By Leanne Friesen | Executive Minister, CBOQ
I admit it: I’m probably following your church on social media. It’s true. If I see one of our churches with an account, I instantly “smash that follow button” – because it is so wonderful to see the day-to-day glimpses of what God is up to all over our two provinces through our CBOQ churches. This summer, I began to really look forward to Mondays. Why? That was when churches would post their pictures of their weekend baptisms! Week after week this summer, I saw our churches posting their pictures of baptisms in local lakes – truly embodying making a public declaration of faith. I know these pictures don’t even begin show all the baptisms that have happened that didn’t get uploaded to social media (we would love for you to email pictures we might not know about!).
To me, each baptism is an answer to continued prayers. This year, we are talking a lot about prayer at CBOQ. My heart is that every church in CBOQ would truly be a house of prayer – that our churches would be places that pray first, pray often and pray always. Baptisms are part of those answered prayers: prayers of saints that are now with Jesus that the Church would continue past their own lifetimes, prayers of parents that the children they dedicated to God would one day choose to embrace a personal faith, prayers of pastors and church leaders for people to decide to follow Jesus.
Prayer matters. This fall, we are sharing season 3 of the Baptist Bridges podcast, and every episode is about prayer. We are talking about prayer walks, prayer practices and how to be a church that prays well. Anyone can listen to these podcasts, and we hope you will take a listen – but even more so, we hope you will let these discussions lead you to deeper places of prayer. We hope you will also be called to prayer as you look at our CBOQ calendar, with invitations to pray throughout the year for our various events and prayer needs. And of course, your CBOQ staff will keep praying for you. We gather on Wednesday every week to pray for our churches. This year, our board has also set aside three weeks of daily prayer throughout the year for CBOQ.
We do this because we know that prayer changes us. Baptisms are just one form of answered prayer. Maybe you have been praying a long time for baptisms, and that prayer is not yet answered. We trust that God is answering your prayers other meaningful ways. And, in the moments that it feels like not many prayers are being answered at all, that you will keep praying in trust that God is working even when we don’t see it just yet.
Prayer is a gift that we too often leave unopened. God is waiting to hear from us. Let us pray in faith, trusting God has more and more to give us as CBOQ churches.
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