Man, I really dropped the ball on keepin' up with this blog, didn't I? Here's the update: I'm not at UNI anymore (I'm at Fuller Theological Seminary, studying my MDiv), so you can pretty well assume the ecumenical work at UNI is in other hands by now.
The vision of an inter-organization council for student ministries hasn't materialized (as far as I know), but before I left we were able to plan a week (and later a month) of uninterrupted prayer, held in the Lutheran Student Union. We had people from the Navigators, Intervarsity, the Wesleyan Foundation, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Lampost, Revolution, St. Steven's and IMPACT. As far as I remember, nobody from College Hill Lutheran, the Presbyterian org, the Assembly of God, the River, the Orthodox churches or the Episcopalians were involved.
Each time of prayer was characterized by a room set aside, especially for the purpose (during the second, month-long session a larger room was used). The room included prayer & liturgy books from the different Christian traditions represented, aids to contemplation (clay for modeling, a wall and supplies for art, notebooks for requests, revelation, poetry, candles, incense, instruments, cd's of every genre & even salt to remind the Christians of their duty as salt in this world). During the month-long prayer, the Lutheran Student Union even provided a large prayer labyrinth.
During each time of prayer, we had a sign up sheet available for all the organizations, so that volunteers could pledge individual hours to spend in the room praying. When someone didn't arrive for their shift, volunteers were encouraged to stay an extra hour if they could or to call a list of people who had said they could fill in for others.
The first session (one week long) was entirely filled up, and there was at least one person (sometimes more) praying in that room every second of every day, with a worship service at the beginning and end of the week where all who participated, worshipped together. The second session had a few gaps, but had even more volunteers and also included weekly large worship sessions.
During the planning stages, we also had weekly prayer and planning meetings with the leadership of the groups represented, with Greg Dolmage (at the time a student volunteer with the UNI Navigators) taking the primary leadership role. As leaders, we discussed many other great ecumenical ideas and we individually read Red Moon Rising by Pete Greig, one of the founders of the whole 24-7 prayer movement.
I think it was definately a great time of communal prayer for the Christians on UNI's campus and I really hope that they're still seeing the fruit of the project today. I think I'll ask some friends still involved with the ministry there to give me an update.
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