Sports Video of the Day

NASCAR is the only major professional sport that starts every event with a prayer, and I believe it's in their TV contract that the prayer, along with other pre-race events, must be carried by the live TV broadcast.

This past weekend the Nationwide Series (sort of the Triple A league for NASCAR) was racing in Nashville and the opening prayer made national news. I love a pastor with a sense of humor (and I think God does too):

The pastor defended his prayer to critics:

“I always said if I get a chance after God told me to preach … to pray at one of the events of the track, I don’t want to do the cookie-cutter prayer, not that we don’t need to thank God for our military men and women, absolutely, we wouldn’t be here without them, not that we don’t desire safety for all of the of the officials, workers and drivers, we certainly don’t want anything to happen to anybody out there. We need a safe race. But it’s the same prayer week in and week out and I’m not sure anybody is even listening to it anymore.

“So I said, I want to get somebody’s attention, so that’s been our desire every time we’ve been up there, to try to make an impact on the fans and give them something they’ll remember and maybe they’ll go home on a Friday night or a Saturday night and say, ‘Maybe I ought to get up and go to church in the morning’.’’