Hundreds of evangelicals and church leaders representing 25 states gathered in Washington D.C., this week for the Evangelical Day of Prayer and Action for Immigration Reform, organized by the Evangelical Immigration Table. The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, remarked, “We’re here to say that immigration reform has strong evangelical support.”
The day’s events included a prayer walk, a meeting with members of Congress and a service led by Willow Creek Community Church’s Bill Hybels at Church of the Reformation, just blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.
According to The Christian Post, during the service Hybels encouraged the group of leaders to pray a “Philippians 4” kind of prayer for immigration reform, one where we are invited to present a request to God and can feel the result of “the peace of God that passes all human understanding.”
“God, my request is that your Church, the hope of the world, would rise up, and not only welcome strangers at our gates, but advocate passionately for their well-being,” he prayed, “and God, my simple request is that lawmakers would do the job that they have been sent to this great city to do — to solve pressing problems, to weed out unfair practices, and, God, may this ongoing nightmare end very, very soon so everybody in this land can sleep the way you created us to sleep.”
Other leaders in attendance were Kenton Beshore from Mariners Church in southern California, Timothy Goeglein of Focus on the Family, Dr. Richard Land who is leaving the post of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and David Uth from First Baptist Church in Orlando, Fla. Both Beshore and Uth spoke about how their congregations have been personally affected and impacted by involvement in the lives of immigrants in their local communities.
