I have believed since I first came to Broadway that the Lord wants this church to shine more brightly. God wants to use us evermore effectively to draw people to Jesus.

God wants our worship services to draw people into God’s redemptive presence. God wants our ministries that care for the poor, the homeless, the hungry, and the hurting to show forth the compassion of Christ and to draw people to Christ. God wants us to build up everyone of our members by nurturing faith and by enriching fellowship and unity so we can shine as lights that God can use to draw people to Jesus.

Look at the handout in your worship bulletin that has the words "Ever Becoming a People of Love" at the bottom. Last week we looked at the section entitled "Foundational Goals." Those goals relate to three of the areas of Christian life that I have just referred to: Worship, Benevolence, and Edification. But your handout lists more area of Christian life. It also has Evangelism, and there is a misperception that can be fostered by listing evangelism separately. It can appear that the other three areas––worship, benevolence, and edification––have nothing to do with evangelism, and that is not so.

Too often when we think of evangelism we think of knocking on doors or street preaching or having a formal conversion Bible study with someone. And certainly those are evangelistic activities which must be valued. But I am convinced that far more people are converted because a church is filled with the love and power and joy of God than by any other means of touching people with the message of Jesus. When love, the power of God, and the joy of God are genuine spiritual realities that fill a church, then that church is full of Christians who are like magnets drawing the lost to the Lord. And those drawing spiritual realities are born in and sustained by worship, benevolence, and edification. It all works together as a part of God’s way to change the world.

When that rich spiritual dynamic is energizing a church, that church grows. And it grows in every way. It grows in its ability to mature believers. It grows in its ability to serve the needy. It grows in its ability to worship. And it grows in its ability to draw people to the cross. All of this is interwoven.

When I dream of what God can do with a church that is committed to being a light to the lost, I know that God can easily fulfill the numerical goals which are found at the bottom of your handout. I can easily visualize Broadway in 2010 as a church with "1500 equipped and active servants of God." I can easily visualize this auditorium being so full on Sunday mornings that we have to go to two services which together have "25000 people in attendance."

When I dream of all that God can do with a church that is committed to being a light to the lost, I know that by 2010 Carpenter’s church can easily average "500 in attendance." Averaging "200 in attendance" in our Spanish speaking assembly will be a breeze if God is the wind that blows through that fellowship of believers. If Broadway is committed to being a light to the lost both at home and abroad, it will not be difficult at all to be "the primary financial supporter for eight missionaries" a decade from now.

If you have trouble believing that these numerical goals can be reached, open your worship bulletins and look again at the Scripture reading from Matthew 28:16-20. Jesus is talking to His disciples here not long after His resurrection. He has already ascended to the right hand of God. He has already been glorified in the heavens and crowned as "King of kings and Lord of lords." Notice how Jesus the heavenly King begins and ends His words to the apostles. He begins by saying, "I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth." He ends by saying, "And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

Sisters and brothers, the potential of this church to reach the lost and to be a light to the lost and to grow in every way to the glory of our God is due to just one reality: the presence of the glorified Christ with us. Since Jesus is the One who has been given "complete authority in heaven and on earth" and since Jesus promises to be with us "always, even to the end of the age"––since these promises are true, the goal of every church seeking to be a light to the lost is to stay tightly connected to Jesus, to be guided by Jesus, to be empowered by Jesus.

Surely we know that the actual power which brings anyone into the kingdom of God is not ours. Only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit can bring anyone into the kingdom. Therefore, our goal is simple: to be so close to the Father and the Son and so full of the Holy Spirit that we are instruments which they use to perform their redemptive miracles. We want to make ourselves more available to the power and will and purpose of God. We want to be used by God to make disciples. We want to be used to baptize them into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We want to be used to "[t]each these new disciples to obey all the commands that [Jesus has] given [us]." That is our dream. No other will do. The power that drives that dream and the only power that will fulfill that dream is the power of God.

Sisters and brothers, I cannot get away from the power of that dream. I cannot escape it. To be used by God to change the world is, for me, the only dream worth dreaming. Every other dream is pathetic when placed alongside this one. Catch the dream and feel its power. Catch the dream, and let it live in the very core of your being.

Once you catch that dream you will realize something fundamental to that dream. It will cause you to pray like you have never prayed before. Why? Because this transfixing dream can only be fulfilled by the power of God, and the power of God is accessed by prayer.

Churches all over the world are being empowered by prayer. Churches are growing after they make prayer the number one activity of their religious lives. Some of you may have read the book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, by Jim Cymbala. He is the pastor for the Brooklyn Tabernacle in Brooklyn, NY. Before prayer became the number one activity of that church, it had only twenty members. It now has six thousand members. Fifteen hundred people come every Tuesday night to the Brooklyn Tabernacle to a prayer meeting. That prayer meeting does not begin until 7:30, but people start arriving two hours early to begin praying. They have all-night prayer meetings every night of the week. And the Friday prayer meeting draws about 150 people who pray all-night long (Pray, Issue #1, 1997, pp. 21-22).

Another church in Jefferson, Oregon had two hundred members, when, in 1989, they decided to make prayer their focal point. At last report they had thirteen hundred worshippers in a rural community of only seventeen hundred people (Pray, September 1997, 23). That growth took place in less than ten years.

I can tell in what I read about both of these churches that they believe some things that I do not, but I suspect that their profound belief in and commitment to prayer are more important to God than any errors in their belief system. I believe in seeking and contending for the truth. But I think we can get so caught up in defending that we never get on the offensive against Satan, we never go out in the power of God and reach the world for Jesus. While some spend their time arguing about religious questions of one kind or another, others pray; and my observation is that the ones who are praying are the ones who are being used by God to fulfill the mission of presenting the face of Jesus to the world.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the church in America and elsewhere appeared to be pretty dead. Then some believers began to stir up Christians to pray. A movement of "prayer societies" began. That movement grew. Another movement took off near the same time in Europe. That movement came to be known as the Moravians. "For over 100 years Moravians prayed 24 hours a day for God’s blessing on His church and the advancement of Christ’s kingdom to the ends of the earth." These prayer movements are commonly credited with precipitating the Great Awakening of the 18th century in America, England, and parts of Europe. "Millions of men, women, and children were swept into the kingdom" (Pray, issue #1, 16).

Prayer. The power of prayer. Let’s take hold of that power. Let’s use it knowing that it is our access to the very power of God. And it is that power and that power alone which will radically change our world and draw it to the cross of Christ Jesus our King.

As your minister, I am committing right now to waking myself and all of us up to the power of God accessed in prayer. In just a little less than two weeks, the elders and ministerial staff plan to be participating together in a prayer retreat. If the Lord wills, we will begin on a Thursday evening and end around lunch time on Saturday. We will spend most of that time together in prayer. We will share passages of Scripture together, and we will sing. But mostly we will pray and seek to draw together before God to ground ourselves in God, in the power of God, in the world-changing will of God.

I have so much to learn. I don’t know how to help Broadway become a church empowered by prayer. And there is so much I need to learn about prayer for my own personal walk with God. But I believe that God will teach us everything we need to know if we will just pray––pray with humble hearts before God, pray with souls wide open to the will and power and love of God.

Two of our members are going to lead us in prayers now. These prayers are for Broadway to be a church of kingdom fruitfulness for God. Let’s humble ourselves before the Father and let’s pray.