by Brennan Takayama
At church in 2017, I ran into a faculty member I had known and worked with when she served as director of nursing at a community college. We had partnered to start a Nurses Christian Fellowship group for her students. As we talked, I mentioned that InterVarsity also does faculty ministry and that if she had even just a couple of colleagues who wanted to pray together, I would help them get started.
A few days later, she texted to say that she couldn’t get this idea out of her mind. At her present institution, she was serving on the chancellor search committee and needed to pray. Meanwhile, I attended our Pacific Region staff conference, where Kathy Tuan-MacLean spoke about spiritual formation and had us write a name or people group to intercede for on a popsicle stick. I wrote “Hawaii faculty.”
I intended to email my faculty contact when I got home to follow up, but before I could do so, she emailed me. She said she talked with a few colleagues and gave me a date and time they were planning to meet and asked if I could be there.
Of course I showed up, and God moved powerfully. At the first gathering there were five faculty/staff, and I shared about the four faculty loves: love for God, love for the campus, love for one’s academic discipline, and love for the world. As we shared prayer requests and prayed for one another and the campus, there was not a dry eye in the room. The group was amazed that they were praying to Jesus on campus, with colleagues, in the middle of the day. God started something powerful.
We asked if they’d like to meet again. They all said yes. We asked how often. They said weekly.
Repost from staff-site article: https://staff.intervarsity.org/facilitating-faculty-prayer-community-college
