Leadership Team

Douglas Small

Executive Director

It is an extraordinary privilege to be a part of Prayer At the Heart movement – an opportunity for believers and leaders to connect in simple, earnest, passionate prayer for the only hope our nation has – that God will intervene, in behalf of His own purposes, and send a revival to the church and a spiritual awakening to the culture.

The good news is that God has done this for us in the past – we have seen great spiritual awakenings that changed the direction of the nation and altered its very ethos. Now we need another divine intervention, one that awakens spiritual and moral sensibilities and confronts the nation with the reality of a living, sovereign and holy God. Such spiritual epiphanies don’t happen in a vacuum. They are associated with prayer, with brokenness, with deep repentance, with some kneeling form who thereby declares God to be the only solution. That’s why I want to be a part of this virtual prayer effort.

Garry Bryant

Chairman

Garry Bryant serves as Executive Director of Evangelism USA for the IPHC.  He has served at the local, state, and national level of ministry responsibilities.  His ministry goal is to raise up the body of Christ in effective ministry to carry out the Great Commission.

Garry carries a passion to see the Church become a House of Prayer for all Nations and to be a part of a fresh awakening across the United States.  He and his wife LaDawn reside in Bethany, Oklahoma.

Joe Soltis

Executive Board Member

Joe felt called to bring Prayer at the Heart into existence at the same time that several others from different Christian denominations and geographies were inspired to bring the same idea into reality, including Doug Small and several others. Through their efforts to launch the Prayer at the Heart idea into reality, they met each other, and Prayer at the Heart is what it is today.

Joe Soltis is a successful serial entrepreneur, CEO of one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, and investor in several businesses.

He and his wife, Becky, have 6 wonderful children. Becky and Joe also lost a son, Ben, late into a pregnancy. Out of that loss, Joe founded several purpose-driven businesses with the central mission of helping others, helping teammates, helping customers and patients, as well as giving back to help those in need. Joe is a firm believer in using business as a tool to help and serve others and give back. Joe has been quoted on Forbes, featured in Entrepreneur, LA Weekly, Influencive, and featured in dozens of business publications on purpose-driven business. He believes that the winners of business in the future will be those that run purpose-driven businesses that do good and do well.

Joe is a strong believer in loving everyone, helping everyone, and offering hope and love to everyone, especially those that need it most. He is a Catholic who believes in Christian unity across all denominations and walks of life. “What people need most is hope. They need to know that they are loved, have value and have a purpose, and their life can be filled with love, meaning, and hope. People need to know that they are beautiful in the eyes of God, and they need to know the fact that they have the same limitless value in the eyes of God as everyone else – no matter what.” Joe also believes in a great future: “I have no doubt that we as a people and as Americans have great challenges ahead of us, perhaps greater than we have ever faced as a nation and as a people, yet I believe in people and I believe in the limitless love and unfathomable mercy of Jesus. I believe to the point of knowing that America’s best days do indeed lie ahead of us, and those days will be found when we unite under the love of an ever-loving God and a love of our neighbor as we ought to love our own sister and brother.”

John Miranda

Executive Board Member

John Miranda, Chief Operating Officer of Alphaport, Incorporated, co-founded the company with his wife, Rosella, in 1999. Alphaport originated as a service company offering science and technology educational programs to students K through 12. Today, Alphaport is an Aerospace engineering technology company providing product and services that range from Propulsion Systems for Commercial Space Vehicles to Safety Contracts across the country.

John earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a master’s in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Dayton and subsequently held manufacturing lead positions at General Electric (GE) Aircraft Engines and GE Nuclear.

John is extremely passionate to be involved with an Industry/Education Movement co-laboring with leaders from the seven mountains of key societal impact to transform Education.

Gerard Long

International Advisor

Former Executive Director of Alpha* USA, minister, evangelist, author, motivational speaker, and former banking executive. Long has over thirty years’ experience of bringing resources together to achieve a stated goal and, from his own encounters with God and deep brokenness, he has a passion for another awakening.

In 1980, Long had a powerful encounter with God that birthed his desperation for an awakening. After much prayer, he surrendered a promising athletic career and his business, hearing the call to move to London. There, he served as a co-pastor of a newly planted church and worked as a banker with HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world.

In 2001, on the strength of a powerful word from God and after much prayer, Long and his beloved wife Jeannie, moved their family to New York. They were humbled by God’s rich blessing in every part of their lives.

However, over an eight year period from 2005, Long endured catastrophic suffering in the suicide of their beloved youngest son Alex, his marriage nearly failing and the tragic death of their beautiful daughter Rebecca. In the depth of brokenness, his faith was challenged to the utmost and, journeying on, he now testifies to God’s faithfulness and his amazing love and grace.
Click to see 8min video of their story

In 2015, through their prayers and tears, Gerard and Jeannie birthed Awakening to God Ministries. Founded on Isaiah 61:1-4, their mission is to comfort the broken-hearted and to share the love and hope of the gospel with those who are suffering in the US and around the world.

Gerard Long now partners with Prayer at the Heart in our desperate cry to God for another awakening.

*Alpha is an introduction to Christianity supported by multi-denominational and non-denominational churches in over 169 countries.

Coordinators

There are hundreds of state, county, city and local coordinators helping to implement the PATH strategy.

Millions Praying For Millions

The plan is simple: One Million Christians praying for One Million friends to know Christ.
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“Whenever God determines to do a great work, He first sets His people to pray” (C. Spurgeon). This reliable principle begs the question: “How does God mobilize his people to heartfelt prayer?” Most importantly, how does God move Christian leaders who shepherd His church to unite in fervent, persistent, biblically focused prayer for the fulfillment of His purposes? By two things mainly: 1) distress over the degradation of the church and the surrounding culture and 2) hope that God will pour out His Spirit on his church and fill it with His fulness until it overflows with transformative impact on society. Many believers are distressed at the current state of things. At the same time, there is much reason to hope for God’s divine intervention in response to passionate, biblically guided prayer.

Believers across America now mourn the debility of the church; its vitality is faltering, its impact fading, its mission neglected, and its devotion to God being undercut by love for this world. Right now we are enduring the largest and fastest religious shift in American history. Its scope is greater than every previous spiritual awakening in our history combined, only in the opposite direction. Christians are being confronted by “spiritual forces of evil” (Eph. 6:12) operating from the heavenly realms that boldly infiltrate every aspect of society, even the church. These dark powers aim to 1) frustrate God’s purpose to bless all peoples on earth through Christ with countless benefits, including righteousness, peace, joy, and justice, and 2)
inflict endless varieties of misery on everyone. When spiritual decline and cultural decay prevail, God’s people rise up to seek the Lord in prayer as the fountain of every blessing, asking him to fill the earth with his glory, pour out His Holy Spirit, inspire his church, and deliver people and cultures from innumerable troubles. Now is the time to pray with desperation for spiritual and cultural renewal, for divine intervention, for the fulfillment of God’s purposes for his church and his creation in Northeast Ohio.

Christian leaders, especially pastors, have a heightened responsibility to press into God with prayer for the church. Biblical precedent shows that gathering church leaders together to engage in heartfelt prayer for the welfare of their community often initiates widespread spiritual and social renewal both in church and society (2 Chron. 7:13-14; 15:8-10; 34:29-32). New Testament accounts show that when Christian leaders unite in prayer, often in response to social and/or spiritual crises, spiritual awakening and gospel advance follow (Acts 1:13-14; 2:1-4; 4:23-31; 13:1-3).

Jesus himself instills expectation of an outpouring of God’s Spirit in response to prayer with this promise: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Our Father in heaven is especially ready to pour out upon us the blessing we most need and long for, the very Spirit of God who imparts divine life, wisdom, and virtue.

With all this in mind, now is the time for Christian leaders across Northeast Ohio to come together to seek the Lord with biblically grounded, Christ-directed, wholehearted prayer for a God-given spiritual awakening. The trumpet of God is blaring! He is calling us to pray! Join Christian leaders from across our region to humble ourselves, seek the Lord’s face, and be willing to respond through His intervening grace to any changes He calls us to make! (Psalm 110:3)

The Gathering is an extension of the nationwide PATH (Prayer at the Heart) initiative piloted recently in Northeast Ohio. Put The Gathering on your calendar: Sunday, September 24, 6 pm, Calvary Chapel of Cleveland, 709 Brook Park Road, Brooklyn Heights, OH.