Feedback: Greetings and Blessings from historic Carrickfergus, as we continued to break new ground and see growth on last year’s event! This year we had the optional offer from our council of holding GDOP in our towns Civic Centre or again on the Castle Green beneath the Castle walls (weather permitting!). What a glorious day that drew a crowd of more than 200, plus the ‘passing trade’ which included a small Orange parade playing ‘What a friend we have in Jesus…take it to the Lord in prayer’!!
Our event was again hosted by Prayer For Carrick with a wider steering group involved in the program. Ian McMaster did a superb job in blending together our worship team from 5 different churches and leading us effectively in praise and adoration and with a great sense of unity of heart and purpose. With more clergy both catholic and protestant leading us in our Prayers of Repentance and Intercession for our community, country and the church, and more clergy in attendance; there was a great sense of unity of heart and a very real sense of Gods presence and expectation amongst us as we gathered together from across the main churches both within and from out of town.
We were blessed to have group of Brazilian with us this year as they glorified God and challenged our hearts through their professional dance and drama pieces and prayed for the nations of the world.
Again this year we lit a large candle remembering in unity the other venues across our land. With flags waving and distributed Palm Crosses held high, we invited Jesus our Lord and King into our Town and community crying out - ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord’ and together cried ‘We welcome you Jesus’.
This year with Hope08 encouraging the Carrick churches to engage in blessing their community and with our town councils support in seeing birthed a Church Forum for our borough, we are hoping that next years GDOP event will be adopted by the Church Forum and gain even wider support from more of the churches and with the Brazilian team on board again, make it the best ever GDOP.
