For a 14th year, prayers and people will return to the Lowndes County Courthouse lawn on Thursday to observe the National Day of Prayer.
Organized by the Christian Community in Prayer Committee, the event is open to all denominations and backgrounds with the purpose of bringing citizens together beyond church walls to pray as a community.
“We just feel very strongly that there are lots of good prayer groups in churches and in other ways where they meet and have prayer,” Committee Chair Nell Bateman told The Dispatch on Monday. “But our thing is, we are a community. Let’s come out of the churches. Let’s meet together … and let’s pray together. It’s not about what church you’re coming from.”
Starting at noon, the National Day of Prayer program will include prayers from local clergy and community leaders, praise music and a message from guest speaker Scott Reall, executive director of Tennessee-based Restore Ministries. In the case of bad weather, the event will move inside the Frank P. Phillips Memorial YMCA.
Bateman said 500 programs were handed out during last year’s event, and she hopes for an even bigger gathering on Thursday. The program isn’t expected to last more than an hour, she said.
“We do it at noon, so that people can come on their lunch hour,” she said. “We’re very cognizant of the fact that we finish in a timely manner, so they can get back to work. We’re not interfering with anything.”
In 1952, a joint resolution of Congress declared there would be an annual day of prayer. The law was amended in 1988, permanently establishing the first Thursday of every May as the official National Day of Prayer.
Bateman had attended different community-level celebrations of the holiday over the years, but in 2011, when there were only about 15 people still attending, the remaining group decided to start the Christian Community in Prayer Committee to organize their own event.
“Those of us who were there looked at each other and said, ‘We can’t let this happen. This is the National Day of Prayer,’” she said. “That was in May of that year, and by January of the following year, we had organized our committee and put together, in 2012, the first local recognition of the National Day of Prayer.
“That first year, I would think we probably had 300, 350 people, which was so encouraging,” Bateman added.
Since then, the local tradition has served as an annual reminder to pray for local, state and national leaders, said Jimmy Woodruff, executive director of the Frank P. Phillips Memorial YMCA, which has been a longtime supporter of the event.
“There’s so many things that are going wrong in the world and so many burdens and issues,” he said. “We just all have to understand that the answer is prayer. … That’s what the National Day of Prayer does. It just brings attention to the fact that we as a nation need to be in prayer.”
Bateman sees the event as an opportunity for community members to step away from everyday distractions, spend time together praying and leave feeling encouraged.
“We always feel like if we can accomplish (anything) that day, it’s to glorify God and edify our community and our people who live here,” she said. “There’s so much discouragement in the world today. Just to have a reminder that it’s okay, that God’s still in control, no matter how bad things may look.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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