More than 250,000 students reportedly gathered last week on athletic fields across the country to pray and worship.
As part of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ (FCA) “Fields of Faith” program, students gathered at more than 500 fields nationwide, according to Fox News.
“In a world where bad news seems to be the norm, we’re happy to share the great news that lives are being changed through [FCA’s] ‘Fields of Faith,’” FCA Executive Director of Ministry Advancement Jeff Martin, told Fox News. “From the student leaders who take on the responsibility to bring ‘Fields of Faith’ to their communities to the skeptical or hurting teen who might be attending for the first time, we see time and again that ‘Fields of Faith’ motivates, energizes, rejuvenates, and unites.”
An annual event, the “Fields of Faith” program began in 2002, according to its website. It is a student-led event held on an athletic field to “provide a neutral, rally point where a community can come together,” the website said.
It boasted bringing out nearly 200,000 people across 521 fields in 2018 and more than 192,000 people across about 500 fields in 2017.
In 2004, the first year the program went national, about 6,000 people gathered at 23 fields across three states.
In Muncie, Indiana, 17 students from three counties and nine schools addressed those gathered at the Southside Middle School football field, which can hold up to 3,000 people, the Star Press reported.
“It inspires me to watch these kids pour themselves into this for six weeks and take the stage in front of that kind of crowd,” Jeff Mosier, the FCA director for the Muncie area, told the newspaper. “It’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most of them.”
And in Baltimore, a group of football players at Frederick Douglass High School had a specific prayer in mind when they gathered Wednesday morning: peace from violence.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It gives hope to our young people, and definitely we need that in the city right now,” Sirena Alford, an FCA regional director, told WBFF-TV.
According to the news outlet, players at the high school “huddle” in prayer weekly.