The Hillsdale Christian Fellowship is hosting 24 hours of prayer beginning tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Phillips Auditorium.
The event, entitled “24 Hour Night of Worship and Prayer,” will kick off with The Well for a half-hour of worship music.
Freshman Katrina Bopp, with the help of sophomore Casey Harper and other members of the Hillsdale Christian Fellowship, got the idea for the event over winter break.
“It’s kind of like The Well in that it’s purely worship,” Bopp said. “It was going to be different, though, because it would be longer and a little less structured.”
Bopp’s vision is becoming a reality with the help of other students who have created posters, volunteered to be present for different time slots throughout the event, or volunteered to play music for one-hour slots during the event.
“The purpose of the 24-hour prayer is to pray for our campus and bring people close to God,” Bopp said. “Also, it’s to encourage people to engage in activities on campus and engage in worship.”
The event will have a variety of ways for students to pursue worship with different “prayer stations” set up throughout Phillips. There will be art supplies available for use. There will be a cross for students to write prayer requests to put in front of the cross.
“There’s another station called ‘intercession’ where you have strings hanging from the ceiling and then paper clips,” Bopp said. “So you can write down your prayer request, put it on a clip, and then other people will come up and pray for it and they’ll move it to the next slip. You can see how many people prayed for your request.”
Volunteers have also made informational boards about some causes they deemed important to pray for in the world such as sex trafficking and abortion.
Sophomore Shelly Peters put together a board of names of all the students on campus and plans to pray for each student individually.
Peters has already been praying for all students on campus, breaking the list into small portions and leading a half-hour Monday prayer session in the Mossey Library “fishbowl” at noon.
“Praying for the campus by name intentionally challenges me to be open to meeting and getting to know people so when I am praying for them by name, then I can intentionally bring specific requests before God,” Peters said.
While there are structured stations, students can also choose to sit in Phillips and just read their Bible.
The event will conclude with a two-hour special worship beginning at 5 p.m. Friday, with an additional half hour for students who would like to continue praying.