Prayer

Physically & Spiritually Restored—Dynamic Ministry through ServeUP

AD-18513 — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 17:32:30 +0000

Nathan Peterson

Physically & Spiritually Restored—Dynamic Ministry through ServeUP

A small house, nestled between palm trees. White-washed walls. A shaded front porch offsetting a bit of Puerto Rico’s muggy weather. Luis was proud of his home. It had taken him five years to finish, building it night after night on top of working a full-time job.

Then came Hurricane Maria.

“The island is destroyed,” an official said. Gusts of 150 miles an hour. Streets flooded. An 18-month blackout—the longest in US history.

Almost two years later, Luis and his wife, Deliah, still couldn’t live in their house due to unsafe conditions. Many more homes still lay in shambles.

Dedicated to Flourishing

With his mom having grown up in Puerto Rico and his uncle still living there with his family, ��ñ�� campus minister Anthony Spina knew he had to do something in the hurricane’s aftermath. Together with Associate Area Director Jessica Pafumi, he began leading ServeUP, an ��ñ�� disaster relief trip, down to Puerto Rico. Last year, they recruited over 70 students, staff, and volunteers from all across Massachusetts.

Of the students, more than 20 were non-Christians. “It’s a unique chance for students who would not usually come to our fellowship night,” Anthony said. “The disaster relief portion is definitely attractive to non-Christians (and so is going somewhere warm for spring break), and we’ve found it to be a great place to engage in conversations about how our faith intersects with our actions as Christians.”

Anthony and Jessica teamed up with a local church, Iglesia La Trevisía, to work in a low-income neighborhood that has received no government funding for rebuilding. “We’ve tried to adopt a community and move from missions of relief to development and rehabilitation,” said Ronnie García, the church’s pastor. “We’re hoping that in three to five years, there will be incredible human flourishing all in the name of Jesus Christ.”

The ServeUP team came alongside Luis to help him restore his home. Painting, tiling, roofing—the work was demanding. And with limited access to running water and plumbing, the group had to take bucket showers all week. Even so, the students didn’t complain. They knew whatever work they didn’t finish would be left to Luis after they left.

“Jesus really powered and sustained us all in Puerto Rico,” Anthony said. “It was incredible being able to talk with Luis, a strong man of faith. When Hurricane Maria arrived, he and his family hosted people in his home to ensure the safety of others. He has since been a part of the rebuilding process for other homes in the neighborhood.”

Receiving a Sign

Today I began calling Jesus by his name. I accept him as the bridge to God. Amen. P.S. Thank you for your patience. I know you’ve been waiting. This was the first entry Jay, a ServeUP participant and student from Salem State University, wrote in her new prayer journal. Little did she know that as she worked on restoring Luis’s home throughout the week, God would be at work restoring her heart.

Even before she left for the trip, Jay knew it was going to be significant. Her dad had passed away a year ago, and she knew there was something missing in her life. Jay believed in God, believed in signs, believed that Jesus was a real historical figure. But still she felt alone in her spirituality. If she could find answers anywhere, she thought, it’d be there in Puerto Rico, getting back to her family’s roots.

With Jay coming from another campus, invited to ServeUP by a friend, Anthony didn’t know any of her story. But as he prepared to colead the trip, he felt led to pack an extra prayer journal to give away. And when he asked God for a specific student to pray for, Jay came to mind each time.

During one of ServeUP’s Bible studies, Jay was struck by someone’s insight that Jesus works through people. She jotted that down then started to cross out Jesus’ name—in the past, she’d always substituted “Jesus” for “God” in her notes and mind—but stopped herself, feeling it would be disrespectful somehow.

Later that night, Jay felt an odd restlessness she couldn’t shake. Planning to head to one of the gathering rooms to be by herself, she walked in to find a room full of people. “Jay,” one of the students grinned, “we were just about to pray for you!”

Anthony stepped forward, sharing how he’d been led to pray for her all week, and asked if he could pray now. Jay was stunned. She knew this was a sign and eagerly agreed.

“When we prayed with her, it became clear that Jesus was in the process of doing something very significant in her heart,” Anthony said. “She realized that Jesus was calling her and that he is actually the way to God. Moments later, she surrendered her life to Jesus. I was really amazed with the ways Jesus orchestrated these events: pointing Jay out to me in a room of over 60 students, knowing that he was going to remove all the barriers she had.”

Anthony went on to give Jay the prayer journal he’d brought, and Jay shared her testimony the following night.

“More Fire” & More Restoration to Come

In the three years he’s co-led ServeUP, Anthony has witnessed a common theme: participants leave as students, but many return as leaders. “I know that God shows up in really powerful and tangible ways,” he said.

One student, a relatively new follower of Christ, led a small group during the trip. “I saw her blossom in her leadership and in her reliance on the Lord,” Anthony said. “One of [her] group members made a decision to follow Jesus.”

In the weeks and months following ServeUP, other Christian students have grown bolder, fasting more with “more fire in their prayers.” They’ve stepped up to take more ownership in the chapter’s ministry and are closely relying on the Holy Spirit for direction.

Having witnessed so much catalytic growth, Anthony looks forward to this year’s ServeUP, returning next month to Puerto Rico with 50 students. “My hope is for students to realize that following Jesus is much bigger than just what God is doing on their own campus,” he said. “I think it’s really special that we get to be a part of this restorative work—both in student’s spiritual lives but also in a very literal sense with the rebuilding of homes. I think that’s part of what makes ServeUP so special.”

Would you like to pray for ServeUP and other upcoming spring break trips? Sign up to receive our monthly prayer update emails.

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Collegiate Day of Prayer Unites Prayer for Revival on Campus

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 21:31:30 +0000

Press Room

Collegiate Day of Prayer Unites Prayer for Revival on Campus

For Immediate Release

(Madison, WI)— ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship partners with 30 other ministries to promote the annual Collegiate Day of Prayer (CDOP), Thursday, February 27, 2020, uniting prayer for students and faculty on 4,944 college and university campuses across the country.

We are inviting people to adopt a specific campus to pray for and to ask God for national revival and awakening.

Last year, in 2019, all 4,944 college campuses were adopted and prayed for on CDOP. As the year continued, many of those campuses were also prayer walked, as part of the EveryCampus initiative involving ��ñ�� and more than 50 other ministries, uniting behind the vision of seeing witnessing communities of believers established on every US campus.

��ñ��’s participation in CDOP and EveryCampus is part of our 2030 Calling, a longing for revival that encourages us to catalyze movements that call every corner of every campus to follow Jesus. We know that the goals that we have set are impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit in partnerships like CDOP and EveryCampus.

“A growing list of leaders, inside the church and outside, see our country in desperate need of revival,” said ��ñ�� president Tom Lin. “We should take every opportunity we can to unite our prayers, seeking God for this much-needed out-pouring of his Holy Spirit.”

A live CDOP simulcast will be hosted at Yale University at 8:00 p.m. EST, on February 27, as the day winds down. The simulcast provides another opportunity to come together before God to pray for God’s renewing work on campus, today as in years past. In the early nineteenth century, Concerts of Prayer for Colleges were regularly featured on many campuses, including Yale.

��ñ�� Christian Fellowship has 1,119 student and faculty chapters on 772 campuses across the US, from the Ivy League to community colleges. ��ñ�� is a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

For more information:
Gordon Govier
608/628-8609

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Prayers and Planting at Pembroke

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 16:21:40 +0000

Gordon Govier

Prayers and Planting at Pembroke

When Meg Sikes moved from Urbana, Illinois, to Fayetteville, North Carolina, she saw two options for campus ministry: Fayetteville State University (FSU), the local campus, and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP), about an hour away.

She prayer walked both campuses with her supervisor.

Meg’s church encouraged her to plant at FSU, but the doors weren’t opening there. “At Pembroke, doors were flinging open,” she said. “I was meeting just the right person, who would introduce me to another person, and I was meeting students easily. It was abundantly clear that the Lord was making a way for me to start something.”

The chapter was launched and officially recognized in the spring of 2017. A small Bible study was planted, and four students went to chapter camp at the end of the semester. Two of them were trained in Bible study leadership, and led Bible studies in the fall. The next year, more students received leadership training, and there were four Bible studies launched for the fall 2018 semester. This past fall, there were three small groups and the strongest group of leaders yet.

Riding the prayer wave

Meg did not see herself as a planter. During her early years on staff at the University of Illinois, she was part of a team and was very team oriented. Yet, lacking team support didn’t seem to matter at Pembroke.

“I stopped and asked myself, Why does it seem like everything is working now? These are the same tricks I’ve always used as a staff worker. I realized that the Holy Spirit was creating momentum. I’m just going to ride this wave.”

As Meg investigated further, she discovered that people had been praying for a campus ministry at Pembroke for over a decade. She herself had spent her first two summers in Fayetteville, when planting was slow work, praying an hour each day. “I’m walking on a campus that’s been saturated in prayer and I could tell,” she said.

The Army prayer

Meg had seen the impact of prayer before as a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). As a freshman she joined a small chapter of about a dozen students. “We spent a ton of time in prayer, and our chapter just exploded,” she recalled. By the end of her sophomore year the chapter grew to 50 students.

“I came into college as a good church kid who did church things, and God had always been a part of my life,” she said. “It was at Chapter Focus Week [at the end of freshman year] that I realized God had become the center of my life. Chapter Focus Week was a big spiritual milestone for me.”

Meg graduated from SIUE with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a concentration in metalsmithing. She said her Fine Arts training taught her resourcefulness. This, along with her strong prayer life, was critical when her husband decided to join the US Army.

The summer of 2014, after she and her husband Ian married, they led an ��ñ�� Global Program to Malawi. He was stirred by the deep poverty and injustice that he saw and felt like he needed to respond somehow. He asked Meg to pray with him about whether or not he should join the Army. She was upset and deeply opposed to the idea of him joining the Army—but not to praying about it.

“This was not at all where I expected life to take me,” she said. “I got to a place where I had to tell God, ‘If you want us to do this, I need you to change my heart, because I don't want to give a begrudging yes.’” And God did change her heart.

Meg and Ian were separated for a number of months while Ian went through training, until they settled in Fayetteville once they knew that was where he would be stationed.

Making opportunities to make invitations

Meg likes the culture of UNCP, partly because it’s known for its diversity. Of its 6,500 students, 1/3 are White, 1/3 are Black, 15 percent are Native, four percent are Latino, and there are smaller numbers of other ethnicities.

Students at UNCP are generally open to ministry; a recent outreach involving prayer and free cookies was particularly successful. Two students came to faith in 2018, and six have already come to faith so far this academic year. “We’re making more opportunities to make invitations, and the students are responding,” she said.

Meg sees strong evidence for how the Lord has been leading the ministry at Pembroke. She has grown in valuing time in God’s presence and praying, and she sees students also valuing that spiritual discipline.

“I don’t know what’s ahead,” she said. “I’ve been along for the ride and it’s really great.”

Give to help plant chapters on more campuses

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Can Culture Fit with Faith? One Graduate’s Story

ashlye.vanderworp@intervarsity.org — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 19:10:39 +0000

Nathan Peterson

Can Culture Fit with Faith? One Graduate’s Story

“It completely blew me away.”

That’s how JD Mercado describes his first ��ñ�� large group at Northern Arizona University (NAU). They worshiped in Korean, Swahili, and Spanish—something he’d never experienced before. “I just felt a sense of peace, not fully understanding the significance of multiethnic worship at the time, but just an innate sense that something was right, something was being done the way it should be, and that God was at the center of that experience,” he said.

JD had just transferred to NAU during the spring of 2013, and he had only known about its ��ñ�� chapter for a few weeks. But this large group experience inspired him to apply to be a Worship Team leader, a role he served in all four years at NAU.

Later that same year, JD was invited to the Native ��ñ�� Would Jesus Eat Frybread? conference to explore his heritage as a member of the Piipaash and Quechan tribes of the southwestern US. He agreed to go but felt a little uncertain, as he remembered one pastor’s warning that culture couldn’t blend with faith.

The conference proved to be just as moving as his first large group, especially when a group of Native Hawaiians performed a hula. “I remember being invited into that moment,” JD said. “That was so memorable for me to see Indigenous people being gracious with their culture, that Jesus gives us an ability to offer an invitation, and that there’s a way to honorably engage with culture. That was something that I immediately began to want for myself, something that I’d never thought about before.”

JD’s four years with ��ñ�� continued to help him grow in his appreciation for multiethnic worship and explore the connection between his faith and Native heritage. He also had the opportunity to perform through spoken word and song at ��ñ��’s Ambition Conference in January 2018.

Preparing the Way

Upon graduation, JD decided to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, with hopes of becoming a published author and teacher. But he also began to experience what he later called “a dry season,” during which he felt like expressions of Christianity revolved too much around Sunday morning corporate worship and prayer and then were neglected the rest of the week.

He reached out to Native ��ñ�� Director Megan Krischke to discuss opportunities to continue serving with ��ñ��. This led to his decision to help plan the upcoming Would Jesus Eat Frybread? conference in November 2019. Struck also by John the Baptist’s example in Scripture, JD sought to prepare the way for a movement of the Spirit by prayer walking four campuses, including Coconino Community College. He plans to return to Coconino to continue building relationships with Native students.

“Volunteering has been really affirming that God is active in my life,” JD said. “In the midst of this dry season, I had this conversation with Megan. I just felt like God was hearing me, saying, ‘I want to use you, even though you’re feeling dry and burned out. Would you just come to me and be replenished and trust that I know what I’m doing with your life?’”

In many ways, JD’s volunteering experience has helped address his disappointment in not sensing the call to join ��ñ�� staff after college. “I think I needed to understand that whatever I was planning to do after college, God was going to be in that,” he said. “The world needs more writers, more teachers, who are not just Christians but who believe in the things God cares about. The fabric of our society is strengthened by the type of people that ��ñ�� impacts during their college experience.”

JD encourages fellow alumni, “God begins a work in us through ��ñ�� in college, and it doesn’t end when you graduate. In this longstanding partnership between chapters and alumni, there are only beneficial things that come from that.”

Like JD, do you long for a way to continue serving college campuses? Consider prayer walking a campus as part of our EveryCampus initiative, a partnership of multiple ministries to launch movements and communities of Christians sharing the real hope of Jesus on every campus in the country. Click below to find a campus to prayer walk near you!

Prayer Walk a Campus

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Native American ministry

Bearing Burdens Together: The Power of Prayer and Flourishing Faculty

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 13:48:04 +0000

Gordon Govier

Bearing Burdens Together: The Power of Prayer and Flourishing Faculty

May Kealoha, a nursing professor at Oahu’s Kapiʻolani Community College (KCC), was used to praying about big decisions. But as a member of a faculty committee that was facing a big decision affecting the future of KCC, she did not want to pray alone.

Brennan Takayama had just moved to Oahu to become an ��ñ�� Area Director. Prayer was part of his plan as he envisioned planting ��ñ�� chapters on more Oahu campuses to reach more students with the gospel.

But neither expected how well their hopes and prayers would come together when they discovered each other at their church in Honolulu and began to talk about campus ministry.

Brennan said he would help Professor Kealoha start a faculty prayer group. But a week later, when he returned from a conference, he found a message from her saying that she had already contacted other Christian faculty and administrative staff whom she knew and planned a meeting. She invited Brennan to come.

“We got together, shared prayer requests, and then we prayed,” Brennan said. “There was not a dry eye in the room. It was so significant. They were praying with other faculty and staff, on campus, in the middle of the day, to Jesus—something that they had never experienced before, and never imagined could happen.”

The KCC prayer group has been meeting almost every Friday for the last year-and-a-half. “We have so many struggles,” Professor Kealoha said. “It’s such a blessing. We call it a little heaven at the end of the week.” Answers to prayer have included financial support for a medical outreach and chemistry research, as well as healings.

Terry Lock, an elementary education professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, attended last year’s celebration of ��ñ��’s 70-year history in Hawaiʻi because all three of her children had been, or are currently, on ��ñ�� staff. When she heard about the KCC faculty prayer group, she knew she wanted to start one on her campus.

“We’ve been meeting regularly every other week to pray since September and it’s been incredible,” Professor Lock said. “God quickly revealed to us that he’s been present on this campus all along and that we were now joining him in his efforts. Now we don’t have to bear the burdens of our work by ourselves and we pray for the souls of faculty, staff, and students across our university system.”

Professors Kealoha and Lock are not only working with Brennan but also now with Dan Stringer, a Campus Staff Minister with ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries (GFM) who has returned to Honolulu after three years at the University of Southern California (USC).

“It’s amazing that there’s so much traction with faculty already,” Dan marveled. “Often you hear stories in GFM that it takes a long time to get started with faculty ministry.”

A year ago, in the spring, an annual dinner tradition was begun aimed at fanning the flames for more faculty prayer groups and fellowships on Oahu. “Now it’s a bonfire,” Brennan said.

Professor Kealoha observed, “When we pray, we strengthen whatever God has put in each of us as leaders. We are strengthened and we can flourish, because we have prayer.”

Will you partner with ��ñ�� and our 2030 Calling so that faculty on more campuses can experience the power of praying together and partnering with God for his mission on campus?

Be a part of our 2030 Calling

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Every Campus Needs Prayer

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 19:53:53 +0000

Press Room

Every Campus Needs Prayer

For Immediate Release

(Madison, WI) – ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship is mobilizing staff, faculty and students, and ministry partners to participate in the annual Collegiate Day of Prayer this Thursday, February 28, 2019.

Collegiate Day of Prayer is a united effort by a broad coalition of ministries to mobilize prayer for God’s work on almost 5,000 US college and university campuses. This united effort to encourage prayer complements the EveryCampus initiative that ��ñ�� is pursuing, in partnership with Cru and other organizations. Furthermore, it highlights a critical part of ��ñ��’s campus ministry.

“Many of our campus chapters have had the tradition of a daily prayer meeting, and campus ministry prayer requests are communicated with thousands of ministry partners on a monthly basis,” said ��ñ�� President Tom Lin. “Since the beginning of ��ñ��’s campus ministry, more than 75 years ago, united prayer has been fundamental, not supplemental, to our work on campus.”

Tracing its roots to 1823, the Collegiate Day of Prayer was designated as a day to appeal to God to pour out his Spirit on colleges and seminaries, on the last Thursday of every February. Revivals were reported on many campuses in succeeding years, and as the Collegiate Day of Prayer website reports, these repeated student awakenings radically transformed the culture and moral climate of many of our largest universities.

��ñ�� is an interdenominational ministry to students and faculty on US college and university campuses, as well as the publisher of award-winning books on the Christian faith through ��ñ�� Press. ��ñ�� is a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, advancing Christian student work in more than 160 countries. ��ñ�� is also a charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

For more information:
Gordon Govier
Media Relations
608-443-3688

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World Student Day Reflects Our Global God

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:25:56 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

World Student Day Reflects Our Global God

World Student Day celebrates God’s work on college campuses around the world through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). This year, on Friday, October 19, 2018, students in up to 160 countries where there are IFES affiliates took part in World Student Day.

How do students who are separated by geographic and language barriers celebrate together? They pray for each other; prayer knows no boundaries. Students love to use technology; Skype calls on the Internet are common. And sometimes students even cross borders and meet together in person.

Tania Andrade, an ��ñ�� Campus Staff Minister at California State University San Marcos, did all three last year, at the invitation of students from Compa, the IFES affiliate in Mexico. “I love that the students were the ones who took the initiative,” she said. “I was really excited.”

Tania already had connections and relationships with Compa staff and students through summer projects and other joint activities, and that made the meeting easier in spite of potential language issues. A group of three ��ñ�� staff and five students crossed the border at 5 p.m. on a Friday night and met together with the Compa students and staff at the home of a ministry supporter.

They ate dinner together, worshiped together, and connected with Compa student groups in Veracruz, Mexicali, and Tecate via Skype. During the Skype calls, prayer requests were shared back and forth and then they prayed for each other.

“Every Skype call we had, we could tell that they genuinely cared about each other,” Tania said. “We learned a lot about Compa’s ministry and were inspired by their creativity.”

During the evening the students and staff also broke up into groups and prayed for some of the cities most impacted by recent earthquakes: Mexico City, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Morelia. During the worship time together Compa students led some of the songs and ��ñ�� students led some. “It was also cool for us to sing a song in Swahili,” Tania said. “It was a beautiful moment for us to praise God as a global God!”

Participants in World Student Day learn about how God is moving around the world, in ways that are different from where they are. They also learn about their unity in the faith. “It’s a great experience of seeing the greatness of God and the church coming together,” Tania said.

Find out how you can participate in World Student Day.

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IFES

International Fellowship Evangelical Students

Compa

Prayer

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Hope and Healing at Ohio State University

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 19:46:34 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Hope and Healing at Ohio State University

The day after an angry man crashed his car into a building on the Ohio State University (OSU) campus and attacked students with a knife, ��ñ�� students mobilized a compassionate response. They erected a “Wailing Wall” on campus that offered fellow students an opportunity to lament and express their fears and hopes. Students also prayed with those who wanted prayer.

The man, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was shot and killed by a responding police officer. Eleven students and faculty members were injured in the attack. The campus was on lockdown for just over an hour and classes were called off for the rest of the day.

“When it was revealed that the attacker was an OSU freshman, ethnically Somali, and religiously Muslim, the level of fear on campus rose palpably,” said ��ñ�� area director Rachel Bobbitt. “Somali and Muslim students feared retaliation with racism or violence. So it was deeply meaningful when a Muslim woman came to our wall on Tuesday and shared her thoughts.” Ohio State University president Michael Drake also stopped by and expressed his support for what the ��ñ�� students were doing.

The Muslim woman who came to the wall stayed for three hours, and even helped bring other people to the wall. She was already friends with some of the ��ñ�� students and had participated in some previous ��ñ�� activities.

“The campus was seeing Christians and Muslims reconciled together, right before their eyes, which is a unity and trust rarely seen,” Rachel said. “This was not just a symbolic action; important spiritual work was done and lives were changed.”

The “Wailing Wall” came out of an extended time of prayer shared by ��ñ�� staff and students the afternoon after the attack, as they considered how to respond. They chose an expression similar to Proxe Stations—artistic displays that are often used to open up dialogue about spiritual issues with students. Students from all five of the ��ñ�� chapters at OSU participated when the wall was set up on the day after the tragedy, dialoguing and praying with fellow students who stopped to share their concerns.

Some of the ��ñ�� students shared about their experiences as they helped lead the campus in a response to the crisis:

“One girl in particular said she grew up around Christians but trust was broken and she was unsure of what she believed. She thanked us for being there and said that her faith in the Christian community was a little bit more restored because of what we were doing and how she saw people being encouraged. I feel like God was using our response to spread the gospel on campus.”

“Our mural actually exceeded my expectations. I have bad allergies right now and yesterday may have been really tiring for me but I knew I needed to be at that wall. Lots of students wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it into words, so I’m glad we were there to offer encouragement and ‘be the light’ on campus. I’m proud of what God did yesterday and that he was able to use us.”

“I think God really showered everyone with warmth. Every person that came wrote or drew something encouraging. Some people were compelled to have conversation or stick around. One or two people decided to hug us as well. We saw so much kindness yesterday in contrast to the violence of Monday.”

��ñ��’s vision is to see students and faculty transformed, campuses renewed, and world changers developed.

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Renewing the Campus

Prayer

Ohio State University

Muslims

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The Persecuted Church

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 14:45:19 +0000

News

Alec Hill, president of ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship

The Persecuted Church

In a recent Washington Post article, a headline rhetorically asked: “Has the world ‘looked the other way’ while Christians are killed?” It certainly appears so.

Open Doors USA, a respected nonprofit organization, reports that every month 322 Christians are murdered for their faith, 772 suffer from acts of violence and 214 churches are damaged or destroyed.

Pope Francis aptly summarizes the situation: “Our brothers and our sisters…are persecuted, exiled, slain, beheaded, solely for being Christian…There are more martyrs in recent years than in the early centuries of the faith. I hope that the international community doesn’t stand mute and inert before such unacceptable crimes.”

Recent Examples

Kenya
Just as a group of Christian students gathered for early morning prayer at Garissa University, al-Shabab militants attacked. Twenty-two students involved with our sister movement, FOCUS, were murdered. And it was no coincidence that they were killed first as Christians were singled out for execution. Please pray for FOCUS’s leader, George Odhiambo Ogalo, his staff, volunteers and their student leaders.

North Korea
For more than a decade, North Korea has been the worst-ranked nation when it comes to the persecution of Christians. If believers are caught praying or fellowshipping with others, they are detained (up to 70,000 are currently imprisoned in harsh labor camps), tortured, and/or executed. This video provides a chilling account of one such story.

Libya
The whole world gasped at a video showing 21 Egyptian Christians being beheaded. Several were heard calling out Jesus’ name as they were executed. The victims, guest laborers in Libya, were identified by the tattooed crosses on their wrists—a mark they courageously took on at baptism to proclaim their faith. When I heard this detail, I flashed back to Cairo in 2005, when I watched fellow ��ñ�� leader, Scott Bessenecker, receive a similar tattoo in order to be in solidarity with Egyptian believers.

Just this past week, 12 refugees drowned after they were thrown off a boat from Libya to Italy solely because they were Christians. This morning's headlines carry the story of more executions in Libya involving Ethiopian Christians.

Syria/Iraq
I recently sat transfixed by a 60 Minutes account of the raw persecution of Iraqi believers. Christian communities that have existed since the first century are facing a horrible choice: conversion to Islam or death. The fortunate ones flee. In the city of Mosul, all 45 of the churches have been destroyed or occupied.

Pakistan

Last month, 13 Christians were killed and 80 injured when bombs were detonated at two churches during Sunday services. Two years earlier, in the same city, approximately 175 homes belonging to Christians were set on fire. I have dear friends living very near to where both of these events occurred and pray for them weekly.

Other Nations
Persecution is rampant in many other nations as well, including Nigeria where Boko Haram continues to terrorize at will. It has now been a year since more than 200 high school girls—many of whom are Christians—were abducted at Chibok. Several would have been college students this year active in our sister student movement, Nigeria Fellowship of Evangelical Students (NIFES).

Vietnam, Iran, Myanmar, India, China, Laos, Eritrea and Uzbekistan are also on the list of 50 nations where Christians fare worst. See the World Watch List.

Our Response?

The apostle Paul reminds us that global Christians are all members of one body: “if one part suffers, every part suffers” (1 Cor. 12:26). We dare not turn away.

The pain of the persecuted church will be one of the themes of Urbana 15. As a community, ��ñ�� will explore ways to get more involved. In the meantime, I encourage you to visit the Open Doors website to learn more about how to pray, travel, volunteer, and advocate.

It is imperative that we speak up even as Western governments, including our own, fail to adequately acknowledge the fact that fellow followers of Jesus are being targeted all over the world.

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A Day of Prayer for Campus Access

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 14:40:14 +0000

News

A Day of Prayer for Campus Access

A Day of Prayer was declared on Monday, July 14, 2014, by ��ñ�� President Alec Hill to focus on campus access challenges which limit the freedom of ��ñ�� and other campus ministries to proclaim the gospel. In particular, we are concerned about the status of ��ñ�� chapters on California State University campuses.

In 2012 the outgoing chancellor of the California State University system issued a new policy that requires recognized student groups to accept all students as potential leaders. While we applaud inclusivity, and welcome all students to our chapter activities, we believe that faith-based communities like ours can only be led by people who clearly affirm the historic doctrines of their faith.

The new policy exempts sororities and fraternities from gender discrimination; we believe there should be a similar provision for creedal communities. Earlier this year, ��ñ�� Campus Staff Member Liz Thrasher Wheatley shared at ��ñ��’s national staff conference her chapter’s experience with derecognization at California State University, Chico. Listen or download her six and a half minute presentation.

Last August the new chancellor, Timothy White, graciously granted religious groups a one-year exemption for the 2013-14 school year. That time period is rapidly coming to a close. For more information on how to pray for this situation, please go to our prayer page: http://intervarsity.org/page/call-prayer-california-state-university-system

The California State University system is the largest four-year public university system in the United States. ��ñ�� has chapters on 19 of the 23 Cal State campuses.

_{(Photo: Kendall Administration Hall at California State University, Chico, from Wikipedia)}

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