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The line starts forming before six o'clock. Parents holding the hands of young children and some children alone are huddled on the sidewalk between a squarish, plain-faced brick faÇade and noisy Flatbush Avenue. By 6:30 everybody who is likely to get inside is in line, still waiting for the doors to open. But New Yorkers are used to that, even at church. And especially at the Brooklyn Tabernacle.

It's Tuesday night, and time for prayer meeting—the children's prayer meeting.

At 6:35, the doors open. Climbing the stairs to the vinyl-tiled upper room, the older children sign in and gravitate to the walls to draw and paint on large sheets of poster board. The theme is "harvest time." After the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in nearby Manhattan, pastor Jim Cymbala told his congregation that while people are asking questions, the time is ripe for sharing the gospel. In a few minutes, the children will begin singing, then get down to the serious business of praying for the next two hours.

The younger children go downstairs to a basement room bright with fluorescent lights. They start singing immediately. Prayer for them will be interspersed with songs and stories, but this is not game time or babysitting. At first it seems like Sunday school, but it's not.

"Prayer is the hub of everything we do," says Nancy Martinez, director of Christian education. "It's not tacked on to other programs. Prayer is what we're here for."

This neighborhood was better known for pimps and winos than for prayer meetings when Jim Cymbala was called to pastor the Brooklyn Tabernacle more than 30 years ago. Today, the church's Grammy-winning gospel choir and its Tuesday night prayer meetings are known around the world. Cymbala has told the story in a series of books beginning with Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire (Zondervan, 1997)—how he told God, while sitting in a fishing boat on a brief respite, that he was ready to give up on the dying church he and his wife, Carol, had just taken on. There were only 20 regular attendees, most of them troubled and broke, and the church was just like them—troubled and broke. Cymbala wanted to quit.

The young pastor sensed God speaking in his heart: "If you will lead the people to pray and call on my name, you will never have a building large enough to hold the crowds I will send you."

So they prayed.

Every Tuesday night, the congregation gathered to pray for the church and the city, and especially for the salvation of their friends and loved ones. Fifteen people attended the first week Cymbala called for the meeting. Tuesday night became the heartbeat of congregational life, and the church soon understood that nothing would happen in Brooklyn apart from persistent, faith-filled prayer.

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