They made a good start last summer.

This year, the organizing pastors of the Rocky Mount community worship services want to go further. They want to make a lasting impression on the city, said the Rev. Richard Gurganus, pastor of Church on the Rise.

Telegram file photo (ENLARGE)

Worshippers bow their heads in prayer following a 2007 citywide unity sermon by the Rev. Bob Bergland at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Considering the weekly services designed to bring different races and denominations together have had attendances sometimes hovering around 1,000 people, the pastors feel they are on the right track, Gurganus said.

"I think it has been phenomenal, just like it was last year. We have had some new churches get involved," Gurganus said. "I didn't think it could be better than last year but I really think it has been even better."

This is the second year the churches have banded together in July to hold a series of Sunday night services to promote unity in the city, said the Rev. Alice Johnson-Curl, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church. The fourth and final service will be at 6 p.m. Sunday at First Baptist Church in downtown Rocky Mount.

"I think that we made history. It wasn't just a one-time thing that we did last summer. We were gathering again this summer with at least equal enthusiasm, if not more," she said.

The theme of the meetings, "Focus Forward," reflects the group's determination to use the meetings to change the city, Johnson-Curl said.

The pastors are not just relying on a few summer meetings to bring about the change needed in Rocky Mount though, said Don Williams, president of the Trinity Lutheran Church council. Many of the churches involved have decided to extend the schedule to stretch past July.

The group will hold services on the fifth Sunday of months that have one, Williams said. The first service will be at 6 p.m. Aug. 31 at First United Methodist Church. The pastors also plan to pair those fifth Sunday meetings with a combined community service project the day before.

Continuing the services throughout the year will help build on the relationships that are already being established, Williams said.

"We are starting to recognize each other from the different denominations and the different churches. Now instead of just nodding at each other, we are talking to each other, and I think that is of course the purpose of the unity approach," Williams said.

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The services follow the format established last year to give people of different churches insight into how other denominations worship, Gurganus said. They have worship and communion in the tradition of the host church, a guest pastor who preaches in his own style and a time of fellowship at the end.

The 13 Rocky Mount churches participating are either predominantly black or white and are from different faiths, including Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Assemblies of God and nondenominational, Gurganus said. The organizers intentionally asks black preachers to speak in the predominantly white churches and vice versa.

Many of the people attending have never experienced a type of church different than the kind they grew up in, said the Rev. R.T. McCarter, senior pastor at Morning Star Church of Christ Disciples of Christ, which held the second meeting.

"It was a wonderful experience for our people. None of our people in our church have ever worshiped with that many people from other races, and likewise I think a lot of the people who came had never worshipped with a group of different people before," McCarter said.

It was certainly a new experience for the Rev. Scott White, rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, when he was the guest preacher Sunday at Word Tabernacle Church.

"I am not sure how often in the state of North Carolina you will find a white Episcopal priest preaching to a packed house at an African-American ... church," White said.

Experiencing the style of worship at the host church was different but still wonderful, White said. The goal of the services is not to make everyone the same as each other in worship, theology or style.

Instead organizers want to help dispel some of the myths and stereotypes people have about other denominations and make them realize that faith can be celebrated in many ways, each of them valid, White said.

"These are very different Christian traditions, and if we focus on God, and if we focus on prayer and if we focus on service, we see that in spite of the fact that we have differences, we have a lot more in common," White said.

In the end, that is what it comes down to – making people who interact daily but never really notice each other look up and see a fellow Christian, said the Rev. Richard Joyner, chaplain at Nash General Hospital.

"When you see people in the grocery stores and on the streets and now you have worshipped with them, there is a conversation. There is a relationship," Joyner said. "I have seen the difference in that when we come to worship."