most of the 2,600 colleges in the United States have some Christian
ministry presence, few have entire groups of students dedicated to
praying for their schools. IHOP’s Luke18 Project hopes to rectify that
by the end of the 2012-2013 school year by establishing “prayer
furnaces” on every campus in the nation.
“Prayer is
the simplest thing to do, but nobody does it because it’s so simple,”
says Executive Director Brian Kim, who birthed the initiative after
watching thousands of college students cry out to God on behalf of their
campuses at TheCall in Nashville, Tenn., in 2007. “We’re looking for
young Daniels, so to speak, who are not just surviving on their college
campuses but dominating. We’re calling young adults to a culture of
prayer and a life of mission.”
While prayer serves as
the project’s foundation, the end goal is to equip and send out 10,000
students by 2020 from these campuses to the hardest and darkest places
of the world. In only three years, the Luke18 Project has already
established 400 prayer furnaces, mostly by word-of-mouth.
“Why
sit on the sidelines in the greatest missionary enterprise of history?
Let’s go finish the task,” Kim says. “The Luke 18 Project is our small
part. We’re tiny—10,000 is a blip on the screen, but we’re just trying
to be obedient to what God wants us to do.”
