MOSES LAKE — Members and parishioners with the two dozen congregations that partner to support Serve Moses Lake gathered Saturday evening for the group’s annual worship and fund-raising event.

And also to listen, and sing along, to the heartfelt praise tunes of musician and worship leader Jared Anderson.

“I grew up in this,” said the 38-year-old Colorado Springs native. “It’s like singing your prayers, and I haven’t run out of things to sing about.”

While Anderson performed a few of the songs he’s known for — such as “Great I Am” and “Glorified” — with Serve’s in-house band, it was mostly just him and the piano for the evening.

‘It’s like singing the National Anthem,” Anderson said. “People gather around a present truth they can participate in as a way of opening up.”

“It doesn’t all depend on me,” he said. “You just start the song.”

Serve Moses Lake is an outreach organization that helps the poor, the homeless, and others in need with basic needs or with help in times of crisis.

“This is our annual gathering, it started as a concert and fundraised, and this is our seventh or eighth year,” said Tim Cloyd, the organization’s director.

But the gathering became so central to the organization that it evolved into a worship service.

“It’s a core piece of who we are,” Cloyd said. “The people of God coming together to worship, to express our thanksgiving.”

Right now, Serve could use a place in Moses Lake to be its winter warming center for area homeless. For a number of years, the group had been using the old Boys and Girls Club on Third Avenue near downtown, but that has been sold and Serve needs another location in order to start providing that warm place to stay beginning on Friday, Dec. 1.

“We have a desperate need for a location for 30 or so people every night, a place to serve a hot meal, where people can come out of the cold,” Cloyd said.

And for that, some of the gathered people of Moses Lake prayed — both in word, and in song.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at [email protected].