When your church is giving away refurbished, already-paid-for homes to veterans in need, you know you're making Jesus smile. And He is smiling broadly upon Rock City Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Under the leadership of Bishop Bart Pierce, church members have built 17 such homes over the years.

But the housing ministry is only one of a multitude of acts of service that members of Rock City Church perform to bring God's love, compassion and mercy to a city in desperate need of it. For example, its food distribution center is the largest in the state of Maryland that gives away free food, donating more than 3 million pounds of food per year.

Pierce, who has pastored Rock City for 35 years, adopted a heart of benevolence through his pastors John and Anne Gimenez, who founded Rock Church International. Coupled with prayer, he sees it as the only way to do church.

"It's an amazing thing when God's people just really have a willing heart and a willingness to do something for God," Pierce told Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of "Greenelines" on the Charisma Podcast Network. "There is really nothing beyond the limit of what God will do to honor them and help them.

"It's not just about blessing an individual who doesn't have anything. It's like a reciprocal thing that comes back and blesses the local church abundantly. ... And, we must teach the next generation about the goodness of God and what God has done."

Rock City Church members also bathe their ministries in prayer. The church has prayer rooms open between 15 and 18 hours a day.

"One of the things we all know and walk in is the power of prayer," Pierce says. "We believe that every ministry we do, whether it's our children's ministry, whether it's at a nursing home, the jails, outreach ministry, if we don't build prayer into the fiber of the church, eventually we will do what we know we can do without God."

For more about God has poured out His blessings on and through Rock City Church, listen to the podcast below.

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