‘Day of Prayer’ calls Southwesterners worldwide to pray for Seminary Hill

The four words David S. Dockery, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, posted on social media on Oct. 2, 2022, “pulled my heart out of my chest and straight up to the throne of God,” recalled Melana Hunt Monroe, director of prayer ministries at the Fort Worth-based institution.

“Please pray for Southwestern,” wrote Dockery, who was less than a week into serving as the institution’s interim president before being elected president by the seminary’s board of trustees in April.

Though prayer was taking place among the seminary’s schools, departments, and students, Dockery’s call to prayer on Sept. 27, 2022, and claiming Psalm 90:17 as the theme verse for the 2022-2023 academic year, helped with “being focused and refined,” which Monroe said, “is praying for each other across campus.”

Since Oct. 3, 2022, Southwestern Seminary faculty, staff, administration, and students have met each Monday for 30 minutes of focused prayer in the rotunda of the B.H. Carroll Memorial Building on Seminary Hill. The seminary community has also gathered for prayer for 30 minutes before chapel on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the academic semester and students have regularly gathered multiple times weekly to pray for the nations, the institution, and one another.

This has “led to a rhythm of prayer on campus that hadn’t been seen at [that] level,” said Chandler Snyder, vice president for enrollment and student services. “Prayer is always present. It’s part of the fabric of Southwestern, of course, but it led to an intensification and rhythm of prayer that has become established” over the last year.

The result is the Southwestern Day of Prayer on Oct. 14 that will allow the larger Southwestern Seminary community, including alumni, former and retired faculty and staff, and friends of the institution, to visit Seminary Hill for a day focused on praying for the administration, the four graduate schools and undergraduate college, and the various departments on campus. The day is designed for Southwesterners to come to the Fort Worth campus to cover the institution in prayer.

“The goal of the prayer event is to bring together the Southwestern family and to blanket the ministries of the campus in prayer,” Snyder explained.

The day will begin at 8:00 a.m. in the Naylor Student Center with a light breakfast before officially dedicating the new prayer room in the facility. The prayer walk around campus will begin at 9:00 a.m. as “all around campus, we’re going to have different prayer stations that will be available for roughly an hour and a half,” Snyder said.

Monroe added that rides on golf carts will be available for those who have mobility needs.

The prayer stations will allow participants to use a QR code to find prayer prompts for the respective school, department, or other facets of the campus community. The day will culminate in a time of corporate prayer in the student center at 10:45 a.m. before the time concludes at 11:00 a.m.

As Southwestern Seminary alumni serve all over the world, opportunities exist for them to join the day in prayer, as well. As Oct. 14 is a day committed to prayer, Snyder said that “multiple times throughout the day” a “blast text message” will be sent “out to people so that they know how they can pray specifically with other Southwesterners deployed around the world for specifics about our community.” Those interested in signing up for the text messages can do so here.

Additionally, a page on the seminary’s website was established in August to share needs from the seminary’s schools and departments. The prayer prompts are updated at the beginning of each month.

Monroe concluded that “as Christians, we do pray for each other and with each other and there is benefit and power and the building of faith and the building of unity and the building of love when we’re praying together for a common cause.”

More information about the Southwestern Seminary Day of Prayer can be found here.