Radical Leadership: How to be a prayerful leader

"What I'm doing is I'm operating obviously in a world that is an academic institution that has a Methodist heritage to it," said SMU president Gerald Turner. "But I'm called upon to lead people that are of many faiths and some who have no faith at all and so the attitude that you bring to it that I think is reflective of a prayerful approach to life oftentimes is the best way to approach it."

"I will pray for God to be supportive, successful, help me to understand the best way to do this, what his will is and so on, but then my assumption is if I pray about that and I believe he answers prayer,then I need to do what I've been trained to do and what I've learned to do and do it in a way that would be pleasing to Him."

"Quite often, my main prayer is Solomon's prayer, you know, make me wise. Help me understand these people that I'm supposed to be leading and be involved with and so I want wisdom more than anything else in how to deal with it and then you gotta get up and hope that what you're doing there is reflective of that and if it's reflective of what you learned through your study of His word and what you've learned from other Christians and I think it's so often on reflection that you could probably say to the Heavenly God better than you can at the present."