As we continue our Acts teaching series at FaithPoint, there has been heartbreak in Baltimore. There is a need for prayers of grace and healing, prayers to listen and understand. There is no quick fix in this beautiful city. Even when the news crews leave there is much work to be done to clean up the literal streets and to clean up policy and seek justice.
As a community of faith who is close by we stand with our brothers and sisters in Baltimore. As we do so this week we have the opportunity to be in prayer for 2 congregations who are diverse in their nature but unified in their love for the people of Baltimore and their desire to see the kind of Kingdom community that can only come through lasting change.
Throughout our series we have been prayer for specific needs of churches that we have connection and partnerships with. The church is MUCH bigger than FaithPoint UMC, but we play a vital role in through our prayer, presence, gifts, service and witness to bring about this Kingdom community we have been talking about.
This week we partner in prayer with Pastor Jason Jordan-Griffin serving St John United Methodist Pumphrey and Pastor Chris Dembeck serving Orems UMC Baltimore. These are two powerful men of God serving awesome communities. Here are their responses when asked how FaithPoint could pray for these to partner congregations:
Hey FaithPoint! Blessings and thank you for fervent prayers! I think two major prayer request would be for understanding hearts of people. As we are dialoguing with people in the city. So many are at opposite ends of the spectrum on how to get the same thing…peace. Pray that dialogue can be held and common ground can be reached. Secondly, pray that the spirit of commitment to revitalization of a city that was struggling long before these past weeks would continue amongs all that are now at the forefront and that people won’t fade away when the cameras leave. Thanks for checking in, be well!
–Jason Jordan-Griffin (serving St. Johns UMC Pumphrey )
FaithPoint, thank you so much for this message. It would be awesome for you all to pray for Orems. There are two ways that I would ask you to pray, 1) For unity, there have been some things in the past that have tried to divide the church, they have done a great job moving forward from them but there are still underlying tensions that I see from time to time, so pray for true healing; I am not sure how you can spin that so that it doesn’t sound awful, because it isn’t but if one wrong move is made…it could be, if that makes sense? 2) That we would be relevant to the community-not just in the way we all want to be relevant, but in a way that really meets the community where it is, whether that is through new ministries and missions that target the extremely high rate of teenage pregnancies in the community, or whatever it needs to be…that is what we need, and a drive to do that. I hope that wasn’t a mouthful and that it made sense. I really appreciate you asking this, and your church for praying for us. How can we pray for you all? I have to tell you that you blessed me today.
–Chris Dembeck (serving Orems UMC Baltimore)
FaithPoint, lets surround these 2 congregations in our prayer and all of the Baltimore churches, leaders and those who encounter brokeness. Let’s pray like it depends on God and serve like it depends on us.