Pray for Other Local Churches
Each week toward the end of our morning church service one of the pastors will stand up and lead the congregation in a pastoral prayer. During that pastoral prayer, you’ll often hear us praying for other churches. Some of them are churches around the world and some are churches in our community. Many of these churches are those that we have some kind of formal relationship with: perhaps a church that is supporting us, or one that we ourselves are supporting. But just as often, you will hear us pray for another sister church in town whose only formal connection to us is that we both gather in the name of Christ and preach his gospel. Some of these churches are quite different from us in their style, culture, or structure. Some of these churches are ones that members of Emmaus came from. Some of these churches we will eventually send members out to.
The reason I bring this up is because at Emmaus, we believe in Serving Other Churches. This happens regionally and globally, but my exhortation to us this morning is to serve other local churches within the Georgetown and Greater Austin area. In God’s gracious providence, we are not the only gospel-preaching church in our area. And this is great news because it means that God is at work outside the 4 walls of this building. God is calling, saving, sanctifying, providing for, blessing Christians throughout our community. And he’s gathering these Christians into churches with their own sets of needs, challenges, and opportunities- just like our church has.
So, how can you, the individual members of Emmaus serve other local churches? There are lots of potential answers to this question, but I’m going to zero in on one way that all of us can serve other churches: We can pray for them. Every one of us can serve other local churches by praying for them.
Perhaps God has given you relationships in your school, neighborhood, or work with Christians who attend other gospel churches in our area. Talk to your friends about needs or opportunities within their church that you can pray for. Ask about VBS or outreach ministries this summer and genuinely pray for the Lord to bring non-Christians to faith through the efforts of these churches.
Perhaps you don’t have relationships with Christians in other churches. You can still pray for these churches. In John 17, Jesus prays for his followers. He knows that after his death, resurrection, and ascension that his followers will go on to plant a global movement of churches. In his prayer, Jesus models how we can pray for other churches:
In Vs 11, Jesus asks his father to Keep them in your name. We can pray that Christians in local churches would remain faithful to God.
He also prays that his followers would be one. We can pray for Christians to be unified with each other.
Vs 15: They would live their Christian life on display to the lost world. We can pray for boldness and opportunity to be salt and light to their non-Christian friends. Pray that they would have a good gospel witness and reputation in the community.
Vs 16: They would not be seduced by the values and treasures of the world.
Vs 17: They would be sanctified by the Word of God.
Vs 19: They would follow the example of Christ.
Praying for other local churches will cause us to deepen our care of them. Praying for other churches will cause us to be encouraged when we feel stagnant. And praying for other churches will humble us because we’ll realize that he doesn’t need us to accomplish his mission for him. God is, and has been at work in our community, long before we showed up. And, if the Lord tarries, he’ll be working here long after we’re gone. God promises that the gates of hell will not stand against his church. And that means Emmaus church- we can be bold and confident that God is at work here saving and sanctifying the lost. But it also means in other gospel preaching churches in our area. Let’s serve them by praying for God’s blessing on them.
Why don’t we do this naturally? Our prayers are often hindered by our own sin. Or perhaps, our prayers are hindered by the fact that we are finite and limited as humans. We aren’t the Christians that we should be. Because of this, we are going to take a few minutes in silent confession, where we should go before the Lord individually and confess how we fell short this week.