Hoover community gathers at Met to pray for racial harmony, justice, compassion

About 200 people from various Hoover area churches gathered in the parking lot at Hoover Metropolitan Stadium tonight to pray for healing and God’s transformative power when it comes to race relations.

But the mood of the night was dampened when two of the black pastors who were scheduled to help lead the community prayer gathering backed out due to rumors of white supremacist violence that spread through the Birmingham area earlier in the day.

That left three white pastors of predominantly white churches to lead the prayer gathering.

Nathan Carden, pastor of The Church at Ross Bridge, said the black pastors and another white pastor who got sick were missed, but they all assured the others that they and their congregations would be praying with them in spirit in the safety of their homes.

Carden said he doesn’t criticize the black pastors for their decision, which was made in the best interest of keeping their people safe during unsettling times.

“Their absence with us drives home one of the realities we came to pray about,” Carden said. “The daily realities of black people — a historically disenfranchised people — are different from my daily reality simply because of the color of my skin. May God have mercy on us.”

Carden said God’s Word tells us that all men and women are made in His image and that God demonstrated in His sacrificial love that all human beings are precious in His sight.

“We admit that we so often have failed to treat each other with similar compassion as you have demonstrated to us,” Carden said.

“We lament the brutal death of George Floyd [a black man who died May 25 in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes] and so many other black men, black women, black boys and black girls who have died needlessly,” Carden said. “We pray that you would comfort the family of Mr. Floyd and bring them your healing.”

Carden said confessed that he and others are prone to allow discomfort at talking about racial realities and racial inequalities to be an excuse for not talking about them at all.

He confessed to God that he doesn’t always have the eyes to see the experiences of his black neighbors or ears to hear their cries of injustice and that he has not always spoken on behalf of those who need his voice with theirs.

“Forgive us all, Lord, for things we have done and things we have failed to do because of indifference,” he prayed. “We pray for healing from the sin of our partisan animosity, healing from the sin of our indifference to the plight of others, healing from the sin of racism, overt and systemic.”

Carden thanked God for the good local, state and national leaders who call others to be their best selves as a unified people and for law enforcement officers who see their calling as holy service for the public good.

Chris Peters, pastor of Cross Creek Church, told God that it weighs heavy on his heart that the other pastors did not feel safe enough to join them tonight.

“It makes me mad at the evil one who seems to be having a heyday,” Peters prayed. “Remind us that you keep him on a short leash and that you reign and you are sovereign and that you are good and glorious.”

Peters thanked God that believers can build their lives on Jesus, His word and the power of the Holy Spirit and that they can provide assurance in the midst of uncertainty.

He thanked God that He allows us to admit when we have failed to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves or had prejudice or unforgiveness toward others. He prayed that God would transform those in attendance and propel them to be instruments of His will and that more of the light of the Jesus would shine in a fallen world.

Randy Norris, pastor of The Station Church in McCalla, prayed that God would bring justice, give mercy and grace, and show those in attendance and others how to love other people, show compassion toward them and understand them like God does.

Norris, who has three white children and two black children adopted from Uganda, said he has sometimes heard that people don’t need to see color, but he disagrees.

“In my family, we see color, and we see it as a beautiful thing,” Norris said. “We see it as how God has made us.”

When he watched his children play together, he realized that “more than being black and white, they bonded by the knowledge that deep in their hearts, they know more than anything that they are brothers and sister,” he said.

He prayed that everyone, regardless of the pigmentation of skin color, might know that “we are bonded by something so much greater than that. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we are brothers and sisters in a sense as neighbors in this world.”

Norris noted that when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is, he answered it is to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. But he added, without being asked, that the second greatest commandment is to love others as you love yourself.

“If what you have is a profession of love for God without a demonstration of that love, then you don’t have much,” Norris said.

Norris led the crowd in singing the song “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” which talks about all children — red, yellow, black and white — being precious in God’s sight.

“We know they’re precious in God’s sight,” Norris said. “Let everyone of every color be precious in our sight as well.”

Those in the crowd also took time to gather with their family or in small groups to pray out loud together.

David Downs, said he and his wife, Ashley, who live in Ross Bridge, were shocked and surprised at everything that is happening in America right now. They decided to come and bring their two children to tonight’s prayer gathering to show support for the community.

“I think it’s important for us to come together in unity and God’s love,” he said.

Bill Sears of the McCalla community said that “if God doesn’t intervene, who knows what’s going to happen.” He agrees with a saying he heard recently that “we don’t have a skin problem. We have a sin problem.”

Sears said he wanted to pray for wisdom of not just political leaders, but community leaders as well. “We, as the church, we have to be more visible as instruments of God’s grace.”