National Day of Prayer - Laurens, SC - May 7, 2009
Today I enjoyed my first observance of the National Day of Prayer by joining with about 15 local pastors and a small crowd of about 45 on the steps of the historic courthouse in beautiful downtown Laurens, South Carolina. The rally was led by Laurens Baptist Associational Missionary Reiny Koschel (pictured). What surprised me the most was that apart from the lone Presbyterian and Methodist, it was largely a Baptist gathering. I know that I’m now living and serving in Southern Baptist-land, but this was more like going to a Baptist convention than a cross-section of evangelical Christianity. Maybe standing on the courthouse steps in the center of town and publicly practicing Romans 13 by praying for our President, Congress, the Supreme Court, the Governor, all the way down to the local School Board is out of fashion. It might not be in the too distant future that public displays of faith like the one we partook in today might be considered bigotry and hate-speech. In the mean-time I’m going to continue to take a public stand for the truth of the Gospel.
