What is the Cairn Facebook Student Prayer page? Where in the world did it come from? Why and how is there 446 members from a range of Cairn students, both current and alumni, on this page; yet, it seems like a secret to the Cairn Community? Or is it? How can one begin to summarize four years of online prayer ministry? Honestly, I really can’t. But what I can do is write about how my life got interwoven into this page, as I am one of the three admins of the Student Prayer Page along with Tyler McDonald and Justin Warriner.

Now…where to begin? Let’s dial back to the beginning of it all for me: four years ago. It was beginning of my sophomore year, fall semester at Cairn, in the year 2012. Some seventeen of us had transferred from the Wisconsin Wilderness Campus onto the Main Campus. What was once Philadelphia Biblical University our freshman year was now Cairn University. There were mixed emotions about this. We came in as sophomores into a large transitional time in the history for this university. Bonding at our awesome one-year branch campus, we were a tight-knit WWC family who seemed like we’d known each other for years. We were the sophomore transfers that everyone knew about. We were loud, boisterous, and always sitting together, just like all the other first-year-programmers that would start walking this campus the following year in Fall 2013. Our first semester began catching up on first year academic credits by having orientation and introduction classes with the freshmen. But on a larger level, we were entering into what we didn’t realize would be the beginning of an unforeseen growing pains for each and every one of us. So as time would tell, priorities, pressures, schedules, and housing began to slowly drift us apart. Funny how this exact same thing can happen in our own spiritual faith.

Personally, I was preoccupied with my girlfriend, enjoying my time hanging out on a new campus with my WWC family, spending time with my newly found mentor, and anticipating the start of many years of college experiences to come on this university grounds. It was a blast; like soaking up the sun rays on a beach, I sat back and relaxed. We were all there sitting in the Great Room in Heritage, playing games with my WWC family during three days of lockdown during the Sandy Hurricane: now this was college! I was creating the memories that college was about and I will always cherish.

Ironically though apart from all these good times, I really didn’t know why I was at Cairn. Here I was coming from a year of spiritual revival and renewal in my heart from WWC and even getting baptized that summer; like many freshman and transfers, my semester was one of deep stress due to the life transition not to mention I’d grown up in Wisconsin and never lived on the East Coast before or even in a city for that matter.  Adding to this my parents had been out of a job from ministry for about seven months now and my finances from landscaping over the summer in Ohio were about gone. Even my relationship with my first girlfriend from WWC was heading into conflict and relational issues. It was a high tidal wave of fun landing on a shore of rocky tensions.  I was still a sophomore and confused at what life would hold for me in the future and had thought and planned to apply to other colleges to do engineering. But hey, I thought, why bother about that now? I had my friends and my girlfriend; what could be better? I had just come from a year of Bible and living on my own with my brother for the first time in a new state that summer. I was very proud of my newfound life understanding. I had made more money than I had ever made before doing landscaping, all the while finding community.  You’re probably wondering what all of this has to do with the Student Prayer Page, right. Well, none of it at the time had anything to do with the page, until my life started crumbling around me.

Toward the end of that semester, I was in and out of the Housing Director’s office. Yes, that’s right, Stephen Houser was the Housing Director and Evan Curry was a Resident Director. Tom Sherf was Director of Student Life, and Scott Cawood was Dean of Student Life. It was a different time; a time when we were the Crimson Eagles. The Highlander Café was called the Eagle’s Nest and they only served fried chicken strips and a cheesesteak with fries, not the fresh healthy food in a hip café that it is now. All the walls in the hallway outside of chapel were the same color instead of a muraled timeline with pictures, without our school mission statement or advertising TV’s on display. It was a time before Arts and Culture existed, and before they built the art piece representing the Trinity in front of the library. It was a time when Sherrill Babb still lived in the President’s house by Babb’s field. The list of things could go on about the simply changes that I experienced from what my freshman year was to what Cairn has become today.

Though for me Sometime in the middle of the semester, before I was talking to Stephen Houser, I was at the end of the semester meeting with my hall mates and RA’s telling them that I was going to be leaving their hall to commute the following semester, even though I had no idea where I would commute from or have the finances to do so. During this time, the prayer page was started by two fellow WWCers from my year who thought there needed to be more focus on prayer for the campus. So they created a closed Facebook page for prayer and added over 200 Cairn students that they knew at the time to this page. It was a humble beginning, as people would post random Scripture and prayer requests. I have to admit that in the middle of all the fun of the beginning of the semester with my WWC family, the start of my real college campus life experience and all the stress of all I mentioned earlier, that I didn’t really think much about this prayer page. It was out of heart and out of mind. But, this changed for me over Christmas break, as I was wondering what life would hold for me for my college career. It was at this time that roadblocks just broke and began to fall into place. My parents got accepted into a missions agency, and since I was now recognized as a missionary kid, I got a scholarship so I could come back to live on campus. The following semester in the Spring I got a new roommate next door to my old room on the same hall. During this Christmas break, I broke up with my girlfriend, and devoted all of my energies that I had for my girlfriend towards God with a broken heart of sorrow in prayer and rededication to Him. I had learned how to love again by her and God wanted that love. This is when the prayer page started showing up on my radar: in the season that I started to prioritize prayer.

The rest I guess you could say (without getting into hundreds of posts and ups and downs of the page) is history. The prayer page now has 447 members, and prayer requests are coming in every week. Was it always this way? No, it started off without any management besides happenstance admins and people who would randomly post. I remember a season where prayer requests would come up and no one would respond to them for weeks. This obviously started some distrust and heated debate on why we had this prayer page. I think over time many of the original people ending up leaving. As a prayer page isn’t compatible to everyone’s heart. As much as prayer should be at the center of who we are and what we do as Christians, prayer can get old. Especially when you keep seeing your Facebook feed popping up with a prayer need, it can easily put a damper on your study break or evening roaming through posts before heading to bed. It’s not an easy thing to stay dedicated to this page, and only God can put this kind of burden on someone’s heart to passionately continue to pursue a dedication to this page.

So why an online page; why not just meet up in person? I think the internet provides opportunities that meeting in-person cannot provide as there are roadblocks associated. Froe one, the internet is an instantaneous thing that has no time constraints or geographical barriers. Anyone can post on the prayer page at anytime from anywhere without planning or scheduling. Why is this important? Needs for prayer spontaneously surface during unexpected and sometimes inconvenient times. Prayer cannot always be scheduled. So in moments of crisis (which this page has proven to be an advocate for time and time again), this page becomes and is a safe and welcomed place to come and be supported. When posting, You know that there are people dedicated to praying for you on there and will give you encouragement along the way. Because let’s face it: in crisis, you don’t care who knows about those issues or problems that are going on. If your dad got in a car accident last night and he’s in the ER, you want everyone in the world and heaven to be in prayer for his safety and healing. This is the nature of this prayer page; it’s not an easy one, but it can come with great delights.

How did I become an admin of this page? Well last fall 2015, Tyler McDonald asked me to be an admin. He had seen that the two guys from WWC had been inactive for a long time, so he asked to take on admin ownership of the page from them. As a result, he then asked me to join him in this endeavor. I said no. I was in my fifth year of school, working on my masters, dating, and was about to graduate. It wasn’t within my personality to want to just lead something like that. I figured there must be someone better to suit this prayer page admin position than me. But after thinking about it more, it hit me that I had been actively engaged on this page ever since that spring when prayer became a higher active member of my being. I had posted so much over that time and had tried encouraging people and bringing up needs of prayer. So I came to my conclusion that Tyler had seen and said yes to Tyler on one condition: we accept an underclassman to join us as admins on our mission. I wanted to be able to hand off this prayer page when I graduated so that it could keep going and not die out. We both thought of Justin Warriner right away. I had taught him how to make pizza in the cafeteria and we bonded over our testimonies and the smell of pizza sauce, baked mozzarella cheese, and oven roasted crust. I see this as an act of God’s providence; although I hadn’t been planning on working in the cafeteria that fall, due to an unexpected financial shift in later summer, I ended up taking up my shifts again to meet paths with Justin his first semester here at Cairn.

So what’s my vision for this prayer page? I want to keep it an active and ongoing place of participation in prayer. I want people to know about this page so that when they come into times of great need and crisis, they have a place to turn to. I can’t tell you how many times someone was added to this prayer page and then a few years later posted, “Hey, I don’t normally post on this page at all, but my family member is going through this really hard and difficult time. Could you pray for him? Thanks.”  Throughout the four years time of this page these kind of posts have become so common and regular that it’s now the staple story narrative of this page. This proves that the Spirit can use whatever tools he has to benefit the family of God. This staple story narrative is the very reason that we as admins (Tyler, Justin, and I) have chosen to keep old members on even if they haven’t posted in years.  So whatever the Lord has for this page is where it is going to go. It was sustained over the years even without heavily active members and admins, and I’m happy that there can now be some management keeping this prayer page focused and safe.

So why does there seem to be a lot of the same people who post on this page? The reason people post on this page is because they need a lot of support. Some people don’t have as glamorous of lives as others do, and they don’t have as close-knit or Christ-oriented friendships as some do in life experience. It is a deep comfort to know that someone is out there reading their post(s), praying for them, empathizing with them, supporting them, and lifting their requests to God. Sure, the internet can seem superficial. But if you’ve sat alone in your dorm room up late at night, tired from writing a paper for the next day, it is comforting being able to go across physical boundary lines of space, time, and means to let some 450 people know that you could use immediate prayer. To support you in something that you feel overwhelmed with that only God’s hand could intervene to make it better. Sure, it also helps if you feel close with members who post on this page. Relational Friendship will influence the level of trust and safety you have on this page, but it’s open to everyone. As posts show time and time again, you never know how the Lord will direct someone to this page for a posted prayer request in a moment of need.

Do people pray for me when I post? Yes they do. You would be surprised at how many faithful prayer warriors are on this page praying for you even though they don’t like or comment on your posted prayer request(s). I’m sure the same goes with your regular Facebook posts; I know it goes that way with my Facebook. As I think only a few people have seen my newsfeed post, but then when I see my friends and family they say “Hey, I see your posts and read that one on such and such and I love that you said such and such” and this whole time I was thinking that no one was  seeing or reading my posts. The power of social media is boundless and mysterious.

One desire I’ve always had even from the start of that spring of renewal for me that I still desire going into the future of this page and Cairn, is developing more of a physical prayer community on campus. We’ve had prayer vigils for a few years in the prayer room in Heritage where for 24hrs straight people signed up for 20min prayer slots. We’ve had worship and prayer nights on the field hockey field, in the walkway circle, in the chapel, and in Manor lounge of Davis. Cairn is a place where God is always moving and being active on campus: for where two or more are gathered together He is going to do great things and show up unannounced. This happens every time professor prayers before class, when the announcer prays before chapel, moments before some meals, at the beginning of music rehearsals, at the student led prayer events, in faculty meetings, and during the morning prayer in the Divinity office each morning. Prayer is an essential aspect of our community that we cannot deny or be separated from. It has always been my hope that this prayer page would be used as an instrument for the Lord to direct people towards one another in relationships focused on prayer, both on and off of this Facebook site.

Just so you know, this page is only for students of Cairn University. This keeps it more intimate and more regulated. The first thing Tyler did as an admin was adjust the purpose and rules of the group. He added structure and clarity. I added passion, inspiration, and dedication to the various ideas and needs of the page. Justin added his newer-student perspective for Cairn that was big and hopeful.  I imagined this page as a springboard for supporting a Campus unified by prayer for those in dire.

The main values that we retain for our page’s rules include:

#1 COMMUNITY EQUIPPING FELLOWSHIP → STUDENT RUN

#2 TRUST/SAFETY → CONFIDENTIALITY/OBLIGATION TO SHARE INTENT TO HARM

#3 TRUTHFULNESS → NO GOSSIP

#4 UPLIFTING → NO SLANDER

#5 PURITY → NO SWEARING

#6 ENCOURAGING → NO FIGHTING

#7 GIVING → NO SOLICITATION OR SPAM

What are things that we as admins do on such a page? It’s a high priority of ours to make sure that prayer posts don’t get missed. As I mentioned earlier, there were times earlier on in the life of this page when people’s posts would get missed for weeks. This defeated the purpose of this page, its function and mission, and the trust members had for this page plummeted. We post Scripture, encouragements that match the theme of the current time of year, and prayer for individuals. When we were all still going to school at Cairn, we would meet once every two weeks to go over the vision of the group, prayer for the needs of the last two weeks for this group, and address any issues that we had and share ideas of advancing awareness for the page. In starting as admins, we added a lot more of our Cairn friends to this page now that there was vision and support for it. One thing we have done from time to time is create a monthly prayer update newsletter. It recaps all the prayer requests of the prior month to remind people who they prayed for or need to continue to prayer without causing members to scroll through a whole month of requests. We also let people know what prayer requests have been answered and how they could be in prayer for the page. “Our Mission is to reach the Prayer needs of Cairn’s Students by words of encouragement and prayers to the Glory of God for a United Campus Of Prayer”.  We pray for the campus and campus-wide needs at times, and it’s a cool place to advertise Unify or Morning Prayer on the walkway. I personally love that this is an avenue to connect the page to physical campus activities relating to prayer. One final most important thing we do as admins on this prayer page is keep it safe and manage the members. I’ve added my own personal phone number so that anyone on the page can contact me at anytime if an important issue comes up, especially one of life threatening crisis. If anything happens where someone posts something life-threatening to themselves or intent to lethally harm someone else, we break that closed group confidentiality and are obligated to tell authorities and Student Life, though most of the time it doesn’t come to this. We can personally message members to see how they are doing as well as receive any questions from anonymous members on how to pray for other members. We are a go-to for questions when the prayer process gets confusing and rough. The prayer page is pretty informal, yet there is a big vision and mission for it to be used by God in ways that only the Spirit can manage. We hope that the page will help transform the campus by a focused presence of prayer.

Ultimately as I share my own story, I am humbled by how God kept me at Cairn, used me, and even brought me out with a Master’s degree. The main lesson I learned through this prayer page is that God can use anyone wherever they are at if they are humble to bring about His mission and vision for His Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven. Stop and pray, my friends; stop and pray. Even if it is for only one second, it glorifies God. Quality over quantity my friends; quality over quantity.

PERSONAL EXHORTATION TO PRAYER

Two of my personal recommendations for prayer devotionals are Teach Me to Pray by Andrew Murray and Valley of Vision by Arthur Bennett. Nothing is more powerful against the bondage of sin than to get down on your knees and pray to God in surrender; He’ll deliver you, and that is His promise. Meet up with someone and pray out loud with them and for them. You’d be astonished at how many people at Cairn are willing to pray for you in the moment if you ask them. Be bold and just do it; they are waiting for you to ask. Pray after any conflict or debate for God’s power. Pray at the lunch table after a chapel or class debate. Pray about the food. Stop complaining verbally. Write a practical and helpful recommendation. Thank God for His providence. pray for endurance. Pray for your RA’s! Pray for Student Life and your sports teams. Email your professors and ask them how you can be praying for them. Engage in the prayer discussion; it will take you into miraculous depth of relationship with God and others. Pray before and after chapel. Pray with your roommate and ask to pray for your RA in person. When someone brings up an immediate prayer need, instead of saying “I’ll pray for you” stop for 30 seconds and pray for them on the spot. It is a far more powerful experience, and you don’t have to worry about forgetting and seeing the person later without having prayed for them as you said you would. Pray as you walk the walkways, the hallways, and especially in your hall lounges where true biblical community can happen. This reminds me of a book study I was also in that spring of 2013 in my revival; Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline includes things on prayer, fasting, meditation, study, solitude, and simplicity. I have never become more focused spiritually and physically than in a fasting and prayer time. One book that also helped me love some people I couldn’t stand in life was Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He encourages readers to start praying and laying prayers down at the feet of the cross. Let Jesus teach you how to love the seemingly unlovable and how to see others through God’s eyes. I had to pray through a couple years worth of love and confession towards past hurts that needed to be healed in order for me to fully love individuals and corporations. Pray before you write a paper. Read your Bible. Walk around campus and see God move. Whenever you read your Bible for personal devotion and a verse sticks out to you and grabs your heartstrings, stop and pray over it and return to it later in the day and read it and pray over it again. Study the phrases and words that hit you and grow in what the Lord is teaching you.

Blessings from your Student Prayer admin, friend & alumni,

Caleb Bishop