Zoom meetings aren’t my favorite thing. Sitting in one place looking at a computer screen triggers my ADD, and the same scenery (my office) makes my days and meetings run together. However, ministering predominantly online these past few months has opened doors that I wasn’t expecting and has resulted in a surprising amount of fruitfulness during this strange season.
I started a virtual prayer team, made up of students who are deeply committed to prayer in our ministry. We meet weekly to pray and share, and we’re working on building a prayer curriculum to help our community grow in prayer. They also cover our online prayer page. This page gives people a place to submit prayer requests that are covered by a real person. If requested, students will call and pray directly for the person desiring prayer. It has been awesome to watch this diverse team grow together over the past few months, and I believe this group will help implement some major prayer initiatives in our community. Currently, we are praying about and planning what an ongoing prayer room would look like on campus!
“Ministering predominantly online these past few months has opened doors that I wasn’t expecting and has resulted in a surprising amount of fruitfulness during this strange season.”
In April, we hosted a virtual worship night. A couple of student musicians gathered, and we broadcasted our worship night live on Zoom and Facebook. While it was very different from our traditional worship nights, many students reported how great it was to worship and feel God’s presence in their homes. Over the course of this pandemic, one of my goals has been to help our people learn how to steward God’s presence in their homes, instead of depending on a church building or meeting to connect with Jesus. Our weekly Sunday night prayer service also helped foster this environment. It was awesome to see our Sunday night group form into a supportive community over the course of the semester.
We hosted our first in-person prayer service in my back yard in June. We were socially distant, but students were very excited to pray, worship, and intercede for our church, university, city, nation, and world. Would you pray with us that we would all grow deeper in our relationship with God wherever we are?
Thank you for supporting us through these challenging and uncertain times. I’m confident God is at work and that He is the light that shines in the darkness. Thank you for partnering in bearing that light in the lives of college students.