Men of Honor Ministries Expands Washington County Prayer Gathering to 5,000 Attendees

Church group preps for expanded prayer gathering

According to the Observer-Reporter, Men of Honor Ministries is preparing what may be the largest ecumenical prayer gathering Washington County has seen in decades — an afternoon expected to draw up to 5,000 people to the Washington County Fairgrounds on September 13 for free food, Christian music, and a program of Christian worship. Behind the logistics, the recent account hints at something quieter: a community grieving its founder and choosing, in that grief, to widen the doors rather than narrow them.

Honoring a Legacy by Extending It

The expanded event grows out of the Washington County Prayer Breakfast that Paul Powers began in the late 1990s. For years, that gathering drew between four and five hundred worshipers to the DoubleTree on Racetrack Road — a steady, intimate rhythm that had become its own kind of blessing. After Powers' death in 2024, the work of carrying the tradition forward fell to Men of Honor Ministries President Pat O'Brien, who told the Observer-Reporter he considers Powers' original vision to have been "very well done," and that the new leadership is trying to walk in the same shoes while simply expanding the scope.

There is a recognizable pastoral tension in that move. To honor a beloved founder is to ask whether faithfulness means preservation or proliferation — whether we keep the table the size it was or set another plate. The organizers have answered by relocating to a larger venue (the Fairgrounds will be temporarily renamed the "Washington County Prayer Grounds" for the day) and by gathering a wider circle of partners, including the City Mission, Word FM, and Washington County Tourism.

A Pastoral Lens on the Afternoon

For readers who may attend, or who simply wish to hold this gathering in prayer, a few reflections may serve better than a checklist. The program runs from 1 to 6 p.m. and opens with a barbecue prepared by Chef Victor Najor of Fire of Coals Ministries, followed by a keynote from U.S. Prayer Force founder Mike MacIntosh. Christian musicians Jonathan Traylor and Jordan St. Cyr will lead worship, and Penn State All-American wrestler Rocco Welsh will offer a testimony of faith. O'Brien has said the hope is for "unity in the church, in the Body of Christ," and for "a revival in Washington County" — longings that are earnest even when they reach beyond our own vocabulary.

A Lutheran eye will notice both resonances and distances here. The gathering is openly ecumenical, shaped by an evangelical stream rather than a confessional one; we will not hear the liturgy we love, nor receive the Sacrament at this table. But we may recognize the prayer underneath the differences, the longing that runs deeper than any one tradition's words for it.

Holding Space, Near or Far

Whether or not we make the drive to Washington on the thirteenth, the gathering leaves us with a quieter pastoral question: what does it mean to pray alongside Christians whose language is not quite our own? We do not need to agree about everything to kneel in the same direction. That, too, is part of the inheritance we carry — worth remembering when the news brings word of revival meetings held far from our own doors.