God to go: Estero church offering drive-through prayer

Would you like salvation with that?

From 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. tonight and every Wednesday through April, the Estero United Methodist Church is offering a novel service to Southwest Florida residents: Drive-through prayer.

The idea behind drive-through prayer is to offer spiritual support to folks not attached to our church community, said the Rev. John Halley, 30, a recent transplant from Los Angeles whos been in his post for 10 weeks. Were on a visible part of U.S. 41, and this is one way to put ourselves out there and to give folks the opportunity to come by and receive the blessing of prayer.

Church member and lay leader Pam Sebby said no one is quite sure how the idea originated, but that it may have come from the Internet.

From what I understand, other churches have done it, so it may have filtered through the pipeline, she said. We did it a few years ago, but there was so much construction on U.S. 41 that we didnt feel safe. We started it back up in the first part of February, and well do it through April every year.

Halley said the drive-through prayer is simply a service, not an enticement to join the church that boasts about 1,100 members during season.

Its not a church-growth strategy for us; its really just an outreach to share Gods love with our community, he said.

Both Sebby and Halley said the success of the service varies from week to week.

Our group has been out there five weeks now and in terms of people stopping (to pray), we might get five or six one week, three another week; a couple weeks we didnt get anyone, Halley said.

Sebby said the most people she can remember stopping to pray is about eight, but that number doesnt cover the actual number of prayers offered.

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God to go: Estero church offering drive-through prayer