Broadview | “If we’re going to be gospel people, we’re going to be about the glory of Christ. And if we’re going to be about the glory of Christ, then we are going to be people that pray,” said David Choi, pastor of Church of the Beloved in Chicago.
“When man works, man works. But when man prays, God works.”
Choi was one of several Illinois prayer leaders who helped facilitate the “Prayer Link” gathering October 7 at Broadview Missionary Baptist Church in the Chicago suburbs. The meeting, which also included prayer leaders from across the Southern Baptist Convention, was designed as a “Great Commission Prayer Experience” aimed at encouraging people to pray for the mission fields around them.
The timing of the meeting, amid political turmoil and recent unrest in several U.S. cities, drove home the urgency of each 60-minute prayer session.
Each hour consisted of a 10-minute presentation of biblical, bold, and challenging material related to prayer, 20 minutes of facilitated table discussion, and 30 minutes of prayer, praise, and petition focused on themes surfaced by the Holy Spirit.
Gary Frost, national facilitator of prayer and compassion initiatives for Mission America Coalition, led more than 70 attendees in interceding for their communities and neighborhoods, often interpreted as Jerusalem in the model outlined in Acts 1:8.
“Our Jerusalem is that area of ministry in our life with the people that we come in contact with every day, the people who live around us. The problem is, that just because people have proximity, does not mean they have affinity,” Frost said. Many individuals are near us geographically on a daily basis, he added, but we have no real concern for them, who they are, or the state of their soul.
Kevin Carrothers, president of IBSA, led the time of prayer that followed Frost’s message. With the idea of letting Christ’s compassion flow out of us to everyone we meet, Carrothers encouraged attenders to pray for their own homes and for the wellbeing of their communities, challenging people to ask God how he wants them to make a difference where they live.
David Choi led a session on praying for church revitalization and church planting. In the U.S., we tend to be all about our individual accolades and strengths, he said. “But the gospel is about finding your weakness, finding your deficiency, finding what you’re not good at, and then crying out to the God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.”
As Cheryl Dorsey, prayer coordinator for the Chicago Metro Baptist Association, led the following time of prayer, the pray-ers found a spot along the perimeter of the room and called out to God, interceding for their churches, repenting of their prayerlessness, and praying for the salvation of those within their sphere of influence who don’t know Christ.
“We don’t need more strategies; we need prayer,” Choi said in his message. “Not just religious prayer, but gospel prayer. Where we recognize that we have nothing without him.”