ASHEBORO, N.C. (BP) – As Reagan P. Wilbanks and his grandfather Douglas Small help mobilize 1 million Christians praying for the salvation of a million souls by Pentecost Sunday, Wilbanks shares his earliest recollections of his grandfather’s prayers.
From the age of 5 or so, Wilbanks and his first cousins would hear their grandfather descending the stairs around 3 a.m. to his prayer room attached to the garage at his North Carolina home. Other times, Small would lead Wilbanks – born to the oldest of Small’s five children – and other descendants in popcorn prayers.
“We’d all be in the room and we’d do what grandpa calls popcorn prayers, where somebody prays, and now another pops up and pops up and pops up, quick little prayers,” Wilbanks, now himself a husband and father of three, told Baptist Press. “And that was a kind of a hallmark, you might say, of the family gatherings.”…