Masses Gather at National Mall to Pray for Third Great Awakening

For the second Columbus Day in a row, churches from all over the Washington, D.C., region gathered as one on the National Mall to pray, repent and ask God for a Great Awakening.

They gathered to display their unity because they all realize national revival will never come from an unrepentant, divided church.

There’s nothing that says love in the church like unity among the brethren. That’s why this Columbus Day gathering was a special event for the area body of Christ, with more than 300 denominations gathered.

“Unity is a beautiful thing,” Senior Pastor Owen Lee, with Christ Central Presbyterian in Centreville, Virginia, told CBN News.

“And Jesus wants unity not just in His churches, but among His churches. And today is just a wonderful opportunity to show that kind of unity,” he said.

“God has worked in leaders’ hearts like we’ve never quite seen before, all at the same time, all in the same way,” Howie Levin, the Washington Prayer Gathering director, explained. “And the church leaders are realizing that we need each other. We’re much better together. We just can’t get the job done as any one church.”

But the show of unity had a greater purpose, as Senior Pastor Lon Solomon, with Virginia’s McLean Bible Church, told CBN News.

“We’re gathering together to humble ourselves before God and pray and seek His face and confess our sins in obedience to God,” Solomon said. “We’re here to pray for revival to fall on our city and on our nation and on our churches and on ourselves.”

“To come together across denominational and racial lines as one body with one voice, to worship God together and to pray together for the renewal and revival of our land that we love,” Pastor Lee added.

The prayer time at the gathering started with an extended period of confession and repentance. Those who study revival know it begins in the Church and with each individual believer.

“We think that it starts in each human heart,” Levin told CBN News.

“If we’re going to see revival, it’s right here,” he told CBN News, as he pointed to his own heart.

Though what happens at such prayer gatherings is important, leaders told those attending the gathering that what really matters is that each person show the love of Christ to a watching world throughout the year.