Claiming Your Campus in Prayer

Recently, students I know at an urban school gave me an update on what God is doing on their school campus. At this school, 85% of the students do not live with their biological fathers, which makes this story seem even more miraculous than it already is. They started Claim Your Campus prayer groups about a year ago. Using the four Prayer Strategies on the CYC mobile app, they began in March of 2016 praying especially for two particular issues that they felt the most passionate about: violence and academics.

Four students courageously began leading separate weekly prayer groups, inviting their peers to participate. A few months went by, a new school year began, and then between 50-60 students were regularly showing up weekly to pray on their campus. Then one day, school officials asked to meet with these students who began this prayer movement. They shared a few updates with these students on what they as faculty were observing about their school environment.

First of all, they noted that up to the time of the meeting, there had been only one fight during that entire school year. This was historically unheard of for this school. They shared how the culture of violence had shifted. They also informed the students of the several academic awards that had been earned by the school in recent months, awards that had never been earned by their school before.

But what they shared next was the miracle.

These school faculty attributed the changes to student-led prayer. They thanked the students for their conviction to pray and their commitment to stick with it. They acknowledged that this school was changing because of student who are praying!

Hear one of the students share part of this story on this podcast episode.

What could God do if every campus across our country had students brave enough to meet weekly for prayer, asking God to change their schools? If just 15 students made this commitment at every middle school and high school campus in America, we would have one million students united in prayer! This is the mission of Claim Your Campus. CYC is currently active in 44 states and around 1,000 schools.

Download the free Claim Your Campus app and learn more at ClaimYourCampus.com.

Jeff Eckart is a Jesus follower, truth seeker, and motorcycle adventurer. In 2009, he founded Never The Same, a national youth ministry organization. Learn more about him at jeffeckart.com or neverthesame.org. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with his wife and their three daughters. He is passionate about seeing new generations transformed in Christ to further the kingdom of God.