November 2017

Dear Prayer Partners,

Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ!  Thank you for your continued prayers for our students, our staff, and Yale University as a whole.  As we’re wrapping up our study of Paul’s letter to the Philippians this week and next, I’m reminded of Philippians 1:3-5 that we “thank God in all our remembrance of you … because of your partnership in the gospel”.  Both through your prayers and the help of Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:19), we are confident in the Lord that He will continue to build his kingdom here at Yale. For the foreseeable future, you’ll be receiving monthly prayer updates from me (Clay) since Jane began her maternity leave this week.  Baby Hannah is due to arrive at the end of the week, and the Hendricksons would ask for prayers that she would arrive just in God’s perfect timing and in good health.

Here are a few additional prayer needs for us:

Starting in December, the Christian Union at Yale staff will be an official recognized chaplaincy at Yale.  We’re excited about this for several reasons:  this facilitates easier meet-ups with students in residential college areas, this will help us be more abreast of University policy and happenings, and will also deepen and broaden our network as we seek a longer-term view of ministry here.  To date, our primary points of contact with the University have been through student leaders, but now we’ll have more direct connection and interaction at the staff level, and we’re excited for that.  Pray that we’ll be the exemplary salt-and-light witnesses in our spheres as we’re always challenging the students to be.  Also pray that this will open up more new doors for ministry and partnership opportunities that we have not seen or had before.

Continue to pray for follow-up from the Open Forum event with Ravi Zacharias on October 10th.  If you haven’t seen the Youtube video, please watch it (see last month’s prayer email), but we have talked to many students who were positively impacted by it, and one student in particular is right at the “threshold” of faith on the heels of this.  Keep praying for God to leverage this forum not only as a catalyst for first-time belief, but also as a tool to embolden our own students to more confident witnesses and apologists in their everyday activities.

Finally, many of you understand the stressful academic push that students face between Thanksgiving and Christmas!  Pray for our students as they diligently apply themselves to final exams, papers, projects, and presentations.  May God give them great success!  Pray also that they will not wane in their desire or practice of seeking God’s face in this time, but that their times of both private and group devotion would only be sweeter, stronger and more life-giving than they imagined (our Co-Presidents will be leading the students through a series of “Advent Challenges” to seek the Lord — pray that more students would press into prayer through these).  Pray for God to “make a way where there seems to be no way”, and also that “whatever they do, they would work at it with all their heart as if working for the Lord and not for men."

Thank you for your commitment to partner with us in prayer — we are grateful for you!

Clay Cromer
Ministry Director
Christian Union at Yale

Please note: if you would like to receive regular updates on how to pray for Christian Union's work at Yale, please email prayer@christianunion.org.