By Kristy Volmert | Staff Writer
On Thursday the Baylor community celebrated National Collegiate Day of Prayer, observed annually on the last Thursday of February.
Hours of prayer filled the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation prayer room from 8 a.m. to around 5 p.m., as students and faculty gathered throughout the day to pray for colleges across the globe. A worship service was held in the lobby later that evening.
Collegiate Day of Prayer began in 1815 and has since been dedicated to intentional, multi-generational and global prayer over college students and their entire institutions.
The Collegiate Day of Prayer’s live service is hosted by different universities each year and broadcast online for audiences across the country. Texas A&M University hosted the event this year, revival sweeping through the seats of Rudder Auditorium in College Station. It was hosted at Baylor in Waco Hall last year.
Students gathered in the Bobo Spiritual Life Center at 7 p.m. to watch the livestream and participate in prayer and worship.
McLennan Community College sophomore Hannah Duhon attended and said that seeing how much the spirit is moving in her generation gave her hope.
“Getting to see college students seeking the Lord and praising Him is such a relief to see,” she said. “Growing up, I worried people my age did not want to follow God, did not believe in Him or did not believe in the power of prayer.”
Duhon said she was very encouraged to see what God is doing in the lives of so many college students and encourages others to be in prayer for continuous revival.
Speakers from a multitude of universities, states and countries shared testimonies of revival and spiritual awakening across college campuses.
One of these speakers was Drew Humphrey, college pastor of local Highland Baptist Church. He gave a testimony on the revival we have seen on Baylor’s campus and across Waco.
“Radical unity and radical prayer have spurred on an extraordinary movement of God at Baylor University over the past seven years,” he said.
Humphrey also shared the impact of FM72, an annual event in which the community gathers on Fountain Mall for 72 hours of prayer and nightly worship.
“Every year, we see thousands of college students come to this field,” he said. “We’ve seen hundreds of salvations, baptisms and supernatural healings … we’ve seen deliverance from the darkest struggles of the soul.”
FM72 2025 will take place March 24 to 27.
According to Duhon, the BSM at MCC will host their own version of FM72 the first week of April, with 12 hours of prayer on Star Plaza.
“We’re really excited about it,” she said.
Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea sophomore Rebekah Ellis also attended the livestream last night.
“It was a really cool event where we were able to come together as the global church and pray for revival in the world,” she said. “I was encouraged to see that people from all over the world wanted to gather together and pray for colleges.”
Ellis encourages people to be in prayer for Christians at universities to have the boldness to share their faith wherever they go.
