“There are some things every parent of a middle school student wants for their child,” said Southside Middle School assistant principal Rod Ruth.
“I want my kid safe, I want my kid to learn, I want my kid to be successful, I want my kid to be able to stand against the outside forces that are trying to get my kid to grow up too fast,” he says. “And if someone wants to come to my kid’s school and pray for these things for my child, I appreciate it.”
About 90 such people did exactly that on Aug. 12, answering the call to prayer of Louanne Stewart, mission and ministries development director for the Florence Association – who was herself answering the request for prayer Ruth made to her just two weeks earlier.
“It blew us out of the water, that the school administration asked us to come and pray for their students and teachers,” says Stewart. “I feel very humbled and honored that God would trust me to get this organized and then be part of praying for these children. It was just very exciting.”
When Ruth first approached Stewart, she assumed he was asking simply for a prayerwalk around the perimeter of the school. But he wanted much more.
“I once visited a church where someone had sat in every chair before the service to pray for the person who would sit there,” he recalled. “And I did the same thing at the start of each school year, when I taught in the classroom for seven years. And I knew the difference prayerwalks had made at Francis Marion University.”
So he clarified his request: They wanted people to walk the halls, sit in desks, and touch lockers while praying for students, teachers, and administrators.
Stewart put together a prayer guide with general requests for administrators and teachers (listed by name), children, and parents, as well as specific requests that some teachers had passed on to Ruth. Working with the school administrators, she organized three prayerwalk sessions throughout the day to best accommodate the most people. (Two youth groups came on Wednesday night.) The prayerwalk was held before the school year began, with no students present, and most teachers away at a training event.
During the afternoon session, she was puzzled to see a bus pull into the parking lot from Bethea Baptist Retirement Center, and then amazed when she realized they were there to pray.
“My eyes filled with tears to think that these precious seniors cared enough about teens to come and pray,” she says. “A couple of them had to stay in the bus and the chaplain took our prayer guide to them, but the others came in and even walked the halls, canes and all.”
Jeff Cockrell, the Bethea Center chaplain, said that when they returned from the prayerwalk many other residents took copies of the prayer guide to pray on their own.
For his part, Ruth was amazed when one woman, whom he did not know at all, came and prayed specifically for him about a situation he’d not shared with anyone at the school. He also appreciated seeing various denominations represented among those who prayed, and even some former students.
“We are very fortunate in having a great relationship with our school district,” said Stewart. “This prayerwalk was awesome. The teachers and administration were so appreciative. Something so simple, yet so powerful, has made a difference in ways we’ll never know. – SCBC