The Washington Post reports on a prayer breakfast that attracted business leaders, investors, lawyers, headhunters and other professionals. But this was not your parent’s prayer breakfast.
Driving nearly 800 local professionals to wake up early was the High Tech Prayer Breakfast, an annual event that brings together a wide range of local business players — from investors and lawyers to executives and headhunters. Now in its seventh year, the breakfast attracts regular churchgoers as well as those who prefer a synagogue, a mosque or no church at all.
“I think people are feeling a lot of reasons for prayer these days,” said Jody Toser, executive director of TelecomHub, an industry networking group.Indeed, the worsening economic situation was a central theme of the morning. Jonathan C. Crane, who had the task of rebuilding WorldCom after the 2002 accounting scandal, told the audience how his faith got him through the difficult time. Holding up the worn Bible he read daily for guidance, he likened that pressure to the current financial fallout.
“Once again, we’ve been betrayed by greed, which has won out over sound business practices,” said Crane, who was most recently president of Savvis, an IT provider. “And it’s shaken us to the core. We need to call on a higher authority than [U.S. Treasury Secretary] Henry Paulson.”
The nearly 100 organizers of the event included Gary Parsons, former chairman of XM Satellite Radio, and Hooks Johnston, venture capitalist with Valhalla Partners.
The event doesn’t have religious affiliations, said Robert Brandau, one of the organizers and the founder of McLean consulting firm Increasing Revenue. “It’s just a one-shot deal,” he said, with “no fundraising, no recruiting, no membership. We aren’t trying to promote anything.”
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