On the second Thursday of every month, a group of Midlanders meets on the courthouse lawn at 7 a.m. to pray for the city. Here is what Pray2Gather is, how the monthly gathering works, and what to know about the Permian Basin Prayer Breakfast it grew out of.
Midland has a lot of churches and, for most of its history, a lot of separate prayer. Pray2Gather is an attempt to change the second part. It describes itself as “a standing invitation to pray for this city together, as one room rather than as scattered congregations,” and that is a fair description of what happens on the south lawn of the Midland County Courthouse once a month.
The monthly gathering
Pray2Gather meets on the second Thursday of each month from 7 to 8 a.m. on the south lawn of the courthouse at 500 North Loraine Street. It is free, there is coffee, there is music, and there is no registration, membership or offering. You show up, you pray, you go to work.
The hour is organized around five themes, the same five every month, each represented by a banner on the lawn: our home (schools and students, churches and pastors, families), our work (foundations, businesses, organizations), our city (EMTs and first responders, law enforcement and fire, elected officials), our state (government employees, servicemen and veterans, the economy), and our future (the country, the next generation, revival and awakening). You can move from banner to banner and spend a few minutes at each, or plant yourself at the one that is on your heart that morning. Thirteen facilitators, drawn from law enforcement, business, nonprofits, schools, families, churches and government, help lead.
It is interdenominational by design. Nobody checks which church you go to, or whether you go to one.
Prayer requests
If you cannot make a Thursday morning, or you just have something you want prayed over, the site takes prayer requests. The promise is that someone will pray over it by name, and they ask you to come back and tell them when a prayer is answered. That second part is a nice touch; most request forms are a one-way door.
The Permian Basin Prayer Breakfast
The monthly gathering is the newer idea. The older one is the Permian Basin Prayer Breakfast, which the Honorable Judge Robert A. Junell founded in 2009. It is held the first Thursday of February to coincide with the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., and it is organized by an interdenominational committee of faith leaders from across the Basin. The next one is February 4, 2027, at the Bush Convention Center, 105 North Main Street downtown. It is a ticketed event with tables available for businesses and organizations; details go up on the Pray2Gather site as the date gets closer, and we will update this guide when they do.
Pray2Gather itself came out of that breakfast. The people who ran it wanted a way to keep the room together for the other eleven months of the year, and the courthouse lawn was the answer.
Who runs it
The organizers are Darrell Dunton, president; Adair Mayer, vice president; Ashleigh Sparks, secretary; Ken Dickeson, treasurer; Pastor Jake Sanchez Jr., worship coordinator; Soraye Palmer, marketing and media; and Debbie Baxter, prayer breakfast coordinator. Businesses and organizations that want to support the work can find the partners page on the site, and there is a get involved page for everyone else.
If you go
Park downtown, bring a coffee if you want one that is not free, and plan to be done by eight. Second Thursday, 7 a.m., south lawn. We list each month’s gathering on our events calendar so it is easy to find.
Disclosure: Forty Wolves, the studio run by Best of Midland founder Ryan Shewchuk, built Pray2Gather’s website. Pray2Gather did not pay for or review this article.
