Last night’s vtONE worship event was awesome. God was there, people were excited, and I feel that people left challenged. Even though we were probably the least prepared we had been in several events, God provided and things came together.
The night opened up with Isaac (Chi Alpha campus minister) leading two acoustic sets that I felt really impacted people. I especially enjoyed how he opened the night with David Crowder’s “Come and Listen” and closed his time with MercyMe’s “Word of God Speak.”
Sno led the first prayer time, which was done Passion style (groups of 3ish with one person praying at a time and the leader telling them when to switch). His introduction was amazing, and it ended with an individual time to get right with God that had a huge impact on people.
Our speaker for the evening was my co-leader Eric. We had invited several campus ministers to speak, but none of the people we thought could do a great job speaking on fellowship were available. As I prayed through who to ask, Eric just kept coming up. He’s the vtONE expert on fellowship, which is a harder topic than I would have thought it could be, and he delivered last night. I’ve never seen someone do that good a job with their first time speaking, especially to a crowd that was around 750 people. His talk is available online.
After Eric spoke on Redefining Fellowship, we had a group prayer time about being thankful for the fellowship we already have, led by Samantha from the Wesley Foundation. Incidentally, we’ve had almost no contact with Wesley in the past, but over the last few months they’ve become one of our strongest supporters.
One of the Cru bands rocked the last two sets with a collection of upbeat hymns and praise songs.
Josh from the vtONE network team (student leaders praying together) led a final prayer time, where we formed groups around campus ministers and the Christian faculty to lay hands on them and pray for them. Like the time we did something similar for campus ministers two years ago, the campus ministers and Christian faculty who were there were very moved by that time. I was in a group around Dr. Grisso from the Christian Faculty Fellowship, and he was so moved by our praying for him that he looked like he was about to cry.
We went from that prayer time into the Lord’s prayer, using the New Living Translation of the text to make people think about what they’re praying for. Marcus (from the leadership team) did an excellent job doing the intro and leading us in the Lord’s prayer.
After a few more songs, I briefly told people how they could support vtONE (including giving away a free t-shirt in the new design) and also introduced the prayer event. Unfortunately, not many people signed up for prayer event time slots, so we may need to try to hit all of our sponsors’ regular meetings before the prayer event. I closed out the night in prayer (I was the MC for the evening), and then we had one last song.
Despite a number of setbacks, such as not getting in our new album before the event, God was with us last night, and I feel that people left both encouraged and challenged. People signed up to get involved, had questions for the leaders, and were asking for copies of the talk. We even had people from several other local (within an hour’s drive) campuses show up–including some girls from Hollins University in Roanoke who are trying to start something similar to vtONE there.
Between the worship event and the prayer event, we’re blogging daily with a little devotion and a prayer to get us all unified in prayer leading up to the prayer event. You can check that out at http://www.vt-one.com/.
Thanks for your prayers and support of vtONE. We appreciate it, and we can see God moving at Virginia Tech!