The Harvest Is Plentiful.

We're really excited that in this season, this fall, we are going through a bit of a vision series. If you've been around New Culture for a while, my hope is that you might be able to preach all of these things even better than I can at this point. So does anyone want to try today? Anyone want to preach the vision?

No one. Okay. Well, then we're going to have to keep teaching on it until everybody else can preach on the vision of creating the culture of Christ. And if you're new around here and you're wondering what this church is all about, we meet in this little room that used to be a Tai Chi center on the corner of Madison.

What are we doing up here? Well, we're going to talk about it. What does it mean for us to create the culture of Christ together in Madison, one person, one place at a time? Last week we talked about one person, one place at a time. We talked about how Jesus was someone who slowed down and stopped for people.

So many stories in the gospels, he slows down and he stops to be with people, to encounter them, that he sees people, that he sees us in the midst of our pain. He stops for them. He pays attention to them. He heals. He brings freedom.

We want to be people who see the people around us, who don't just walk throughout our lives as if we're just bumping into strangers, but who see people as someone's son, someone's daughter, someone's child made in the image of God, worthy of our love and our attention, just like Jesus. Today we're talking about what does it look like for us to do this in Madison, Wisconsin, in this city, a few of you got excited that some of us love around here. I know we all have different stories with how we got here, with how we landed in this place. Some of you were born and raised in this city.

And it's home. There, we got one. We got one. Some of you were not born here, and maybe you're still shocked that you ended up in the Midwest, if you moved from all over the world or the country, from places where it's warm and sunny, and now you're adjusting to snow and the cold and all of these things.

But we're here, in this beautiful place that God has us in these moments. So what does it look like for us to create his culture? There are two passages of scripture today that I want to center our time around. I tried to pick one and I just couldn't do it. So we're going to read both.

Nehemiah and the harvest

Starting in Nehemiah chapter one. It says this:

The words of Nehemiah. In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the city of Susa, one of my brothers came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. They said to me, those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire. When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Then I said, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands. Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws you gave your servant Moses. Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and I will bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man. I was cupbearer to the king.

Nehemiah 1:1-11

And if you want to flip to the New Testament, to the gospel of Luke. Last week we were reading out of chapters 8 and 9. I want to pick up in chapter 10, where it says Jesus sends out the 72.

After this the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go. I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or a bag or sandals, and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, peace to this house. If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him. If not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you, heal the sick who are there, and tell them the kingdom of God is near. But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: the kingdom of God is near. I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for this town.

Luke 10:1-12

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word that is alive, that is active today. We thank you that you are speaking to us through it. Holy Spirit, we know that you are present with us, and we just ask, would you help our eyes in these moments to be open to see you, Jesus, in this text? Would you help our ears to be open to hear you clearly, Jesus, your voice, your guidance, your direction? God, I pray that you would lead all of us closer to you, your heart, your love for us today.

We just say, Holy Spirit, you are so welcome in this place. Would you have your way? In Jesus' name, amen. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

Loving Madison means asking the right questions

I want to talk about these two parallels of what it looks like for us to love our place and our city and the people around us well, by looking both at the Old Testament and the New. Jesus is telling his disciples, the harvest is plentiful. He's not saying you need to pray because there's no one around who needs harvest. He's saying it's plentiful. There are people who are open.

There are people who are in need. There are people who are willing, who are ready. But he's saying there aren't enough people to go and harvest the fruit that's ready to be harvested. When we say yes to following Jesus, we see what happened earlier in the gospels: Jesus invites people to come and follow him, to be a part of seeing his kingdom come and flow through their hands. He takes this group of men to walk alongside him, to do miracles, to be witnesses to it.

Now he's sending out this next round of 72 people who were following him. He's saying, go into the streets, go into people's homes, be with them, sit with them, eat with them. I want to go back to the passage we read in Nehemiah, because I think as we talk about what it looks like for us to love our city well, to love Madison well, Nehemiah is an incredible example of loving a place well. Nehemiah is in the city of Susa. This is the capital of Persia.

So he isn't living in Jerusalem in this moment. And it's important for us to recognize that he's talking about Jerusalem, where the city walls had been destroyed. When I travel to other countries that are a lot older than ours and see the ruins, I think, oh, it's beautiful, it's a nice aesthetic, it's pretty to look at. But walls were not just pretty to look at.

Walls represented security and safety. They represented stability, that the people were going to be protected. Jerusalem's walls had been destroyed at this time. Nehemiah is serving as cupbearer to the king, a very special, important role.

He's hearing about what has happened in Jerusalem. And rather than saying, well, that's really unfortunate, or that's really sad, we see him start to do something I want us as followers of Jesus to learn from today. He gets the information. He becomes aware of what's happening.

Then we see him weep. He allows himself to feel something. He allows himself to enter into other people's story, and even their sin, which we're going to talk about. His response is not just to say, that's so sad, I'm heartbroken for those people. He prays for them.

He starts to intercede and pray for the people. And then he participates, not only in their pain, but in saying, we're going to pray, and now we're going to do something about this. He participates in rebuilding the wall in Jerusalem.

This is a significant story, and if you haven't read the book of Nehemiah, I invite you to. We also have our reading plan for this series at the welcome table, as we read through the gospel of Luke. These stories are so rich and deep. Think about this man, at this point, willing to get the information, enter in, feel something, and participate in the rebuilding.

I believe that's the type of thing Jesus is inviting us into right here in this city. Whether we really wanted to be here or not, or we thought we'd be here for one year and now it's five years, whatever our story is, maybe this is the dream place you're so excited to be in. Whatever it is, we're in this place, in this city, and God has a plan for us. We might be tempted to look away and say, well, I'm not even going to ask. I'm going to keep my distance.

I don't really want to weep over other people's problems because I have enough of my own. We can make all these excuses, but what does it look like for us to follow Jesus, to create his culture, and to participate in seeing his kingdom come? When we think about Madison, there are a lot of reasons for us to love this city. Whenever I'm not in this city and people ask me about it, I say it's so cool. We're one of two cities that live on an isthmus, we have all this water, the farmer's market.

We can go on and on about the beauty in this city. But even in that, there's pain all around us. I find it fascinating. Madison has recently been voted in all these different magazines, and I always share it on social media because it's cool.

I live here, and it's like, best place to live, best college town, this or that. But even when we see that, we have to stop sometimes and ask a question: who is it the best for? Is it the best for everybody? Is it just the best for the people who happen to vote on this survey that said so? What's the makeup, the demographic of the people?

Is it really the best? The only way we know is if we get to know people, if we enter into their stories, if we decide to leave our place of comfort sometimes and go beyond what feels safe and secure, and if we ask questions. One of the first things I want to talk about today is that to love Madison, we must be willing to ask the right questions. We have to know Madison. We have to get to know this city.

We have to pause and ask, am I asking the right kinds of questions? Nehemiah got the information, and he started to ask even more questions to understand what was happening. What is going on? I wonder what that could look like for us if, rather than just saying, okay, this is where I'm at, this is where I live, we started to ask, well, who else is here? Who else is around me? And what are their stories? What's their experience? What do they need?

Or what do they have that I need, that I need to learn from them? When we, as a church, during the pandemic, like many churches, had to shut down, and because we had just started the church a year prior to that, we really had to shut down. There were a few of us meeting in three different houses. I would record sermons from my bedroom and share them with the church, and we'd watch it and do little studies.

That's what we did until the fall of 2021, when we decided to try again. Let's see, Lord, you're not done with New Culture. What does it look like to try again? When we moved into this space and this building, I didn't know much about these neighborhoods. The first thing I felt the Lord inviting us into was to get to know our neighbors and ask, who's here? What's happening?

We were really blessed at the time. There was this couple who started coming to the church, and it was the cutest thing. His name was Doug Hunt, and he had been praying for these neighborhoods for years and years and years. He had this binder, thick, of the history of the city planning and the redlining and all the things that had happened, why these buildings are here, and who originally owned this building. He had all this information.

Somehow we got connected, and I know it wasn't just by chance, but truly the Lord orchestrating this connection and this friendship, and he and his wife started coming to the church. He said, these are the people you need to know. So we started going in, and that's when we met the people at Bayview and the people at Neighborhood House and all the people in these surrounding organizations, believing that God has been working in these neighborhoods long before we ever showed up in this city. God has been moving. There have been people praying.

So now, when we showed up, we said, let's get to know our neighbors. It started awkwardly, and I'm not good at this stuff, so it was taking some deep breaths, being like, okay, Abbie, you can do this, and walking into these organizations and saying, hi, I'm the pastor from this church down the street, we just wanted to give you Christmas cookies and say we're here. That's how it started.

Fast forward to last week, when Laura, the executive director of Neighborhood House, who's had a lot of transition in staff, two years ago called me and said, we have our biggest donor and no way to provide backpacks for kids for school, and we have all these families relying on it. Because of the relationship, she knew she could ask us, and we were able to say, yeah, we're in, let's do it. This year, when she had almost no staff and didn't know what they were going to do, our church was able to show up last week and provide about six thousand dollars worth of school supplies for almost 200 kids. I'm so grateful that we get to be a part of these stories in this city, to see how God is moving. But so much of it started with asking questions and saying, God, what's happening here? Where are you already working?

Who are the people doing the work? And how can we partner with you? Because we truly believe that when we talk about the gospel and the good news, yes, Jesus saved our souls. When he died and rose again, it's finished. But then part of that is he said, I've come so you can have life, and have it abundantly.

That means on this side of eternity, he wants his kingdom to start coming and flowing through us. That means he loves us enough to say, you're worthy of food. You're worthy of school supplies so you can learn and get an education. So when we talk about sharing the gospel, last week that was sharing the gospel, when we were packing those backpacks and distributing them to those kids. That is telling them: you are worth this.

You are loved and you are seen and you are valued. We have to ask the right questions if we're going to love this place well. We have to get to know who's here. We have to get to know what God has already been doing long before we showed up. And then we have to be willing to feel something.

Willing to feel something

We have to allow ourselves to feel something. In verse three, Nehemiah says, they said to me, those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. He hears, he gets the information. Then, the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire. When I heard these things, I sat down and I wept.

For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. We don't want to ask the question sometimes, because then we think, oh, shoot, I might be responsible to help. Can you imagine if you're cooking dinner and someone comes in and says, what do you need help with, and you give them five things and they just say, okay, and walk away? Typically, when you ask someone what they need, that means you're going to do something about it.

So we don't want to ask, because we don't want responsibility. And we also don't want to ask because we're kind of afraid to feel anything sometimes. He wasn't just grieving and mourning for himself. He could have just stayed put in the city he was in and thought, well, it's great for me here in Susa.

Too bad for them. He wept. He entered into their pain, into their suffering, into their moments of defeat. He let this information get deep down inside him, to the point that he was moved with passion. He had compassion for these people.

That's when we see him start to pray. For us, that means we can say we love this place, but are we willing to weep when people are weeping in our city? Are we willing to slow down and grieve and mourn, and allow ourselves to feel things that might initially feel uncomfortable? Because this is the world we live in, and rather than moving to say it's all beauty, or it's all brokenness, we have to say more times than not, they're both existing at the same time.

Jesus was okay with this. He recognized that this is the mystery of the kingdom of God, that it is here, it is now, and it's still coming. There are things we're going to see, his kingdom coming here. We're going to experience the beauty and the glory. And there are still broken things we're waiting and longing and mourning and praying and interceding for him to rebuild and redeem.

It's both of it together. And Jesus models this so well. Nehemiah didn't just stay put; he was able to enter into their pain and feel those things. I believe it was those feelings, and that love for those people, because he related to them and their suffering, that moved him into prayer and participation.

When someone you love deeply in your life is hurting, how much more are you ready to say, I'm there, I'm stepping in, because you know them, because you feel things with them, compared to a stranger? If we're going to love the city, we have to know people, and we have to be willing to feel things with them, and then to pray, because that's what Nehemiah was moved to first: to pray and to intercede. I love that as we move back to Luke chapter 10, when he says the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, then he says, ask the Lord of the harvest, pray. His invitation is for them to pray. This is such an incredible reminder for us as followers of Jesus, that we are not out here on our own. We don't just have to say, okay, Jesus died and rose again and ascended into heaven, and now we just have to wait till we get there and we're never going to know the answers. That's not how this works.

He left with us his Holy Spirit, to continue to be our guide, to give us wisdom and direction, so we can ask. We can say, God, would you provide these things? We will ask God to intercede for the city. Before Jesus sends out his disciples, he asks them and invites them to pray. And Nehemiah prays for Jerusalem.

We see Jesus do this right before the cross, when he paused on Palm Sunday and wept over the city and prayed for the city, because he knew the people and he knew the city and he loved them. He wanted them so desperately to experience his kingdom coming.

Participation and repentance

Now, when we move into talking about participation, I want us to catch one more thing in Nehemiah. The language here is a little confusing, in verse six, about halfway down: I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. We've acted very wickedly towards you.

We have not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws you gave your servant Moses. Nehemiah is including himself and his household because, culturally, at this time, everything would have been part of this household, this family unit. He's including himself even though he himself was not the one who destroyed the temple. He was not the one who destroyed the walls. He was not physically a part of that destruction, yet he identifies with it.

He is willing to participate in repenting for the sins of his people. As followers of Jesus, we are not individuals walking around saying, well, that's not my problem, I'm not the one who did that, so I'm not going to do anything about it. That's not how it works. We have an invitation to say, Lord, forgive us for the ways we have sinned against people, for the ways we have collectively harmed people and oppressed people and led to these situations, and then to participate in praying and interceding and doing something about it, to bring redemption and renewal. Nehemiah looked long enough to be moved, to feel something, and then he participated even in the repentance of sins that were not his, and later in rebuilding the wall, even though it was something he could have said wasn't his problem. We have an invitation to participate in the renewal. We have an invitation to see even the beauty of this city become even more beautiful than it is.

Staying, not rushing

If we go back to Luke chapter 10 and these instructions he's giving the people: when you enter a house and say peace to this house, let the peace rest on him. If not, it will return. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. I've been doing a lot of quick, five-hour road trips to different family functions and friends' weddings this summer.

Yesterday I was driving back from Minneapolis. It's not a crazy bad drive, pretty simple, pretty straightforward, but I get so annoyed by the people who are just moving around back and forth, back and forth. You all know what I'm talking about, when we're going at a great pace, and then someone cuts you off, and you think, okay, sorry, I was only going three over and you want me to go 30 over right now. And then next thing you know, somehow that same person is behind you five minutes later, and you're thinking, how did you get here again? Leave me alone.

There were moments where I was just sitting there thinking, if we could all just stay in our lane and stop cutting each other off, stop trying to rush things, we would all get there faster. But that's not how we like to live our lives. We always think there has to be a faster way, a shortcut. If I just cut these five people off, surely I'm going to pass all the semis.

You're never going to pass all the semis. And even when you do, there's going to be another one that shows up. But this is what's so ingrained in us: we want to move faster, so we bounce around. And Jesus is saying, would you slow down a bit, would you just stay. Don't go from house to house, just stay. When he's talking about eating a meal, there were no microwaves or fast food at that time. Eating a meal in a Jewish household, you're going to be there a while. It's not just one course.

We're talking course after course after course, sitting, dwelling, delighting. He's asking them to stay. And if you're doing that, guess what else might happen? You might have to talk to people. You might have to get into some beyond-the-surface, how's-the-weather conversations when you're sitting at someone's table for quite a few hours.

Jesus knew this when he gave this invitation. He's saying, stay there for a while, sit, be with the people, get to know the people. I love this, because the gospel is so spiritual and so practical, and it's all intertwined together, where food is so sacred. Jesus is leading them into something when he says, I want you to go, because yes, you have the good news and the gospel to offer them. But these people also have something to offer you.

You're going to rely on these people to nourish you. You're going to rely on them to sustain you. This is such an important reminder for us, because what I never want us to feel, as we preach about going and serving and giving, is that we're just people used by God. I always want it to be a sense of overflow, a remembering that we do this because we have received the love of Christ, because we are sustained by Christ, and so we're able to love freely, and to remember that we're not left behind in the process. As you go, as you serve, God sees you too. He sees even your smallest desires.

A couple of years ago at Neighborhood House, most people don't realize just how short I am. People ask, are you like five four? I'm only five two, but I fool everybody because I'm always wearing heels or wedges, so you can't even tell. I do that because it makes me feel a little taller and more superior than just a flat five two. If you're also five two, you feel me. So I was hyping it up a little bit. Because of that, even my sneakers have just a little wedge, a little platform, to give me a little boost. I had been looking, and those of you who shop like this know what I mean, I had a pair of Doc Martens, wedged platform boots, in my shopping cart for months, and I kept thinking, I can't really justify getting new winter boots yet. Yes, they're leaking, and every time I step out I can feel water in them, but there's other things I can wear, and some of this stuff is expensive.

I show up to Neighborhood House, the community center down the street, one random day, and I kid you not, out of the blue they say, hey, we randomly got this donation, and we have nothing to do with them, any chance you're a size eight and you want these platform Doc Marten boots? They're brand new.

I said, you've got to be kidding me. They all know I'm a pastor, so I said, this is a miracle. This is the Lord right here. We're going to testify to the name of Jesus.

I laugh about it, but it was that moment where I felt so seen by God. You can't make this up. The exact color I wanted. You'll see me in a couple months, in the cool weather, wearing them almost every Sunday.

And you're never going to know I'm only five two because of them. But I see these things, and I think, the Lord sees us as we're serving and giving, we're not left behind. When he told the disciples originally, go out and take nothing with you, he did that because he was saying, I've got you. I have everything you need already taken care of.

So when he says, lay it down, leave it behind, it's not because he wants you to go without, but because he has even greater things in store for us as we continue to lay things down and make room for him to flow through us.

Good Neighbor Gathering, and our part in the city

So I'm going to invite the worship team to come up as we get ready to close today. I wanted to share this specifically in this timing, because as Josh shared, next Sunday we're not going to be gathering here in the sanctuary. I've even been using the language, like, we cancel church for the Good Neighbor Gathering.

And then this morning I thought, that's so bad to say. We're not canceling church. We're just changing the way we worship next week. So I mean it when I say I would love to see everybody, even if it's just an hour, sign up and serve at the Good Neighbor Gathering. We've been participating in this for the past five years.

We're with local organizations. We get to go down the street at Brittingham Park. Look at all those cute little faces. We get to love on some families in our community. This year we're introducing some new things I would love our church people to be the best at.

We're doing Good Neighbor Bingo. We have about 200 gift cards from local businesses, and questionnaires for adults to go and ask, hey, what's your favorite spot in Madison? If you meet enough neighbors, you get a gift card. So you could all get gift cards next week, but we're trying to be so intentional about not being a church that just says, yes, we're going to create the culture of Christ, and we know our city and we're going to pray for our city, but we also want to participate in loving the people in it, which sometimes means we're going to take a whole Sunday, and instead of being here, we're going to be down at the park, providing kids with joy and fun and access to community resources. It's going to be a phenomenal day. But beyond that, I want to encourage all of us to really be praying and asking the Lord, what is it for me that I need to focus on right now? Is it knowing my place in my city? Is it allowing myself to slow down and feel something for my neighbors and the people around me? Am I praying enough for this place? I could go on and on about the people I know who have been praying for the city of Madison long before I moved here.

I mentioned that man Doug and his wife Marianne, they would walk the neighborhoods and pray. They had no idea what it was ever going to lead to. Now they live in Colorado with their grandkids, and we still talk on the phone and catch up. But I truly believe that the things we're able to participate in are a result of those prayers. After we pray, it's one thing to ask the questions, but when we ask, there's a sense of responsibility to say, now we get to do something, we get to be a part of seeing his kingdom come and sharing the good news of the gospel. And we do this not from a place of lack, but because we have encountered and have access to the greatest love there is, found in Jesus. Jesus is the example of this: he left heaven and came down to earth, and he did not stay far off from people, he entered into their place. When he's telling the disciples to go into people's homes, the place where they had their meals, that's the center of their lives. Jesus came into the center.

He took on all of our pain and all of our suffering. He defeated death so that we can experience the goodness of his kingdom for all eternity. When we say yes to following Jesus, we're saying yes to that. We're saying yes to the joy of participating and seeing that love flow through our hands. So today, as we close, I want you to ask the Lord.

For me, what is it? Do I need to take time to know the city? Do I need to ask the right questions? What does it look like for you even to start walking and praying for your own neighborhood, whether you know the names of the people or not? Who is Jesus asking you to notice?

What do you need to feel? Where are there things you've been looking away from, because it's just too hard and too painful? Where do you need to pray and ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers, to pray for more people to come to know him and feel that compassion to go and participate? And then that last part, where can you participate? We have plenty of opportunities as a church, whether it's Good Neighbor Gathering, or Laundry Love, or a Care Portal team that responds to families in need.

I want to encourage you to be praying about that, but I'm going to invite us to stand. We are here to create the culture of Christ together in Madison, one person, one place at a time.

It's going to be sustained, and it's all going to start with us centering everything around Jesus, and being reminded of who he is and his glory and his beauty, because as we do that, it's going to flow. So I'm going to pray for us, and we're just going to end in this time of worship today. God, we thank you so much for the example of Nehemiah, someone who was willing to see a city that was broken and destroyed, and rather than ignoring it, looked in, entered in, prayed, and participated in the rebuilding.

God, we thank you for your son Jesus, who came, who left everything to come and be fully human and fully divine, to walk with us and feel with us and know our pain and our suffering. I thank you, God, that you see us where we're at today and that you do not forget about us. When you ask us to participate, it's for your glory and for our good, and you are with us in that. God, I pray for those of us today who maybe have things you're asking us to step into that feel like we don't know how. Would your Holy Spirit empower us?

God, would we follow your son Jesus' footsteps as we participate in seeing your kingdom come in this city, as we participate in loving our neighbors and getting to know our neighbors, asking the questions, weeping with them, mourning with them, and praying for them. Would you help us, Jesus, even in these moments, as we sing about your beauty and your glory, to be reminded that you are with us, that you are for us, that you pour your love out for us time and time again. So now, as we end our time together, we look to you, Jesus, and your glory and your beauty, and we say thank you. Thank you for redeeming us. Thank you for setting us free.

Thank you for healing us. Thank you for not leaving us in our sin and our brokenness and our darkness, but for coming to us, and defeating death. Thank you that you're coming again, that the things we experience here are just a taste of your kingdom to come in all of eternity.

So I just pray that as we lift high your name, Jesus, you would draw us closer to you, as you have promised to do. And as we lift high your name, would you draw this city closer to you, as we sit in this corner of Madison, connecting the campus and the capital and all the neighborhoods and the housing and everything that happens in this corner. For the people driving past, headed into work on the beltline, as we lift high your name in this corner of Madison, would you draw people closer to you, Jesus? In your name we pray.