Crowd prays, sings at Day of Prayer

Havre Daily News/Lindsay Brown

A crowd prays during Thursday's National Day of Prayer service in Town Square.

Patriotic music and speeches at the Havre celebration of the National Day of Prayer Thursday praised the United States for what it stands for.

But several speakers at the Town Square commemoration said they were worried about the spiritual direction the nation is taking and asked the large crowd that gathered to join them in prayer for a spiritual revival.

Phillip Neuharth, pastor of Havre's Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the main speaker, warned that "a large part of this nation is not putting their eyes on God."

He recalled that the prophet Isaiah faced similar circumstances in ancient Israel — the nation became financially well off, but it turned away from God.

"We live in a time that is quite similar to the time of Isaiah," he said.

He urged the crowd to fight back with the fervor that Isaiah did.

"Turn this nation around, heal this nation," he prayed.

But, he warned, "this nation will not turn its eyes to God until it happens at home."

The biggest problem, he said, is that many young people are abandoning the faith of their parents.

"Seventy percent of young people are leaving the faith their parents practiced," he said.

A survey conducted for the Church of England several years ago showed that the biggest single factor in determining whether a young person stayed in the faith was the church attendance of the father, he said.

Even when the mother was faithful and saw to it that the children attended church every week, children were likely to lapse in their faith if their father stayed home on Sundays, he added.

Daughters are likely to leave the church when on Sunday "daddy is out on a hunting trip or out fishing," he said. So, he asked the crowd to say a special prayer for fathers.

Clerics John Chapman, Brian Barrows, John Ulrich and Tim Zerger prayed for the city, state, nation and world in conclusion of the ceremony.

Zerger advised people not to despair.

Even under the suppression of the Iranian government, more than a million people have converted to Christianity in recent years.

"If you can do that there," he said, lifting his eyes up, "you can do it everywhere."