This past weekend in Fayetteville, NC, Festival Park was filled with 5,800 people uniformed in simple T-shirts that read “God Belongs In My City”. They were all gathered for the city’s first community Prayer Walk. God Belongs in My City is a national movement which started in New York City with a small group of believers. The movement has now grown to several cities across the
nation with Fayetteville marking its largest participation log to date. “On behalf of our national office, this walk has been one of the greatest epic prayer walks we have ever experienced,” states Alan Diaz, Co-Chairman of God Belongs In My City – National Office.
Fayetteville’s God Belongs In My City Prayer Walk was organized by Anthony O’Neal, Youth Pastor at Simon Temple AME Zion Church. The goal of the event was accomplished – to bring every religious denomination, all races, nationalities and ages of people in the community together in a day of communal unity and proclamation that God does belong in Fayetteville. With the up rise in recent violent acts and homicides, O’Neal was compelled to create an event that brought awareness to the concerns in the community and the solutions to which everyone could contribute.
Lead by Fayetteville Mayor Anthony Chavonne, local pastors and community leaders, a sea of walkers took to the streets of downtown stopping at Veterans Park and Airborne Museum, City Hall, the Market House and the Public Library to pray. After the mile and a half prayer walk, the crowd was enthusiastically engaged in a live worship concert that featured Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Myron Butler from The Potter’s House, Dallas, TX. To top off the afternoon, walkers were treated to lunch sponsored by Chick-fila.
“To see my pastor who has a small ministry walk next to the pastors who have a larger ministries and they not treat him any differently blessed my heart,” a participating walker shared. “Our pastor preached ‘As One’ for his sermon topic on Sunday morning.” “As One” was an inspiring short message by Pastor Fletcher who spoke to the crowd at Festival Park.
The overwhelming response and community support has lead O’Neal to confirm the now annual event with next year’s date set for April 20. O’Neal humbly, yet confidently proclaims – “This is just the beginning!”
About The God Belongs In My City National Movement: New York City youth group passionate for God saw an Atheist Advertisement campaign in the subway system which stated, “A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?” They were so stirred up by this they went to their Youth Pastor who then went to his network of Youth Pastors and leaders to ask, “What are we, as the body of Christ going to do about this?” They prayed and decided to take action and have Youth Ministries from all around the 5 boroughs hold a prayer walk wearing a simple T-shirt which stated “God Belongs in My City”.
