Two hundred years ago, five Williams College students held semiweekly prayer meetings in a Massachusetts maple grove with hopes of spreading Christianity around the world. The small band of young men faced persecution from classmates and, on at least one occasion, a thunderstorm that sent it running for cover beside a nearby haystack. Yet the group’s efforts continued and eventually led North America to its second great revival, according to the North American Mission Board (NAMB).
Today college ministry experts see a need for the same kind of dedication among students. Enrollment at American colleges and universities is 17.6 million, and a Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles reveals that only about 26 percent of students consider themselves born-again Christians.
Alabama’s statistics are not much different. The Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) estimates that only one-third of the state’s 220,000 college students have a personal relationship with Christ.
“In my conversations with campus ministers around the country, many of them indicate that as much as 80 percent of the students on their campus do not know the Lord,” said Mark Lydecker, NAMB director of collegiate evangelism. “In some cases, they are giving even higher numbers. One campus minister told me that he actually polled students and only found 10 students out of 1,900 who were believers. One group of campus ministers in the South told me they believed that only 10 percent of their students knew the Lord.”
Hoping to “bring a mass collegian commitment” to God, NAMB’s collegiate evangelism unit and the Southern Baptist Convention Baptist Collegiate Network are challenging students and churches across North America to unite and commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Massachusetts movement.
Held Oct. 1–21, the event, named Haystack Awakening ’06 for the haystack that provided shelter to the original prayer group, encourages students to reach their campus for Christ through 21 days of prayer and fasting. The last seven days will emphasize evangelism at the schools.
“Prayer is a catalyst in seeing revival,” Lydecker said. “We hope to see a great student movement where they are passionate about sharing their faith in Christ here in North America and around the world.”
Mike Nuss, director of the SBOM’s office of collegiate and student ministries, also hopes this will result in changed lives. “Throughout history, college students have been an integral part of great spiritual awakening movements in the United States and Europe. Haystack Awakening ’06 is an attempt at once again igniting the spiritual passion of collegians to effect spiritual revival on college campuses in Alabama and around the nation.”
Even before the event’s official start date, many Alabama colleges and universities joined the Haystack movement. During Labor Day weekend, about 50 students from Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) from several Alabama schools met for a Haystack Awakening retreat at Chapel Hill Baptist Church, Northport, in Tuscaloosa Baptist Association. They spent the weekend in joint worship services and breakout sessions on prayer, fasting, evangelism and missions.
Students at the retreat also distributed Gospels of John at the University of Alabama vs. University of Hawaii football game that weekend.
“For many students, it was their first experience in developing a genuine prayer life, in trying fasting and in approaching strangers with the goal of sharing the good news,” said Jerrod Brown, senior Baptist campus minister for USA.
Tara Burke, BCM president at USA, is already applying what she learned at the Haystack retreat to her daily life. “It really caused me to take a more radical step with my faith as far as stepping outside of my boundaries, and it renewed the meaning of prayer in my life,” she said. “It’s really made me focus on why I’m here at South Alabama. I’m more than a student. I’m basically a missionary to the students on this campus.”
Many Alabama schools are using the Haystack Awakening as their October or semester emphasis to reach students.
UAH’s BCM teamed up with Campus Crusade for Christ and the university to bring in Starfield for a concert on campus Oct. 3. And Auburn University’s BCM served pancakes outside on two different occasions to students coming in from downtown in the early morning hours, something BCM representatives said opened the door for conversations with the students.
Both Brown and Hocutt believe Haystack aligns well with their existing goals for their campuses.
“This is exactly what Baptist Campus Ministries has been about, is presently about and will continue to be about,” Brown said. “Students are hungry to be part of something that makes an impact, that changes or shapes the world. This is a movement about just that.”
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