story3064.xml
Title
story3064.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-11
911DA Story: Story
On September 11, 2001 we were in the second day of a worship conference called "Journey Into His Presence" being held at the First Baptist Church, Euless, TX - a suburb between Dallas and Fort Worth. This was a conference for pastors and ministers of music to improve their worship services and their working relationships.
I did not have any early responsibilities at the church that morning, so I had not left my house yet when my sister, who lives in Tulsa, OK, called to ask if I was watching the news.
As soon as I saw what was happening I rushed to the church where they had just announced to the conference what was happening. It was soon obvious that many of our registrants were not going to be able to get home that night so I called a local motel and reserved a block of rooms in the name of the church.
At the lunch break we put CNN on the large screens at the front of the church and we realized we needed to close the conference early.
By that time, the registrants were asking what they should do at their churches on the coming Sunday so we turned the conference into one of helping these ministers plan for their services that night, Wednesday night and on Sunday.
We closed with a time of prayer for those injured and the families who had lost loved ones.
We then turned to the task of informing our own church members of a special prayer service for that evening. Through a phone tree and announcements on media and word of mouth, we had almost 3,000 people in our service that evening of 9/11 with over 200 in the choir.
The next morning I took my daughter to high school for band practice at 6:45 AM. When we arrived at the school I saw a circle of at least 25 or 30 high school students (not an adult in sight) heads bowed in prayer for our nation.
Later that day (9/12) I drove past a business in downtown Grapevine and as I got closer the traffic came to a halt. Just then a man ran up to the car with an armload of T-shirts printed with GOD BLESS AMERICA. As he approached each car he threw a T-shirt in every open window
saying "Wear it with pride. God bless America!"
Somehow I knew as bad as thing were, we were going to be OK.
=Bill Rayborn=
Grapevine, Texas
I did not have any early responsibilities at the church that morning, so I had not left my house yet when my sister, who lives in Tulsa, OK, called to ask if I was watching the news.
As soon as I saw what was happening I rushed to the church where they had just announced to the conference what was happening. It was soon obvious that many of our registrants were not going to be able to get home that night so I called a local motel and reserved a block of rooms in the name of the church.
At the lunch break we put CNN on the large screens at the front of the church and we realized we needed to close the conference early.
By that time, the registrants were asking what they should do at their churches on the coming Sunday so we turned the conference into one of helping these ministers plan for their services that night, Wednesday night and on Sunday.
We closed with a time of prayer for those injured and the families who had lost loved ones.
We then turned to the task of informing our own church members of a special prayer service for that evening. Through a phone tree and announcements on media and word of mouth, we had almost 3,000 people in our service that evening of 9/11 with over 200 in the choir.
The next morning I took my daughter to high school for band practice at 6:45 AM. When we arrived at the school I saw a circle of at least 25 or 30 high school students (not an adult in sight) heads bowed in prayer for our nation.
Later that day (9/12) I drove past a business in downtown Grapevine and as I got closer the traffic came to a halt. Just then a man ran up to the car with an armload of T-shirts printed with GOD BLESS AMERICA. As he approached each car he threw a T-shirt in every open window
saying "Wear it with pride. God bless America!"
Somehow I knew as bad as thing were, we were going to be OK.
=Bill Rayborn=
Grapevine, Texas
Collection
Citation
“story3064.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 4, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/8768.