- March 3rd, 2013, 4:41 pm
#421847
Las Vegas Weekly wrote:Can a group of Liberty University evangelists save Las Vegas?Click Here for Full Story
In 2012, Pastor Dave Earley moved to the Valley to start a church. Now he’s trying to turn Sin City into Grace City
Rick Lax - Thu, Feb 21, 2013 (midnight)
Pastor Dave Earley spent a year asking God where he should start a church. Then, on Day 364, God woke him up in the middle of the night and said, “Google Las Vegas.”
Photo: Leila Navidi
Pastor Dave Earley prays the way you and I scroll through Facebook news feeds, the way we watch TV, the way we breathe. All day, nonstop. He spent a year asking God where he should start a church. He visited a few cities, but none seemed right. Then, on Day 364, God woke him up in the middle of the night and said, “Google Las Vegas.” So he did. He saw a lost city, a broken city, a city that needed to be saved.
Pastor Dave, as his congregants call him, used to teach Church Planning at Liberty University, the Lynchburg, Virginia, school founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because he’s the guy who outed Tinky Winky the Teletubby and blamed 9/11 on gay people, “abortionists,” pagans and the ACLU. Pastor Dave, by comparison, isn’t overtly political. “Liberty is a big school,” he says. “We’re all trying to follow the Bible the best we know how.”
Last year Pastor Dave recruited 18 Liberty University alums and moved to Las Vegas. The group prayed for 40 days, seven hours a day. They cut costs by living together and raised financial support beforehand, so they could pray full-time. They prayed for the city and for the sinners who live in it. They prayed that they could turn Sin City into Grace City.