InterVarsity's StudentSoul.org

For hundreds of years, college students have felt called and compelled to pray for their campuses. The Cambridge prayer meeting in England is one daily prayer event that has continued nearly unbroken for more than a hundred years! As your heart yearns to see your friends, classmates, professors and administrators come to know God, you may wonder how and what to pray. Here are some articles and stories that offer insight.

How to pray for your chapter

Hallie Cowan’s heart is for lively prayer meetings that are a joy to attend, and she offers helpful suggestions in this article. One strength of this article lies in her suggestions for what to pray. Hallie offers scriptural resources for praying for those in authority and for fellow students, seeking protection for believers and asking the Lord to “send laborers into the harvest.” She also suggests recruiting alumni to join you and your fellow students in prayer. Note the several side bar articles available on the right of the Web page for this article.

Recovering roots at Baldwin-Wallace

Taking a clue from Gideon in Judges 6:25-35, Sue Radke shares how a struggling, fledgling group of believers followed the command from God to Gideon to “reclaim” Baldwin-Wallace College from its spiritual decay. Gideon, she notes, was commanded to remember and reclaim the old altar, tear down a false altar and rebuild a new altar from the reclaimed altar. The value of this article is not because it’s a recent story (it’s not), but because it’s a fantastic case study of a campus and fellowship both desperately in need of spiritual renewal. This story shows how prayer for a campus can actually happen and what can come of it.

Spiritual warfare (MP3 file, 30m 32s)

As you might discover from the above links, praying for your campus is not always easy. It can mean waging battle. But where does spiritual warfare really take place? Becky Stephen, director of InterVarsity Link, talked about “Lessons on Spiritual Warfare” in a recent chapel at InterVarsity’s National Service Center. Becky is introduced by Scott Bessenecker, and scripture readings are by Karen Hartline. “Much harder than rebuking the devil are the battles that take place within us and our community,” says Becky. “Spiritual battle is fought more by how we relate to each other than by rebuking the devil.” We need to face our sinful behavior, our weaknesses and faults, and our broken relationships with others. Worth a listen.

Ways we pray

How do you and your fellowship group like to pray? There are all kinds of prayer and “prayer events” possible. This piece from the early version of the Student Leadership journal website offers a fun, short list of some of the ways we pray, followed by some brief stories. There are many prayer styles happening among InterVarsity groups on campuses all over. Maybe you’ll gain some fresh ideas! How do you and your campus friends like to pray? Feel free to add your own ideas through the comments feature on this page.