Your thought has the following structure: "Would those who quit playing violin eat an apple instead? Of course not, so everyone should attend at least one year of college." Words that might belong together but do not.
When you are leading in prayer, this no longer your private prayer. If you are in a mixed company, you seek a common ground. If you pray to G-d, you do not jeopardize any of your Christian beliefs and remain on common ground with Christians of all denominations, Jews, Muslims, and Hindu.
It's very simple, actually.
There is no common ground if we are discussing prayer. Who do non-believers pray to? Yet, you are not arguing THAT position. Oh no, we can pray. We just can't be "too Christian" about it.
Thanks for the insult in preface to your response to me. I won't respond in kind.
If the minister's conscience bids him to pray "in Jesus name" anytime he prays (and we're not debating whether or not that in itself is appropriate), then to expect him to DROP the "in Jesus name" is to make the minister violate his own conscience.
Personally, in this situation if it were me, I would seek common ground, and pray to God, because my conscience is not bothered by saying the name "God", and omitting the ending of "in Jesus name." But maybe this minister is different. I know that there are some fundamentalist Christians (as well as Christians of other stripes) who would feel that it was a form of denying Christ NOT to finish a prayer with those words.
Maybe had the minister been aware of the fact that he wasn't supposed to say Jesus name, he would have declined the offer to lead the prayer, due to a violation of his conscience.