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The world's religions each have magnificent prayers, said the Rev. Dick Stetler of Bowie's St. Matthew's United Methodist Church. But if congregations never share their prayers and customs, then only those of each individual faith will enjoy the message, he added.

That's one reason why Stetler and other area religious leaders are coming together Wednesday for the 15th annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Eve service.

Organized by The Bowie Interfaith Clergy Association, the service will bring together practitioners from a host of religions to celebrate the holiday. Members of area congregations and religious groups such as St. Matthew's, Temple Solel, the Islamic Society of Southern Prince George's County and Bowie's Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation will participate.

The service is open to the public, and donations collected there will go to the Bowie Interfaith Pantry and Emergency Aid Fund.

"It's a great way of showing [our congregation] in real time and in action that there is this sharing and commonality that makes us all alike," Rabbi Steve Weisman of Bowie's Temple Solel said of the service.

"One of the things that our country is known for is [that] we are a melting pot, but we maintain our secular boundaries," Stetler said.

In addition to the sharing of religious traditions and prayers, two foreign exchange students, one Christian and one Muslim, will speak at the service about their impressions and experiences of coming to the United States. The clergy association wanted to highlight the origins of Thanksgiving with the theme "Coming to America: The Struggles and the Joys," Weisman said.

Several clergy members said the annual service provides participants a chance to learn about other faiths through personal interaction while allowing them to develop a better understanding of their own religion.

"It's having a better sense of who we are and having a better connection with others who we might otherwise not have interaction with," Weisman said.

But the blending of practices into one cohesive service can be difficult, Stetler said.

"We want to push the envelope as far as we can without offending anyone," he said. "The spirit of it is not to lift one faith up above another, which Christianity is kind of [historically] known for."

The interfaith services perhaps wouldn't be such a success, regularly drawing about 150 people from as many as 10 congregations, if not for the close friendships that have developed between the religious leaders, Weisman said.

"The core group is a bunch of people that know each other and like each other and are comfortable in each other's skin," he said.

The close relationships of clergy members have lead to other cross-religious dialogue, members said. The association also works to create a service for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and has hosted several interfaith dialogues and panel discussions to continue the educational dialogue.

The service will include calls to prayer from several religions, prayer readings and songs performed by a choir of mixed congregants. The event gives religious leaders the opportunity to highlight important customs, such as Judaism's sounding of the shofar, which usually is made from a ram's horn, and to bond with the larger religious community.

"We're the Universal Unitarians — we aren't the Jews, we aren't the Christians, we aren't the Muslims," said the Rev. Cynthia Snavely of the Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation. "This gives us a way to get together with the wider community."

The Interfaith Thanksgiving Eve service will be held at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Temple Solel, which is located at 2901 Mitchellville Road in Bowie.

E-mail Andrea Noble at anoble@gazette.net.