How to Pray for Your Chapter

Swiss chard. Prayer meetings. We’re told both are good for us, but both are acquired tastes. You may wish your fellowship were more fervent in prayer for your campus, but getting there is kind of like deciding to eat more dark green, leafy vegetables; sure, it would be good for you, but you’re just not highly motivated to start! Maybe you have memories of painfully boring prayer meetings, where everyone sits in uncomfortable reverence, while a few leaders drone on with prayers that use words they wouldn’t say in any other context. Or maybe you can’t find anyone to sign up to pray.

Or maybe you can relate to this situation: you have experienced the power of prayer at conferences and other events, and you want to begin a prayer meeting in your chapter. You announce it at the large-group meeting and hear a lot of enthusiasm, you reserve a room and show up early to welcome the crowd, but as the appointed hour for prayer comes and goes, you find yourself all alone. Not to be discouraged, you talk to friends who assure you they want to come, but again and again you wait, waffling between hope and discouragement, and still no one shows up. Did you hear God right? What is the problem?

Is there a way to bring prayer meetings into being, and to give them life? To get students involved in meaningful and effective prayer for the campus? To harness the potential power that the Scripture tells us is there, when two or three gather in the name of Jesus? Yes, there is!

We must begin in humility with the recognition that true prayer—prayer that connects our hearts with the heart of the Almighty—is nothing short of an act of God.

Real prayer always begins and ends with our dependence on God. And so, in a sense, we are always beginners in this work, always dependent, needing to rely on God for motivation, direction, empowerment and continuing zeal. As soon as we think we’ve “figured out the system” for getting prayers answered, we are no longer depending on God, but on our system, and pretty soon we aren’t really praying. The secret to corporate prayer is to come, together, just as you are, to God, just as he is. Ironically, the more we know our great weakness and our real need for God, the more skilled and effective we will be in prayer.

What to pray?
What should we pray for on our campus? Jesus said to pray for the kingdom of God to come. When the disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, his answer, in Matthew 6 (which we now call the “Lord’s Prayer”) includes the request, “Your kingdom come.” He defines this as “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What would it look like on your campus if that simple prayer, “Your kingdom come,” were answered? What would be different? What specific, identifiable changes does Jesus want at your school? Those are the things to pray for!

The Apostle Paul gives his disciple, Timothy, instruction in how to pray in 1 Timothy 2. He urges that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

In case you think it would be self-serving to pray “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life,” remember that Paul was writing to Timothy when Nero was emperor and Christians were being fed to lions in the Roman Coliseum. Persecution was intense. Paul was urging them to pray for protection of their very lives and for enough tranquility in their relationship with the government that the gospel could actually have a chance to be preached and heard. The end goal of praying for the king is that people would be saved and the kingdom of God would come. Paul encourages Timothy to pray specific, local prayers to achieve global ends. I saw an example of this prayer in action last summer when I attended the first-ever IFES student conference in Central Asia as leader of an intercession team. My team of eight students and staff from schools in North America was invited to come solely to pray for the conference—a real privilege! (And it was a wonderful way that we who didn’t speak Russian or any Central Asian tongues could assist in this historic event; we were able to pray in English.)

Kevin, the chair of the conference committee, had prayed strategically for the conference with his team for months beforehand. He described feeling intense grief about the schemes which the Enemy had used to keep the people of God from gathering together in parts of the world where there was extreme hostility to the gospel. So he prayed boldly that “our students would not be prevented from crossing the borders from one country to another for the Central Asia Student Conference.” He already knew there were laws that were making it difficult for some students to get the multiple visas they needed to come to the conference, and that others might be at risk if they carried Christian literature across the border or were spied on by fellow students at the conference. Can you imagine our rejoicing as the staff team at the conference site answered phone calls and heard one by one from the student delegations that all 119 students had crossed all borders safely? We heard later that they all were able to return to their homes without any consequences at the borders. That was a huge answer to a bold 1 Timothy 2:1 kind of prayer!

Who is in authority on your campus? You can make a list of the names of people in power and pray for them. List not only the president and deans in official positions of responsibility, but also those who wield influence on campus—those students, faculty and administrators who set trends, make policies, hire staff and faculty, admit new students and transfers, enforce the campus rules, and report the news on campus to the wider community. Pray for those people by name, that because of (or in spite of) them the gospel would go out to your whole campus! And if you identify individuals who are deliberately working to prevent the spread of the gospel on campus, you can pray that their hearts will be softened, that individual Christians will find favor with them, or if they are incorrigible, that God would encourage them to move along to other venues, and replace them with leaders who are more open to God’s work.

In John 17 we can find a model for prayer by studying Jesus’ prayer for the disciples on the night before he died. Study that passage with your prayer partners, asking, “How did Jesus pray for the disciples?” and “How can we follow his example?”

Two concepts leap off the page to me in John 17. The first is Jesus’ prayer for the unity of the believers, and the second is his prayer for protection of his followers. Naturally we should pray for unity inside our fellowship, but we need to pray bigger. Can we dare to pray that every Christian on our campus would be walking in the same direction, deliberately following Christ? Now, unity in Christ doesn’t necessarily mean there must be only one Christian ministry on campus, nor does it mean we have to participate in multi-faith mush; but we can at least pray that we would be reconciled to those Christians who are working together for the spread of the gospel. This includes other Christian ministries, as well as local churches that serve the campus. Many chapters have found blessing in sharing a daily prayer meeting, prayer vigil or prayer walk with other Christian groups, uniting in prayer for the campus.

One healthy way to connect with local churches is to enlist their prayer warriors as intercessors for your fellowship and for the campus. Every church has people of prayer. Often they are behind-the-scenes, older men and women who love Jesus and love to hear of new ways they can be praying. They will thank you for asking! Ask the pastor who the prayer warriors are, and then ask permission to contact them.

The prayer for protection in John 17 had never struck me as a prayer I should pray, but I have found it to be a very important daily request. Jesus makes clear that he isn’t asking for his disciples to be removed from conflict and strife, but that they would be guarded and kept safe so they can be effective in the battle. I’m convinced that we need to be more conscientious in our prayers for the protection of believers. A simple prayer is the phrase from the Lord’s prayer, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” What are the temptations and evils that we are likely to face on campus? In prayer we can name them, renounce them and ask God to keep people safe from them. We can pray daily for God to protect us and the work he is doing through us to bring about his kingdom. We can pray for protection of the “seeds” of the gospel that are scattered in people’s hearts so they would bear good fruit. We can also pray for protection of the reputation of the gospel on campus, that we would be guarded from slander or scandal.

Luke 10:1-2 also gives some direction for how to pray for the campus: we need to pray that “laborers are sent,” and that they will return with the harvest. Pray that students, faculty, staff, parents, neighbors and landlords (whomever God chooses!), will be given passion and power to share the gospel with students on your campus. Pray that those whose hearts are being prepared to become Christians would connect with the “laborers.” I tend to tell God who I want to see become a Christian—my friends, my family and more. I have my list of loved ones that I want saved. But God wants me to ask him, “Where is the harvest? Who is ripe and ready to become a believer now? Who is being called and drawn by your Spirit?” It is quite possible that God’s list looks different from mine, and that if I pray, I might learn where and how to harvest “ripe” fruit!

Ways to pray
How can we pray? What follows are some ideas and forms for prayer. But remember, the goal is not to come up with a great system. The goal is to connect with the heart of God. Here are some things that I have seen God use when students have come to the Lord in expectant faith:

1. Devote a large-group meeting to prayer. You can plan one large-group meeting a semester to be devoted to praying together. Prayer meetings do not need to be boring, and a little creativity and planning can make them much more approachable for all the participants. Give clear directions and explanations to put everyone at ease. Use a variety of styles and formats in order to include people with different sensibilities, backgrounds and worship styles. Meetings can include praise music, hymns, psalms, silence, small-group and individual prayer times, whole-group prayer, “popcorn” prayer (where individuals call out short sentence prayers one after another), call-and-response prayers (where the group gives a united response to a prayer request, such as “Lord, hear our prayer” or “Thank you Lord”), dance, drama, art and creative writing (such as composing psalms together and reading them aloud).

Jonathan Edwards, who wanted to see revival continue in the churches in New England following the Great Awakening in the 1700s, designed a format for prayer meetings which he called a “Concert of Prayer.” The word ‘concert’ doesn’t refer to a musical event, but to the ‘concerted’ or united prayer of people from different denominations and congregations who come together and agree on what they desire from God. David Bryant has developed a contemporary model for concerts of prayer and has written a resource book called How Christians Can Join Together in Concerts of Prayer for Spiritual Awakening and World Evangelization (Regal Books, 1988). Another format for a prayer meeting with visual aids is a tabernacle prayer meeting, which uses articles like a menorah, a throne, a giant cross, bowls of water and towels to symbolize some of the aspects of the Old Testament tabernacle worship experience. In the tabernacle model, participants are invited into a variety of formats for repentance and forgiveness, praise, consecration, intercession and worship at different places and times in the meeting.

An easy-to-remember guide which covers four kinds of prayer in a prayer meeting is the acronym, ACTS. Adoration (or praise) calls us to acknowledge God’s presence and his character and worship him. In confession, we acknowledge our sin, and our need for God. T is for thanksgiving, when we recall the specific blessings we have that come from God, and supplication means asking God for the things we need.

Two passages that can be used as outlines for prayer meetings are the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 6:9 and following) and Jesus’ prayer in John 17. Each passage has a handful of intercessions that can give order to a time of prayer, and you can be creative in using different formats and styles of prayer in each section.

2. Host daily prayer meetings. I remember being deeply moved by the testimony of campus staff member, Lou Soiles, who came to Christ through attending a daily prayer meeting. He described how he was drawn by curiosity to this unusual group of students, and how he experienced the genuineness of their faith as they gathered so faithfully day by day to talk with God about the stuff of their lives. He also described how the very presence of God in their midst was undeniable.

Are you ready to see God work among your members through a daily prayer meeting? To get started, you need at least two students who are committed to prayer, and a time and a place you can meet together each day. Early in IVCF’s history, chapters were required to have daily prayer meetings in order to be chartered. Prayer has always been a central discipline in our life together. (A staff member from the early days of the movement—when one staff would cover five states!—told me that the way she planned her ministry trips was to get on her knees, ask God where he was already at work, and then go there.)

One common reason that prayer meetings fail is that those who are highly committed to prayer expect that everyone else is, too. So they make two errors that can be fatal to a prayer meeting. One is to induce guilt in the members by telling them that if they were really good Christians, they would come to the prayer meeting (that evidently nobody really wants to go to). The second prayer meeting killer is to try to schedule the meeting around the broadest interest and access, and in so doing, inadvertently schedule out those who are most committed. If you have two or three individuals who are highly committed and passionate about prayer, do everything possible to make sure that those individuals are able to meet together. If ten people in the room can come at one time, but two of your passionate pray-ers can’t, then don’t choose that time! (Here’s a corollary: just as with gifted evangelists, gifted intercessors should not be saddled with administrative jobs on your exec team.)

3. Appoint a prayer coordinator. A prayer coordinator in your fellowship can advocate prayer and provide resources for a variety of ways the leaders and the members can pray. Some possibilities:

• E-mail prayer requests are collected by the prayer coordinator, and passed along to individuals who have committed to pray. (They can be students, or alumni, parents and church people.) Note that any prayer list like this needs guidelines to guard confidentiality. Prayer requests should only be for the person who initiated the request, or with permission from the person who is the topic of prayer, and should contain only the details necessary for prayer. Those who receive the requests may need to be cautioned to beware of gossip.
• Special delivery prayer: the prayer coordinator or a prayer team can volunteer to come and pray with individuals or small groups in their rooms or at their meeting place, when there is a special need, or just as a gift and encouragement to the members.
• Assigned prayer partnerships: those who sign up can pair off at a large-group meeting (by drawing names or by assignment of the coordinator) and make a “prayer date” when they will get together during the week to pray for each other.
• Prayer before events: The prayer coordinator can lead the worship team, student leaders, staff and speaker in prayer before large-group meetings and oversee prayer times during large-group meetings. Take time in large-group settings to allow testimony of answered prayers, as well as time to give thanks to God for his specific provision.
• A fellowship “prayer tree” could be managed by the prayer coordinator (or small groups can use their own prayer trees). This device consists of a paper tree posted on a wall, and paper leaves that are passed out to members to write “faith-sized” prayer requests on. Individuals keep the “leaves” and commit to pray (either in the group or individually during the week) for the concern on their leaf. When a prayer is answered, the leaf is stuck on the tree. As the tree sprouts leaves, the group has a visual reminder of God’s faithfulness. (We began using a prayer tree at home when our kids were small, to increase their faith, but in fact, it increased ours as parents! Each Thanksgiving, we would take off the year’s worth of answered prayer leaves and read through them to remember what God had done.)

4. Provide special prayer events. Here are a few ideas:

• Prayer walks, or Jericho walks. Prayer walks are a kind of portable prayer meeting. Gather a group of bold believers, and walk around your campus, your city or your dorm. Begin with an assembly to explain the plans, and a time of praise and worship. (You may want campus maps and paper on which to write prayer requests.) Then the group can either break into small groups and go to different parts of the region, or go as a whole group. As you walk, you can pray about the activities that go on in the buildings and areas that you are passing. You can ask God to show you needs and concerns for prayer—a kind of “prayer scavenger hunt”—and try to discern the “spirit of the campus” or any spiritual strongholds that inhibit students from coming to Christ or following him wholeheartedly. And you can ask God to bless the campus so that what is good and pleasing to him would prosper.

  For an outreach prayer walk, you can ask passers-by for prayer requests. After explaining who you are and what you are doing, you could ask, “What do you think are the greatest needs of the campus?” or “Is there anything you would like us to pray for you?” Depending on their comfort level (and yours!) you can pray for them on the spot, or write down their requests for prayer at a later time.

  At Smith College in Massachusetts, the IVCF chapter had a custom of beginning the school year with a prayer walk. We assembled students from Campus Crusade, the Newman Club (Roman Catholic), the campus Korean Christian group and our IVCF chapter, and sometimes some prayer warriors and InterVarsity alumni from the surrounding area. One year we met on the steps of the campus chapel and sang some songs of praise together and prayed. Then we began our walk by traveling together across the street to the college president’s home. Her lights were on, so we rang the doorbell, and when she came to the door, we explained what we were doing, and asked if she would tell us the things that she saw as priorities for prayer for the campus. She was surprised, but pleased, and quickly listed her major concerns and desires for the school. After we prayed with her for the concerns she mentioned and for her leadership of the school, we split into smaller groups and spread out to pray for dormitories, academic buildings, the library and so on all over campus. We came back together at the end of the evening to report back and close in prayer.

• All-night prayer. Another way to pray comprehensively for the campus is to hold a prayer watch, also called a prayer vigil or an all-night prayer meeting. Again, this kind of event is strengthened by teaming with other campus groups that love Jesus. First, you’ll need a place to pray. Try booking the campus chapel if you have one, or a lounge or meeting room on campus. It’s helpful to have a spare room nearby for breaks, naps and snacks. Students can take shifts, spending time in worship and intercession for the campus. Use markers and newsprint or poster board to highlight topics for prayer. You can include worship, listening prayer, fasting and any of the other ideas I’ve mentioned.

• Try a listening prayer meeting. For this event, a leader can teach on how to discern God’s voice. Because this kind of activity is vulnerable to spiritual warfare and deception from the Evil One, it is important that the group doing this be rooted in Jesus Christ and familiar with Scripture. These events must have mature leadership. Pray for protection as you begin, and welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit. Then participants can be instructed to enter into silence together, asking Jesus how he is praying for the campus, or what his greatest desire for the fellowship is, or what strongholds are binding the campus or the fellowship. After an opening prayer, all the participants take time in silence to listen for leadings from the Holy Spirit, which may come in the form of a Scripture passage, a visual mental image, a word or name or sentence, or simply a convicted feeling about something.

  After a time of silence, the leader can ask individuals to share what they “heard” from God, noting that we bring our impressions humbly, because each of us is capable of misinterpreting something as being from God or not being from God. Agree to test any impressions with Scripture and the wise counsel of leaders, before assuming you heard from God accurately.

  Often, the experience of a group in an exercise like this is that one or two themes will emerge from several different people, or in different forms, and the group has an “aha” experience as they sense the Lord’s answer to their question. It is helpful to note that one person may receive a picture, or a word, and not know what it means, but God may give an insight to someone else in the room. Anything that is clearly not from God can be set aside (such as any direction that contradicts Scripture, or the Bible reference for a chapter and verse that doesn’t exist).

  Once, when we did this at Smith College, one student saw a picture of a square, with a flagpole in the center of it. She didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but she shared it with the group. Another student said, “That’s like the tower of College Hall as seen from the top!” (It’s a gothic building with a brick tower, and has a flag on top.) Someone else made a connection between that and some thoughts other students had shared, along with the teaching of 1 Timothy 2. We decided we were being called to pray for the college president whose office is under the flag in College Hall. That is the same president whom we visited on the prayer walk, whose commitment to religious expression on campus and to spiritual life was in strong contrast to her predecessor, a woman who saw no value in religion and had worked to dismantle the college chapel budget. The president we prayed for later gave scholarships to help two African-American students attend Atlanta 98!

Enlisting alumni
Another resource in prayer is alumni or local church members who are prayer warriors. When I started as a campus staff member at the all-women’s Smith College in 1990, there was no list of alumnae of the IVCF group, so I began to pray that God would show me women who had a heart to pray for their alma mater. Whenever I met a Christian Smith alumna, I asked her to try to recall other Christian classmates she knew, and I began to contact them and ask them for more names. Gradually, I assembled a list of alumnae who were interested in praying for the campus. One in particular, Lynne, told me when I contacted her that she hadn’t really thought about Smith for 15 years, but in the last few months she suddenly had a burden to pray for the school! As we talked, she told me the issues she was praying about, and they were precisely the concerns that were on my heart at the time.

We invited her to come and meet with the leaders of the group, and over lunch she shared an image of the campus that God had given as she had been praying. She had seen the campus, looking like a World War I battlefield with foxholes all over it and Christians hiding in the foxholes. Each one had a tiny candle that could hardly be seen. Each one would pop a head up now and then to look out, and occasionally two Christians would see each other’s lights and recognize they weren’t alone. Then, there was a second scene. It was the same campus, but with no foxholes. Instead, a huge bonfire blazed in the center, drawing people to the light from all over the campus.

After she shared that vision, we identified that isolation was a serious problem for believers on campus. The leaders were empowered to pray boldly for the protection, unity and witness of Christians on campus. We prayed that first-year students who were Christians would not be placed as the only believer in a “house” (dormitory), but rather that each Christian would have at least one other believer in her house. The next fall, as we met new members, it was wonderful to find out how many had Christian roommates, hallmates or housemates!

Some chapters have organized prayer events for alumni. Mount Holyoke College reserved space at Toah Nipi (the New England IVCF conference center) for a prayer day for alumnae. A couple of student leaders and the staff joined a dozen alumnae for a day of prayer for the campus. Wellesley College I-V staff, working with the chaplain, established a slot on the college reunion schedule for an evangelical Christian prayer breakfast during reunions. This is a great way to pray for the campus and to meet alumni who may have come to Christ since they graduated. Other schools have matched interested alumni with fellowship members as prayer supporters. The alumnus is sent a photo and a brief description of a student, and agrees to pray regularly for the student.

In 1999, the Wellesley College IVCF group hosted a reunion (during peak foliage season in New England) to commemorate more than 50 years of Wellesley Christian Fellowship history. The day was divided into decades, and alumnae and students told wonderful stories of God’s work on the campus, from the beginning. We spent time in prayer for the campus as well. It was there I learned that Ruth, who had been a WCF president 25 years before, had fasted and prayed every Thursday night the year before I began there. She had asked God to bring new converts and to build up the fellowship. My class (’74) brought a bumper crop of believers into the group, the beginning of a steady increase in the fellowship. And out of my class and the class after me, six women from Wellesley joined InterVarsity as interns or staff—a number that is more impressive if you realize there were only 15 IVCF staff in the New England area at the time! I had often marveled at the work of God in our chapter, but I had never known about Ruth’s fasting and prayer during the year before the growth began.

Just light the fuse
As you set out to pray more for your campus, you will need encouragement. Often when we pray, we don’t see the results we want as soon as we want them. Sometimes, we simply forget what we have asked for, so it’s helpful to keep a prayer log and look for answers to your prayers. But it is my observation that a fresh, Spirit-led prayer effort on a campus is often followed one or two years later by measurable growth in the fellowship. Sadly, by that time, it’s possible that the prayer initiators have graduated!

Barbara Boyd, a veteran IVCF staff worker who has taught me much about praying for the campus, has said that intercessory prayer is like drilling holes in a rock wall and putting in sticks of dynamite. You may drill one hole, and then five more, and see no change in the wall at all, and it is easy to get discouraged, thinking your work is having no effect. “But one of these days,” Barbara would say with a twinkle in her eye, “God is going to light the fuse!”

Every prayer for your campus is worth the effort. So I urge you to pray and see what God will do.

Hallie Cowan serves as a specialist in prayer and spiritual formation in the New England region. She is married to a pastor, and has two daughters in college in New England, who are also encouraging their IVCF chapters to pray.