Community Corner

Four Local Churches to Join Forces, Observe National Day of Prayer

Fort Lee's First Reformed Church of the Palisades, Bethany Well Church, Fort Lee Gospel Church and Maranatha Grace Fort Lee will commemorate the annual observance Thursday.

The annual National Day of Prayer, held each year on the first Thursday of May, represents an “invitation to people of all faiths to pray for the nation,” according to the NDOP website.

Created by a joint resolution of Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1952, the National Day of Prayer “exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families,” according to national organizers.

Locally, four area churches will join together to pray for Fort Lee and its neighboring towns, the country and the world on Thursday evening, marking the 61st annual observance of the National Day of Prayer.

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The event, which is scheduled to take place at on Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs, is being organized by Pastors Richard Lee of , Rick Spenst of , Dominick Apollo of the and Won Kwak of Maranatha Grace.

“Essentially we just want to come together and bring awareness to the fact that there’s power in prayer,” Kwak said. “It’s a national event, and we certainly don’t want to limit it to just praying for our churches, or our needs, or our desires. But we want to pray for the greater Fort Lee area.”

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Thursday’s event won’t be the first time the four churches have joined forces. In July 2011, they held a joint worship service called , which Kwak called at the time an “initial endeavor” the four saw as “just the start of united efforts.”

Kwak also said last year that the four church leaders hoped not only to make Gospel4Fort Lee an annual event, but also the launch of further efforts to better serve the community.

This Thursday, Kwak said, the four pastors will each present a different subject or theme—prayer for the local area, prayer for the country, prayer for the world and prayer for the churches themselves—but that there won’t be any sermons or homilies per se.

He specifically mentioned Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich and Englewood Cliffs Mayor Joseph Parisi as examples of people participants will pray for Thursday, but he also said other towns and their leaders will be included, as will trouble spots and recent troubling events across the U.S. and worldwide.

“You don’t have to be a part of our churches; anyone is invited to come and learn about Christian faith, but also just to come and participate in what I wouldn’t call ecumenical, but just kind of a concert of prayer,” Kwak said. “There will be live music and worship in song as well, so it’s going to be a neat thing.”

The local version of the National Day of Prayer takes place Thursday, May 3, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Maranatha Grace Fort Lee, which is now located at 360 Sylvan Ave.


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