• FM72 gathers students for 72 hours of prayer & worship in the heart of Baylor’s campus

    Students pray at FM72 on Fountain Mall

    In the spring of 1945, a group of Baylor students prayed for spiritual renewal for 90 straight days. Their prayers led to a movement that helped inspire ministries on campus and around the world, from the Journeyman mission program to the Passion Conferences.

    This week, hundreds of Baylor students again gathered in Jesus’ name for FM72, a 72-hour on-campus prayer and worship event coordinated by Baylor’s Office of Spiritual Life.

    The entire event centered around Fountain Mall, right in the heart of campus. A prayer tent featured round-the-clock worship and prayer, and students gathered four straight nights (Sunday through Wednesday) for special worship services led by local pastors. [Get a taste of the worship in this short video.]

    The theme for this year was “Lord, teach us to pray,” based on Luke 11:1. “We are here to seek the Lord,” explains Dr. Charles Ramsey (BA ’97, MA ’00), Baylor’s director of campus ministries and church connections. “It is a vulnerable and yet endearing and empowering experience to pray — to ‘get spiritual’ with your friends and colleagues.

    “But something good, tangibly good, happens when we stop to pray. There is a wonder, and sense of joy in discovering prayer, and for many this opens the way to an ongoing and deepening devotional, a more personal faith and a love for the church. That is our hope: to engage more of the facets of Christianity in our community, and to humbly invite greater participation.”

    Perhaps the highlight of the multi-day event were the baptisms, as Baylor students made public professions of faith right on Fountain Mall. (Worth noting: These weren’t spur-of-the-moment decisions, either; each Bear had first met with his/her pastor to talk through what baptism means, and trained response team members from a variety of local churches and ministries are following up with them to discuss next steps.)

    “FM72 is a reminder of what we yearn for, of spiritual promises yet to be fulfilled,” says Ramsey. “Students become mindful of what God has done in the past, and hopeful that they too can carry forward the torch that is entrusted to them. As I heard one student pray, ‘Lord, we ask for a forest fire, not a grass fire.'”

    Sic ’em, Bears!