UPC church distributes prayer altars: Good idea or future garage sale piece?
 

Prayer power: Pastor hopes homemade altars encourage good habits for New Year

By GLENN EVANS
Monday, December 31, 2007
GLADEWATER — An altar call seemed a good way to get ready for 2008 at one local church Sunday, when members of Abundant Life United Pentecostal Church distributed the first of 100 handmade prayer altars.


"What better way to position ourselves but to go into this new year repositioning ourselves to prayer," the Rev. Michael McGuire said, shortly before a Sunday night communion service that concluded with members and visitors invited to take home a gift filled with the mystery and promise of prayer.


Members of the Abundant Life Temple in Gladewater stand behind altars Sunday. The altars will be distributed to families so they can have their own personal place to pray in their homes.

Seventy short benches, or altars, filled nearly every spare aisle space in the Gladewater sanctuary, lighter wooden sides supporting camel-colored seats. The altars were patterned after one that late church member Dan Moody Watson kept in his home for decades.

"He said, 'That's where me and Mama talk to God,' " McGuire recalled Watson, who was buried in overalls with a little, red New Testament tucked into a pocket.

"The altar itself, we recognize, is just a piece of furniture. If we've got a place for our car, if we've got a place for clothes, if we've got a place for food — we don't really have a place in our homes that is set aside exclusively for prayer. If they will see the altar in the home, they will be prompted to prayer. I hope this will catch on and churches in this area will be prompted to do the same thing. Everything we believe in starts with prayer."

McGuire had been inspired by the simple object when he conducted Watson's funeral, where it took a prominent position beside the casket.
Watson's son, John, brought the original with him to church Sunday.
"It was pretty much the center of our home," he said, describing it as the place his father and mother, Mary Jane, would turn for guidance from above.

"Instead of trying to figure out something by himself, he would go to that altar first. This was a man that was very simple, and yet who felt impressed to do this."

McGuire challenged the assembly of about 140 people to start a wave of prayer that could cover the area as more join.

"I believe we can raise up a wall of prayer, like a standard at every home," McGuire said. "It's time that America wake up and realized there's power in prayer. East Texas needs a revival and an outpouring of the blessings of God.

http://www.news-journal.com/news/con...07_altars.html

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Thoughts, comments, ideas???

Wow, I was in that church about a month ago.

Are you now coming out for selling your altar and as well as tossing out the baptismal tank? :doh

Just asking whether or not it will get the intended response? Or will it just become ornate furniture in the homes of some ... next to the dusty bible?

Let us hope not? Family altars are good. :praying

Buy a prayer alter as prayed over by Pastor so and so..

And receive the answer to your prayers for a lifetime.

Your cost $$$$$$

Hmmmm ... the article doesn't say if they were distributed for free or for a fee .... Are you suggesting this was nothing more than a fund raiser???

With advertisers leading the charge willing to spend millions and millions on advertisements (Newspaper, internet, TV, billboards, flyers, etc.) knowing very well they can bank on the power of suggestion, it just seems that this is a neat way to remind people to pray...if the power of suggestion works through this, then great. After all they did say:


"If they will see the altar in the home, they will be prompted to prayer. I hope this will catch on and churches in this area will be prompted to do the same thing. Everything we believe in starts with prayer."

However, I think it takes a lot more than just the power of suggestion to get folks to habitually set a time for prayer.

I wonder. It would not surprise me...

You know better than that. This is not a fundraiser.