Bethel College student Alli Rudeen had always wondered what it might look like to pray without ceasing.
“That verse, I Thessalonians 5:17, always stuck out to me,” the junior from Osage City said. “I’m not good at sticking with one thing for a long time. I’m easily distracted.
“‘Pray without ceasing’ is a tough concept for me. What does it look like? What does it mean? But in these past couple of years, I’ve seen the power of prayer.”
Rudeen and her roommate, Katelyn Melgren, junior from Olathe, “discuss all things, at all hours,” Melgren said. So they talked about prayer.
Rudeen recounted some of the experiences she had this past summer as a counselor at Covenant Heights, a Christian camp between Estes Park and Allen’s Park, Colo. One of Rudeen’s fellow counselors described having 48 hours of prayer on his campus.
As two of Bethel’s six student chaplains, Melgren and Rudeen didn’t think there had been a similar opportunity at Bethel in recent memory. “What if we started with 24 hours?” Melgren wondered.
They took the idea to their weekly chaplains’ meeting with Dale Schrag, campus pastor.
“I thought it was an awesome idea,” said Leland Brown, junior from Galveston, Texas, “but I was trying to figure out how we would do this for 24 hours.”
“I wasn’t sure what the campus reaction would be,” said Ben Kreider, junior from North Newton. “Prayer can be uncomfortable to talk about. People think you have to be some kind of ‘prayer master.’ But once Katelyn and Alli described their vision, I was on board.”
“We talked about the logistics, and would this be possible, and we all got excited,” Melgren said. “We could actually do this!
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