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Portrait: Doug Crader leads New Year's Eve Prayer Service in Capitol
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By Bob Watson
News Tribune
Doug Crader's New Year's Eve will be hectic, as he leads a special kind of party inside the Capitol Rotunda.
Prayer is the focus, as Crader again is leading the 28th Annual New Year's Eve Prayer Service at the Capitol, just as he's been involved every year from the beginning.
“I believe in the power of prayer and, to sit there in the Capitol Rotunda and you look around at the different scriptures inscribed right there on the wall - knowing that those scriptures meant something to the original founders of our nation and our state - to me it's a powerful experience,” he said last week.
Several leaders of the former Uncompromised Word Center church “were sitting there one day, in the very late 1970s, and almost joking about having a prayer service in the Capitol Rotunda,” he recalled. “It just seemed to be such a really God-inspired idea and, after we thought about it, we started pursuing it.”
The New Year's prayer service - and his involvement in helping organize early May's National Day of Prayer events locally - are part of Crader's mission to spread God's Word.
“The Bible says we should first of all ‘pray for all men, for kings and those who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life,'” Crader said.
“And, since I truly believe that the Word is truth, I believe that it must make an effect - I (just) can't tell you how.”
Although many of the earlier New Year's Eve services ended at midnight, the 2007 version runs from 6:30-9 p.m. Monday.
People from many churches around the state have joined the service in the past, he said.
Crader helped found the non-denominational Jefferson City Christian Center Church 21 years ago.
“We're a very missions-oriented, very outreach-oriented, very much the Bible is the focus of what we teach (church),” he said.
“We've never had more than 80 members at a time - but we've had 47 different people go to 46 different countries.”
Crader has wanted to be a minister most of his life.
“I've always had a very strong relationship with God,” he explained. “And, even, as far back as I remember, when people would ask me, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?' I would talk about being a missionary or a minister.”
Still, after graduating from Jefferson City High School in 1977, Crader spent two years studying engineering at the University of Missouri.
“My first shot at a major was going to be nuclear engineering,” he recalled. “And I was just so miserable, as time went on.
“And, finally, I started seeing that ... engineering wasn't my call.”
Crader's church occupies the former Rip's Mor-E-O Lodge property, a long-time party place overlooking the Moreau River, east of Jefferson City.
“People love the location,” he said. “And one of the first things you hear people say is, ‘Just driving down the driveway - it's just such a peaceful place out here.'
“It fits us.”
Still, the Mor-E-O Lodge - home to many Cole County Sheriff's Bar-B-Qs and political party events, among other things - had a reputation that might not agree with some folks' ideas of “church.”
“When we first moved out here, we literally had a couple of families that said they could not continue to come to church here, because they couldn't deal with things that they used to do when they were in this place,” Crader recalled.
“But, if you want to use it as an analogy, that's exactly what Jesus did ... when you're born again, God says it changes your heart.”
And that's what Crader wants people to remember about his activities in the community's prayer life.
“I really believe it doesn't matter how big or how important you are, God's got big plans for you, and you can do big things,” he said.
Prayer is the focus, as Crader again is leading the 28th Annual New Year's Eve Prayer Service at the Capitol, just as he's been involved every year from the beginning.
“I believe in the power of prayer and, to sit there in the Capitol Rotunda and you look around at the different scriptures inscribed right there on the wall - knowing that those scriptures meant something to the original founders of our nation and our state - to me it's a powerful experience,” he said last week.
Several leaders of the former Uncompromised Word Center church “were sitting there one day, in the very late 1970s, and almost joking about having a prayer service in the Capitol Rotunda,” he recalled. “It just seemed to be such a really God-inspired idea and, after we thought about it, we started pursuing it.”
The New Year's prayer service - and his involvement in helping organize early May's National Day of Prayer events locally - are part of Crader's mission to spread God's Word.
“The Bible says we should first of all ‘pray for all men, for kings and those who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life,'” Crader said.
“And, since I truly believe that the Word is truth, I believe that it must make an effect - I (just) can't tell you how.”
Although many of the earlier New Year's Eve services ended at midnight, the 2007 version runs from 6:30-9 p.m. Monday.
People from many churches around the state have joined the service in the past, he said.
Crader helped found the non-denominational Jefferson City Christian Center Church 21 years ago.
“We're a very missions-oriented, very outreach-oriented, very much the Bible is the focus of what we teach (church),” he said.
“We've never had more than 80 members at a time - but we've had 47 different people go to 46 different countries.”
Crader has wanted to be a minister most of his life.
“I've always had a very strong relationship with God,” he explained. “And, even, as far back as I remember, when people would ask me, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?' I would talk about being a missionary or a minister.”
Still, after graduating from Jefferson City High School in 1977, Crader spent two years studying engineering at the University of Missouri.
“My first shot at a major was going to be nuclear engineering,” he recalled. “And I was just so miserable, as time went on.
“And, finally, I started seeing that ... engineering wasn't my call.”
Crader's church occupies the former Rip's Mor-E-O Lodge property, a long-time party place overlooking the Moreau River, east of Jefferson City.
“People love the location,” he said. “And one of the first things you hear people say is, ‘Just driving down the driveway - it's just such a peaceful place out here.'
“It fits us.”
Still, the Mor-E-O Lodge - home to many Cole County Sheriff's Bar-B-Qs and political party events, among other things - had a reputation that might not agree with some folks' ideas of “church.”
“When we first moved out here, we literally had a couple of families that said they could not continue to come to church here, because they couldn't deal with things that they used to do when they were in this place,” Crader recalled.
“But, if you want to use it as an analogy, that's exactly what Jesus did ... when you're born again, God says it changes your heart.”
And that's what Crader wants people to remember about his activities in the community's prayer life.
“I really believe it doesn't matter how big or how important you are, God's got big plans for you, and you can do big things,” he said.
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