“For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” To bring students together in prayer, Oklahoma Christian University senior Desirea Roberts has planned a student-led event tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Lawson Commons.
Everyone is invited to attend, including faculty and staff. According to Roberts, the event will begin with an acapella worship song followed by prayers led by any students who wish to pray.
“I know we have a lot of Ethos-approved events, and I know it’s a Christian campus,” Roberts said. “I just wanted to do something no professor had to tell us to do, [where] there were no incentives [and] that people just knew how important and how powerful prayer is.”
The prayer night is not ethos approved, but Roberts said she does not want that to deter people from attending. She said she wants prayer and unity to be the focus, not earning a Kudo.
“I think a lot of the time you can say ‘Ethos’ and people will just come for the Kudos,” Roberts said. “I didn’t want it to be something where [people are] just there to be a spectator. I wanted it to be an event that everyone is invested into whether it’s five people or 50.”
Roberts said she was inspired to plan the event during one of her communication classes. Later, speaking with a friend who recently attended a Bible study reinforced the idea for the student-led prayer night. He told Roberts he felt unsettled how some people only go to spiritual events, like Bible studies, for a Kudo.
“If he feels like that, there has to be at least another hundred people on campus who feel the same way,” Roberts said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Ethos approved. I’ll still do it. It’s still important to me. It’s part of who I am.”
Roberts said she began planning and praying for this event about four weeks ago, and she has since then organized three “demonstrations” to advertise the event and bring unity.
“I think where we are in America as it pertains to racism, politics and everything that’s going on, the one thing we lack is unity,” Roberts said. “Whenever you see a group of people doing one thing, it’s a demonstration and if they are doing the same thing, it’s unity. White, Black, poor, rich, Hispanic, engineers, liberal arts—whatever it is, at the end of the day, we are all unified in God.”
Roberts said the purpose of this event is to bring people together to pray for those who are hungry, sick, dying, struggling or anything else that needs prayer.
“There are different denominations, but ultimately we pray to the same Jesus,” Roberts said. “More than anything, I want it to be a night of unity where people can come together with different religious preferences when it comes to how [they] worship, but when it comes to prayer we can just come together and set aside our preferences.”
Junior Abigail Kent assisted Roberts in planning and advertising the event and said this event is a chance for students to take ownership of their faith and act on it.
“It’s students from the university using the university grounds to gather but other than that, it’s individualized,” Kent said. “It’s something that’s coming from the students, not from the university like chapel is, and it’s an important application of faith without any other incentive besides truly gather and pray.”
Kent said she will be attending the event because of the focus on prayer and the power she has seen displayed through prayer in her personal walk with Christ.
“I think it is especially powerful for us, as those who are witnessing prayer, for it to be done in a group setting and to gather in the name of our Savior and commune with God as a body of believers,” Kent said. “[It’s] a small picture of what the entire church does and is called to do and what we will eventually do for eternity when we are in heaven with him.”
Roberts said this event also provides an opportunity for students to pray for professors who come to school going through some of the same situations students go through, just on a different level.
“The teachers are always praying,” Roberts said. “They stand up in chapel. They’ll pray for us before tests. I’ve even [gone to] Brian [Simmons] and he’s prayed for me. I think it’s our chance to show our appreciation, and we can pray for them.”
Senior Emily Sirani, a friend of Robert’s, has supported her during the planning of this event.
“They do such a great job on the day-to-day, [but] they have personal lives, too [where] they might be struggling,” Sirani said. “We are all humans. So, I’m going to really be in God’s presence and really embrace and be there for whomever needs it.”
Sirani said this is an opportunity for students to take a break and come together in support.
“We kind of spend every day moving super fast paced just going through the day, whereas there might be somebody struggling we don’t know about,” Sirani said. “I think students should attend this as a place to slow down—slow down their thoughts, slow down their minds, slow down where they are—and just be in one solid presence and place and have that wash over them.”
According to Roberts, no one should feel unwelcome.
“I know for a lot of people, it’s difficult for them to pray publicly, [but that doesn’t mean] you can’t stand right there and pray in your head or just pray silently,” Roberts said. “You don’t have to pray. We just want you there with us.”
Students should email all prayer requests to desirea.roberts@oc.edu to be read and prayed for at the event. For those who want their prayers to remain confidential, those will be placed in a box and prayed over without being read.
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