Can you join us in praying for students?

This isn’t just a response to COVID, this a response to a generation of students that don't yet know the hope of Jesus. Universities and campuses aren’t closed and our prayers have a powerful impact.

We believe this is for all of us, not just for students. Can you and your small group join in with others across the nation and get out on campus to pray that we will see more of God's kingdom come. If you are not sure where to start, check out Josh's experience....

 

Loughborough University. 2017.

1am.

My first campus prayer walk.

We drove straight over from the Fusion Conference. Hours ago I think we were marching, no, skipping, around the conference hall with tambourines, shouting as we sounded the prophetic drums of the uprising before spilling out into the carpark and collecting in our cars for the drive home.

But we’d taken a detour. Now we were skipping around campus, praying for everything, laying hands on everything, giddy with anticipation. While campus slept, we felt stirred.

“Why don’t we do this every day until students arrive?” I remember thinking, then suggesting. 

So, on the first Monday of September my alarm woke me up well before dawn. I had sobered up from my giddy-ness, and to be honest, was feeling a bit scared. Scared of the idea of prayer meetings every morning for the rest of my summer. I had never enjoyed prayer meetings - I usually didn’t have anything to say when it was my turn.

And I knew it was my turn. The campus cried out from it’s depth for renewal. 

Five or six of us congregated at the water fountain; one of the oldest landmarks on campus, inscribed with the university motto: ‘Veritate Scientia Labore’ - Truth, Wisdom, Labour. The university turns the fountain off over summer, and a pool collects in its basin. It sits there for weeks, stagnant.

But somewhere near the start of September, someone flicks a switch. It starts with a hum as water is drawn from a hidden place somewhere deep within - pouring outwards and churning up the still water.

That’s what it felt like for us - like a splash of cold water on our faces at the end of a sleepy summer. And we were glad we got up early, because campus looked different in the morning's first light, as darkness faded into the refreshment and life of a new day.

I think prayer walking campus is a very good idea - it’s part of His preparation for the university, and for us. When you spend that time with God and really give Him the opening in your heart, you may well find that your prayers seem to trickle out from your bedroom and into the street, or onto campus - joining with the voices of many others in God’s river of healing, that stretches out before and after us.

It’s lineage, a call passed down in the church, from generation to generation. You won’t be the first to prayer walk that ground, and you won’t be the last. Just ask older people in your church who attended the same university as you! I guarantee there are already so many prayers sown into the soil of your university campus.

Find a few people who are keen and go for it - walk and talk, pray and notice - look closely; you can’t help getting the feeling that Jesus is up and awake, with grave clothes neatly folded, already tending to the garden.

Register to share where you are playing your part and receive encouragement, ideas and prayers from others who are joining with you in the Spirit. This is our watch and together our prayers will pave the way for students to find hope in Jesus and home in local churches.

Register your prayer walk here