As we near the end of our first year of the BUILD journey, we are hearing many amazing testimonies and stories of people taking bold steps of faith in their own lives to BUILD more room for God in their time, their communities, their finances and their lives.

One area in which the church continues to thrive is prayer. Centre Street Church is a prayerful church, as you may have read about in our history story, Living Stones which is available for pick up at your campus. Our history shows that it has only been due to prayer that CSC has prospered the way it has.

We encourage everybody to BUILD more room in their time to be with God in prayer. We’re excited to report how God is moving in the prayer life of the church in 2019.

As we entered into the new year, CSC was invited into a week of prayer and fasting from January 7-11. Throughout the week there were opportunities to come together to pray and worship God as a community. During the Wednesday night Healing Prayer evening, one lady even accepted the Lord! The week culminated into a Friday night Call to Prayer which began at 9 p.m. and continued into the morning hours.

“I thought a few people would show up at 9 pm,” said Community Pastor who was taken by surprise to discover the Prayer Chapel completely packed. They had to bring so many more chairs as people were standing, sitting and squeezed into every corner of the Prayer Chapel. There were people sitting in the corridor outside and once a conference room was opened it became full. “Sadly, one of my volunteers counted 60 people who came and left because there was no space.”

Through the night about 250 people passed through the chapel doors. The evening was divided into four sessions, each of which had worship, scripture reading, and devotional prayer time. “I have never experienced anything like this. There was a hunger and thirst for an outpouring and infilling of the Holy Spirit,” recalled Pastor Jacob. Even the people sitting in the corridors and conference rooms were engaged together in powerful prayer. In the last session as the meeting was about to close, Pastor Jacob invited everyone to stand and lift their hands and tell the Lord how much they loved him. “They lifted their hands and voices and it almost brought the roof down. You had to be there to experience it.”

“I hope that next year there will be more room available because it broke my heart to see so many turned away because there was no room to pray all together,” said participant Caroline. “Last night was inspirational. God must have been so pleased!”

Did you know that each month there is a special time for prayer for our growing church? “Our focus is the BUILD more room for God initiative which includes BUILDING more physical space for God and BUILDING more room for God in all of our hearts,” said Elwyn Dahlke, member of the BUILD prayer committee. In recognition that we are One Church Many Locations these prayer meetings have been rotating to the different campuses. “Our January meeting was at South Campus and our February meeting was at Central Campus. We thoroughly enjoyed praying together!”

If you would like to be one of our BUILD prayer warriors, and receive updates, prayer requests and meeting invitations, please visit buildmoreroom.ca/pray-and-give/pray.

Also, stay tuned for our passion week of prayer coming up this Easter season.