A locked box unlocks hope.
It's at the end of a sidewalk near the road in front of Washington Pike United Methodist Church.
The prayer box is just a way of allowing the community to have access to the church from the outside," Pat Polis said.
He is known as Pastor Pat. He said a member of the congregation came up with the idea a few years ago. It's a prayer request box.
"They can write anything. A prayer request is a prayer request. It goes from anywhere from pray for my children, pray for my husband, pray for a job I'm unemployed, we don't have any food pray for us, my son's on drugs pray for him, I have cancer," he said.
Those prayers don't stay outside in the box. Once a week Pastor Pat brings them into the church and reads them during the Sunday service.
The people in the pews on Sundays also write down prayers. After Pastor Pat reads all of them, he takes them to a special clear container at the front of the church as a reminder.
"Prayer is the way we communicate with God. We don't have to be in the building to do that. That's why we had the idea to put the prayer box outside. A lot of people for some reason won't come into the church but they still want to connect with God and they know the importance of prayer," he said. "Prayer is critical to our life here."