n my last column I wrote about the absolute necessity of our churches becoming houses of prayer. In the Scriptures God does not suggest that the church consider becoming a house of prayer; He makes a clear declaration that this is what His church must be (Isa. 56:7 and Matt. 21:13).

I'm writing this during a layover at the Tokyo airport. For three weeks I had an opportunity to visit a few places around the world, helping pastors and leaders improve their leadership skills. I try to make it a priority, wherever I am, to attend a midweek prayer meeting in one of our churches. I find great spiritual benefit in being in a prayer-filled environment when God's people gather.

In each of the prayer meetings I attended, I was struck by several disturbing similarities: (1) Very few people attended relative to the size of the church. (2) Most of the prayer meeting was spent singing, preaching, and doing other things. (3) Very little time was actually spent in prayer. (4) The people seemed to have had no expectation that God would even show up.

Can it be that we have become so mechanical in our churches, and everything so agonizingly predictable, that we feel little need of prayer? Have we been focusing so much on other things that we have made prayer only an addendum to the more important things of church life? I fear that much of our praying is done while we're not really expecting God to answer. If we had a real sense that God was going to show up in our churches and really answer prayer, I believe our churches would be packed to capacity every prayer meeting. Packed not only with our own members but also with people from our communities who would seek out the place where God was moving in such a powerful way.

In the book of Acts the early church gathered in prayer meetings daily. The power in that church could not be contained. Miracles happened, lives were changed, and the kingdom of Satan was being defeated on every hand. To be sure, the early church was subject to intimidation and persecution on a continual basis, but those early Christians retreated into prayer meeting to regain strength to face the battles ahead. Out of those prayer meetings, God moved in powerful ways over them. I don't know about you, but I long for that kind of movement of God over His people.

In the book of Acts Peter spoke to the crowd of "times of refreshing" in the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19). These are times of special visitation by the Spirit. While we can personally experience those times of refreshing alone with God, can you imagine the power unleashed when the church gathers in His presence for no other reason but to seek His face in praise and intercession? The local church that finally gets this--that is, that it must first and foremost be a house of prayer--is going to have a massive impact on the world around it. The power won't be able to be contained.

Is that biblical? You'd better believe it! Look at this: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13, NKJV). Now, please don't define their being with Jesus as just the three years Peter and John spent in ministry with Him. After the three years the disciples spent with Jesus, they still had major issues they hadn't dealt with. But it was the time they spent in prayer meeting in the "upper room" at Jesus' command that made things really start to happen. And not only in the upper room, but in the subsequent prayer meetings held in homes and hideaways throughout Jerusalem that resulted in anger and threats from the members of the Sanhedrin, who sat up and took notice.

Congregations that go beyond programs, potlucks, and pageantry, and focus on the power of prayer, will not only impact their church and their world; they will experience a moving of God over them rarely seen since that powerhouse of a church in Acts. The Seventh-day Adventist church in every community, across all of our great lands, can be that church--a house of prayer.

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Frederick Russell is senior pastor of the Miracle Temple Worship Center and Ministry Complex in Baltimore, Maryland.