When you walk into the Chase Center on the Wilmington Riverfront for breakfast with about 600 people – from business leaders to elected officials to sports figures – and you notice that your program includes scripture readings by two significant political figures – then you know you can only be at one event, the Annual Delaware Leadership Prayer Breakfast sponsored by the Delaware Leadership Foundation.
The breakfast, in its 26th year, featured an invocation from Cathy Reese, an attorney with Fish & Richardson. Cathy’s stories about two times her life was in peril, and the faith that brought her through both ordeals, set the tone for the morning, faith and action go hand in hand.
After readings from Proverbs and I Kings by Attorney General Beau Biden and readings from I Peter and Galatians by House Minority Leader Greg Lavelle, the crowd heard from the Sunday Breakfast Mission Men’s Choir.
Randy Chambers, State Director for the Delaware Fellowship of Christian Athletes, led everyone in a prayer for Wesley College Coach Knapp’s 16 year-old son, Ben, who is in a coma in Pittsburgh after suffering severe cardiac arrest.
The keynote speaker this year is no stranger to Delaware. Rich Gannon is known to many as an NFL MVP, Super Bowl Quarterback, UD Hall of Famer, and commentator for CBS. He’s also known as a faithful Christian who insists on finding the nearest church to attend Mass whenever he’s travelling during football season.
Gannon spoke about realizing that while his parents had given him much in his faith as a child and young person, he needed to make a decision for himself as an adult about where he was going to go with his faith.
Gannon’s challenge to those attending the breakfast was to become “Difference-Makers” – whether a person works in a business, plays a sport, teaches, or serves the public – all have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives around them.
If even a small percentage of the people attending the breakfast take that challenge, we could be looking at a very different state by the time next year’s Leadership Prayer Breakfast is held.
