where I live — ain’t nothing like it! So grateful!!!” ❤️ 

What Stays with Us 

Carol closed the afternoon with a line that’s easy to remember and hard to fully live out: 

“We are exceptional prayer ministers. And the most exceptional thing we can do is get out of the way and let Jesus be Jesus.” 

That’s the heartbeat of what we’re all learning together — not to fix, not to lead, but to make room. And afternoons like this one, around the Waltons’ table, remind us we’re not learning it alone. 

What’s Next? 

Whether we gather in a home or at a restaurant, a Community Chat will be coming your direction this summer — Sugar Land/Richmond area, Houston, possibly Spring, and of course on Zoom for our prayer ministers out of state and out of the country. If anyone would like to open up their home for the next chat, contact me at [email protected]. 

And this fall we’ll be back at the Waltons’ home in Bellville. She said we are welcome anytime, so we’re taking her up on it.