Prayer Day at Hillcrest Follows Similar Blueprint of 1907 Revival
Students huddle around Bibles in the Student Union every morning at 7:30 am. The rhythm is something a pair of students started after feeling like something was missing earlier this year. Throughout the months, a student here and a student there have joined the group, each equipped with a Bible, sometimes tired eyes, and a heart to pray together.
This discipline is something that was fostered in students through the community at Hillcrest. Every class grounds the academic discipline to the long-standing and faithfully true Word of God. Because students are around Scripture and turn to it regularly in class for perspective and answers when they struggled earlier this year, it felt natural to turn to the Bible for answers and peace.
This scene mirrors a scene from the early days of Hillcrest, in 1907, when in late winter, a group of students was praying for a spiritual awakening. According to one student who wrote years later, “I don’t think anybody had expected it to come as it did. We had been especially thinking of the unsaved people, praying that God would reach them and bring them into His fold. And that is what we commonly think of when we pray for revival…And then the ‘fire’ fell! ALl of us started to pray again, not for the unsaved one, but for ourselves - all at once! The room filled with the presence of God.”
From this revival in 1907, the school and the Lutheran Brethren Synod felt a new calling to China. Missionaries in China would write letters regularly to the school, and those letters were read and prayed over. Still, one letter from minister Didrik Kilen read, “To the Students at the Bible School: For several years you have been along in missions through your prayers, letter, and gifts. But now it is time for you to carry a greater burden and send a personal representative to the mission field, and this missionary should be from the student body and supported by you students.”
On graduation day that year, the students gathered with school officials and formed the Lutheran Bible School China Mission Society. Two members of the student body joined the mission field in China, H.S. Fauske, and George Holm.
The movement of students in 1907 to pray and lead the school in a movement faithful to God’s leading led to public displays of faith. It happened this month at Hillcrest as students gathered for the annual Prayer Day, where students and faculty spend the school day learning about and practicing prayer. Following the recent prayer day this week, Hillcrest was host to the first basketball playoff game against a sister Christian school, Park Christian, in Moorhead, MN. Following the game, students gathered together to close the night in prayer. It was nearly silent in the gym as players gathered, arms wrapped around each other, students circled the court, and parents and fans stood in the stands as the schools thanked the Lord, honored Him with a time of sincere prayer, and publicly displayed their faith in the same God who called students in 1907 to stand and praise the Lord publicly.
These rhythms at Hillcrest give students critical pathways for their future. A recent Hillcrest student from Bergen, Norway, sat down to share how Hillcrest has guided him to a life of faithful obedience to Christ. He spoke of the essential habits of Scripture reading and serving, habits he is continuing in Norway. He also shared how Hillcrest was used to equip him to lead others in the corporate worship of Jesus through music. The stories of students being equipped for lives of eternal significance aren’t just true in the formation of the China Missions Society of 1907, they’re true of Hillcrest today, and that’s a truth that needs to be shared with more students and more people looking for a place where teenagers can build a faith that is trained to honor and glorify the Lord.