More than 100 people gather together Saturday morning at the Edmund Pettus Bridge Voting Rights Park to pray for Selma.

The annual event hosted by Outreach Team Fellowship Prayer Selma Ministry is meant to get people and churches together to worship outside of their normal Sunday routine.

“What we want to do is just bring the community together in prayer, praying for the city of Selma, praying that we all do well and that we stop the violence,” said Natalie Jones, who attended the event.

“I believe as we continue to pray and get the community together, I feel change will come.”

The crowd prayed together and sang together as they worshiped God.

“So often in Selma, we’ve kind of closed ourselves into our buildings, to worship God in our buildings, but we really should be worshiping all over the world and all over our community,” said Jerre Yeager, who attended the event. “When the churches start supporting each other, that’s how you’ll know that Jesus is in control of them.”

Yeager said the event wasn’t about how many people came out, it was about showing the people how important it is for everyone to come together and pray for their community.

“It’s not really the number of people, it’s the different churches and different races, that’s what’s exciting,” Yeager said. “It’s just letting the people know that we don’t have to be in a church building or it doesn’t have to be organized religion, it could just be letting your heart lead you. If we let Jesus have control over our hearts, he’ll lead us to him.”

Jones said she was happy with the turn out and excited to see so many people come together for the same reason.

“The turn out is great. It’s all about outreach and it’s all about making sure that we get the word out and people just have the energy for positivity,” Jones said.

“My hope is that we develop the city a little bit more better because this is a historic city and we see a lot of visitors that come here, and we just want to build it up and make sure it’s the platform that people want to come and see.”