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Baylor’s traditional chapel offering — large-scale student gatherings in Waco Hall — has been scattered into a variety of “calling and career” options in recent years, as the chapel department pushes to personalize the chapel experience. The result: more than four dozen options, including everything from Aviation Chapel to Eastern Orthodox Morning Prayers.

In 1945, a group of Baylor students began leading a series of worship gatherings that came to be known as the Waco Youth Revivals. The meetings sparked a nationwide Youth Revival Movement that is registered as one of the largest student-led revivals in American history. Today, FM72 leaders believe God can “do it again.”

“I feel like that’s when I had a moment of commitment,” said Yeager, a San Mateo, Calif., sophomore who was recently named Highland Baptist Church’s youngest-ever College Guys Associate. “For the first time, I understood what that meant of like, ‘Oh yeah, I want to be committed to the Lord every day, and I want to live a life for him — worthy of the Lord in every way and bearing fruit in every good work.’”

Holloway, like other Gen Z Christians, grew up in a cultural environment that sees digitization and documentation as core values. This is the “pics or it didn’t happen” generation, a mantra that has rubbed some church leaders the wrong way.

“We prayed, you know, at the beginning of FaceTime that we wanted to be part of the heartbeat of Baylor University,” Olayinka Obasanya, founder and director of FaceTime with God, said. “I think we’ve established that prayer; I think we’ve seen…God establish that prayer through us and we want to continue to be that at Baylor.”

Every year at orientation, the incoming class gets to learn its class hymn. Each class hymn is about the transformation of incoming freshmen as they become adults, allowing them to get a glimpse of what is to come as Baylor Bears. For the class of 2027, they learned “There’s More.”

With a name translating to “the reason of Christ” in Latin, Ratio Christi is aiming to educate Baylor students on apologetics. Starting this fall, the new spiritual organization is implementing guest speakers, small study groups and community worship in an effort to teach students to defend the Christian faith with philosophical, historical and scientific arguments.

“No matter what stage of life you’re in, it’s really important to look to your right and left, instead of being tunnel-focused on your bigger goals,” Hallbauer said. “That’s what we want for people to take away from this group, is that they have an ability and an obligation as believers to serve and love the least of these.”