Columbus community celebrates 'National Day of Prayer'

Thursday marked the 'National Day of Prayer' around the country and the city of Columbus was in full swing recognizing it. People around the community came out to First United Methodist Church to sing religious tunes and pray with friends and family.

The main organizers, Tom Zimmerman and Fred Ritter, said they were glad to be back this year.

“We're so glad to be back together again and have a choir again," Ritter said. "It's always had a community choir that was made up of people from all the denominations here in town."

Zimmerman told NCN that the theme of the night was "unity and prayer" and with a successful turnout during the event, he also said they will have produced lots of different forms of worship.

"We will have generated an enormous amount of prayers in unity," Zimmerman said. "That's basically kind of what our theme is tonight is unity and prayer. With that in mind, that is kind of the central aspect of doing our national day of prayer here." 

Back in 1952, President Harry Truman signed a bill proclaiming a National Day of Prayer must be declared by each subsequent president at an appropriate date of their choice.

Since 1988, the National Day of Prayer has been the first Thursday of May each year when President Reagan amended the law.