Every week students are coming to Christ at the University of Texas at Dallas! The spiritual climate around campus has shifted this spring as if a warm, refreshing breeze had blown through to drive out the winter, and there is an excited buzz among the Christian leaders to see what God is going to have us do next.
This year was the third Rez Week (Resurrection Week) at UTD. In the first two years, Rez Week consisted of one night of all-campus worship. This year though, God took things to a whole new level.
Ministries have begun to collaborate more this year, and Rez Week events were much bigger as a result. Students were encouraged and amazed at all God is doing, and both guests and alumni were astounded at the drastic growth in ministry and in partnership.
Prayer-Walk Monday
On Monday of Rez Week, we gathered to cover every corner of UTD in prayer. We had about 30 students come out to pray, plus two local parents of a UTD student who shared with the students about their experiences prayer-walking the campus every week. They spoke about how God had given them a very strong conviction through this that God was going to bring massive revival to UTD in the next four years and then gave tips for prayer-walking.
Gospel Tuesday
The next day, we set up a booth to engage passersby in spiritual conversations while the Baptist Student Ministry fed more than one hundred (primarily Indian international) students free meals through their weekly Free Lunch program, engaging in even more table discussions.
Later, more than 30 high school youth students came to visit the campus, who then paired up (some with UTD students) to share the gospel on campus.
Lastly, we recorded a guest speaker as he gave a presentation of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. To view this, join the Campus Renewal UT Dallas Facebook group – the video will be posted soon!
24-Hour Prayer Wednesday
From midnight Tuesday/Wednesday to midnight Wednesday/Thursday, students and campus ministers signed up to attend one-hour segments of prayer, trading off, so that we could pray and intercede for 24 hours without ceasing. Some folks prayed alone for their times, but most of the hours had two, four, or more people interceding for God to work at UTD.
All-Campus Worship Thursday
Finally, we had a great crowd come out for an all-campus worship event on Thursday to close the week. The organization of the prayer teams symbolized the UniTeD atmosphere: We had five praise teams lead worship for 30-minute segments, where each team was led by a representative from each of five different ministries but also consisted of members from each of the other four ministries. \In between sets, we heard testimonies of how God had used UTD students to lead others to Christ, heal sicknesses, orchestrate a kidney transplant for a student, and more.
Going Forward
God’s work at UTD is not finished, but aggressively expanding. It feels as though the campus is coming alive, being renewed, and I’m so excited to see what He has planned for us. It’s gonna be big. After all, everything is bigger in Texas 😉
Charlie is a new campus coordinator for Campus Renewal at the University of Texas at Dallas. He obtained a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and is recently married. He is fluent in German and enjoys racquetball.
