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Almost 200 people were baptized during a Sunday night worship service and a planned outdoor event hosted by Manna Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
As CBN News has reported, Manna Church is a multi-campus congregation whose expressed mission is to plant a church near every U.S. military base around the globe.
The church hosted a “Worship & Baptism in the Park” event at Festival Park in Fayetteville and saw 193 people make a public declaration to put their faith in God, as many more gathered to praise the name of Jesus.
“The MOST incredible night at Festival Park. Around 200 people made the decision to go public with their faith through water baptism! What a move of God!” the church said in a Facebook reel.
“I felt really compelled to practice my faith – one of the basic fundamentals of our faith, the sacrament of water baptisms – right out in front of everybody,” Manna Church Pastor Chris Fletcher shared in a video message ahead of the event.
The church pastored by Fletcher is located near Fort Bragg, one of the Army’s largest installations.
In total, there are 33 Manna Church sites near U.S. military bases, as shown in a map on a wall in the church. The greatest concentration of campuses is in North Carolina and Virginia, but multiple locations are growing in other parts of the country, from Florida to Colorado, Missouri to Hawaii, and even overseas.
The vision to equip “His people to change their world” and plant “churches with the same world-changing vision” began with Fletcher’s father, Pastor Emeritus Michael Fletcher.
Chris Fletcher told CBN News last year that God gave his father a vision of how to reach the military almost a decade ago, after the church lost more than 1,100 people to military transfers in just one year.
“And so he kind of sat back in his chair and said, ‘This is crazy. Like how are we going to build a church this way? We’re sending people that God’s beginning a work in, to nobody,'” Fletcher explained, recalling what happened with his dad.
His father decided to reach those on the military bases in December 2014. “And from that point forward, we’ve been seeking to plant an expression of Manna Church near every U.S. military installation in the world,” Fletcher said.
The goal is to plant churches near 273 military locations, which Fletcher calls the “Military Highway.”
“The thing I love about 273 is it’s not a vision I can accomplish,” he shared. “It’s not wisdom that is going to be somehow inherent in me that’s going to come bubbling to the surface.”
“It requires God to move, and that sort of drive gets me up in the morning,” the pastor continued. “I think more believers should have God-sized visions that are terrifying when you look at them.”
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Sunday’s outdoor worship service involved a simple vision of reaching the community, and Fletcher says the evening was “transformative.”
“About 200 people made the decision to be baptized, and 20 people came to know Jesus right then and there. The evening was filled with such a deep joy,” he wrote on Instagram.
“Witnessing Jesus’s transformative power in people’s lives is profoundly moving, and we’re so honored that we get to be a part of something SO huge and eternal. The heavens are rejoicing with us,” Fletcher continued.
The father of four added that his favorite part of the night was baptizing three of his sons’ close friends.
He wrote, “We love these boys more than they will ever know, and we are SO PROUD of them. Our hearts are brimming with gratitude. Thank you, Jesus!!”
Find a Manna Church:
Click Here to Explore Manna Church Sites Across the U.S.
Manna Church in Fayetteville, NC
Manna Church Newport News, VA
Manna Church Colorado Springs, CO
Manna Church Fort Leonard-Wood, MO
Manna Church West Florida
Manna Church Hawaii
