Yale University

Dear Prayer Partners,

As always, we give thanks to God for your ongoing support. As I write this, we are looking forward to an outreach event this afternoon: a screening of the film Emanuel and conversation with producer Dimas Salaberrios, a long-time friend of Christian Union. While the event will already have taken place by the time you are reading this, please pray that the conversation would continue and that hearts would continue to be stirred and drawn to the Lord by the film's powerful witness to the Spirit of forgiveness.

Dear Prayer Partners,

I deeply appreciate you and all the prayers that you have offered to the Lord on our behalf in 2019!

As you may know, every Christian Union Bible Course on every campus studied Colossians this fall. The theme of Thanksgiving resounds throughout Paul’s letter. As this holiday season can easily be filled with unchecked expectations and the strangest of insecurities, I encourage all of you who know and love God to enter into the Christmas season “already full”. Full of joy with the good news that God has lifted the crushing burden of sin off our shoulders. Full of the abundant life Christ has given us in exchange. Full of many good moments with family, friends, and members of Christ’s body. Fully assured in all the will of God — that he is working out holiness in you and bringing to more maturity in Him.

Dear Prayer Partners,

I hope this update finds you well! Thank you for praying for our requests last month — God has been answering student’s requests on the prayer board, our alumni panel was a big hit, and students have been taking next steps of faith since the fall retreat, particularly in the areas of seeking God.

“… if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard …” Colossians 1:23

Dear Prayer Partners,

Praise be to Christ Jesus, the only sure foundation upon which we stand here at Yale! This semester, we're seeing in Colossians how the only way to continue in the Christian life is the same way that we began in the Christian life—by grace, through faith!

Good afternoon prayer partners,

We are nearing the end of our 4-week freshmen outreach, and we have welcomed with great joy a new crop of young men and women who want to know, love and pursue God here.

This last month has been a season of testing and trial; a mixture of pangs of discouragement combined with moments of joy and delight. Looking back, we are thankful for each of the new students God has brought into the ministry and for each gospel exposure, touch of kindness, and warm welcome we’ve been able to extend to the class of 2023. It’s not lost on me that our strength for this task came daily through the ministry of prayer.

As the pressure of the semester begins to increase, I ask that you’d pray for protection over our community from any of Satan’s classic schemes of gossip, disunity, or grumbling. Rather, pray that we would “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience” - Colossians 3:12

I also ask that you pray for God to move and be glorified in our midst during our Fall Retreat at the Incarnation Center, 11-13 October. There’s an appropriately-high expectation amongst our students that God is on the move and desiring to give us more of himself.

Thank you for your prayers. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you all!

Warmly,

Clay Cromer
Ministry Director
Christian Union Lux

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.

Greetings from Yale!

As I drove through town yesterday, there was a distinct increase in activity as students are moving back into their dorms and preparing to start classes next week. Our own ministry team and students are in the middle of Pre-retreat, where they are preparing their hearts and minds to welcome the incoming Frosh class with the love of Christ and invite them into our community. Please pray for their time together as they seek the Lord and plan events and strategies to welcome a new class of students.

Pray that the Spirit would grip them to love God whole-heartedly and to walk with bold faith. As they return to campus, a fast-paced season awaits. Along with tackling another semester at Yale, they’ll be navigating a robust line-up of events and following up with students they meet. Pray they would be fruitful as they intentionally seek out other students to offer friendship and the good news of the Kingdom.

Pray for our ministry team as they set up new Bible Courses and begin mentoring relationships with students, that the Lord would sustain them and they would be sensitive to the Spirit’s leading as they navigate conversations with new people.

Pray for the students of Yale at large - that in this season of transition and change, the Spirit would be at work in their hearts to ready them for an encounter with the Lord Jesus.

Thank you for your prayers on our behalf and for the students of Yale!

Joy,

Callie Cromer
Administrative Assistant
Christian Union Lux

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.

Dear Prayer Partners,

Blessings to you in the name of Jesus! Thanks for praying for us regularly. I’ll maintain that our primary strategy in ministry here is what Paul spells out as the “communications equipment” of God’s armor, saying in Ephesians 1:18 “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints”.

We come again to the end of a semester. As I write this, a few students have finished all their work and are packing to go home, while others are still gearing up for the push through final exams, papers, and projects. Please pray that our students receive grace, not only to finish well, but that they would turn to their heavenly Father in times of pressure. Truly, He carries us through when our strength and wisdom fail; and by trusting in Him, our hearts find rest even where others are crippled with anxiety. As the psalmist says: “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (Ps 4:8, ESV).

Pray that our students rest well over the break: that they sleep well, spend quality time with family and friends, exercise their bodies and have fun—those things we all know to do, and which can be difficult to keep in the balance with busy lives, especially for young and ambitious students—and that they will seek God’s face diligently. It’s all too easy, when the structure of a regular routine is interrupted for a few weeks, to lose the momentum of positive habits that we’ve built up. Pray that our students will use the break not to sit around aimlessly, but to increase the time and energy they devote to prayer and reading the Scriptures.

And let us all—students, Christian Union faculty, and you, our partners in prayer—give thanks for the abundance of good work God has done in our midst this semester. “Blessed are those who keep His testimonies…” (Ps 119:2). We’ve seen a deepening of fellowship and unity in our community; we’ve welcomed in a wonderfully eager and engaged freshman class, who continue to bring in new friends even at semester’s end; and we’ve seen movement along every stage of the discipleship spectrum, from the un-churched exploring and discovering the gospel for the first time to established believers deepening their faith and growing in knowledge and love. God has been good, as He is and always will be, and He is worthy of our thanks and praise.

To you also, whose prayers are precious to God and a help to us, my co-workers and I extend our sincere gratitude. May the Lord bless you and keep you in Christ Jesus, until he comes again in glory to reign forever and ever.

Michael Racine
Ministry Fellow
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.

Thank you all for your continuing prayers in support of God’s work through Christian Union at Yale. The Lord is indeed moving here in beautiful ways. We celebrated as one of our freshmen, who made a faith commitment in high school, passed through the waters of baptism this past Sunday. Another student came to faith after a spiritual encounter two weeks ago. Still others are actively exploring, drawing near, and on the verge of giving their lives to Jesus. We’ve even had non-Christians bringing their friends to our Friday dinner and Leadership Lecture Series.

Dear Friends,

Thank you for continuing to remember us in prayer before the Lord Jesus Christ! I’m pleased to share that Fall Retreat (Oct 12-14) was the encouraging, faith-building experience that we had hoped it would be! We brought 28 students to the Incarnation Center to reconnect with God and with one another, and evangelist Chris White (Yale ’87) taught richly from God’s Word and his own life. Saturday night was particularly powerful as the Holy Spirit flooded the room during our time of worship, and God’s Spirit helped staff and students pray over and minister to one another. I had a strong impression right before the retreat that the young men and women in our ministry would begin to live more like “brothers and sisters” in Christ as a result of the weekend. Progress towards that end was evident in group times, play times, meal times, and we all agreed that God had graced us with much deeper sense of “openness” as guards had come down in response to His work in hearts.