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A prayer for higher education

The following prayer Interceding for Those in Higher Education is an adaptation from a prayer written by Emily Umulis and posted on the Women Scholars & Professionals website. We are using it at the first GCF of the year.

Lord, you are present to your people throughout the world. You have called us to learn, love, and serve within the universities where you’ve placed us. Hear us now as we bring them to you.

Lord, we pray…

  1. For the leaders in higher education, including presidents, provosts, governing councils, deans, department heads, and all who manage internal operations and external relationships that influence the flourishing of the University of Toronto: give them wisdom as they navigate complex systems. May the decisions they make and the actions they perform nurture the well-being of the university and the lives of the people within it.
    • We pray, both aloud and in silence, for the leaders we know:
    • “Lord, hear our prayer.”
  2. For faculty who teach, mentor students, conduct research, and take part in various service obligations balancing day-to-day tasks with pressure to achieve in an increasingly competitive environment: give them insight as they order their days, create boundaries between work and life, and prioritize the demands on their time. Fill them with wisdom and grace as they bring words and influence into people’s lives and engage in research that furthers our understanding of your world.
    • We pray, both aloud and in silence, for the faculty members we know and work with:
    • “Lord, hear our prayer.”
  3. For graduate students who often work countless hours in solitude, studying a topic few people in the world understand, and feel caught between their own needs or desires and the power structures in which they live and work: give them peace and hope. Fill them with a sense of your presence and connect them with others in meaningful ways.
    • We pray, both aloud and in silence, for the graduate students we know and work with:
    • “Lord, hear our prayer.”
  4. For undergraduate students who are often both excited and overwhelmed as they navigate new independence and spaces of need: meet their longing for beauty with your presence, ground their identity in your love, and breathe your Spirit into all the ways they long to impact the world.
    • We pray, both aloud and in silence, for the undergrads we know and work with:
    • “Lord, hear our prayer.”
  5. For those who serve the University without long-term titles, including adjunct faculty, operations managers, grounds and cafeteria workers, who navigate power systems in which they are not at the top and serve in positions that are often overlooked: provide financial stability, open their eyes to see the impact they have, and speak truth and justice into the systems that affect their lives.
    • We pray, both aloud and in silence, for the we know or have seen at work on campus.
    • “Lord, hear our prayer.”

Lord, we bring to you the places where you have called us and the people there. Fill us with your Spirit, bless the work of our hands, and make us to be a redeeming influence in our classrooms, departments, and universities. May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.”

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The Crisis of International Students in Canada?

“On Friday, November 14, 2025, Global Scholars Canada hosted its 3rd Annual Word & World Symposium entitled “The Crisis of International Students in Canada and Christ’s Call to Peacemaking.” International students make up 30% of Canada’s enrolment in colleges and universities, which has created a complex of crises in Canada, triggering a largely negative response from the Canadian public and significant policy shifts from the Canadian government.”

One question raised was this: are international students a crisis, or do they present Canadians with an opportunity? Specifically, is there an opportunity here to serve, to learn, and to make peace in our troubled world?”

Speakers at the event included:

  • Dr Ruth Hayhoe, “50 years of Student Exchange”
  • Yixin Jiang, “Intensification of Institutional Procedures”
  • Isaac Bekoe, “A Personal Story, coming from Ghana”
  • JesusMiracle Chiadika, “Mental Health and Mental Illness”
  • Dr. Gang Li, “Sojourners Within Your Gates,”
  • Dr Grace Karram, “Off-Campus Supports”

See summaries of the talks, including responses, at The Crisis of International Students in Canada: An Opportunity for Peace in a Troubled World? by Peter J. Schuurman

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Hope as the best sort of apologetics

Gretchen Ronnevik has the following encouraging words for parents as they prepare to send their children off to university. The words of fear she names below, the warning that you might ‘lose your faith at university’ are ones that multiple students in the ministry have expressed hearing from well-intentioned Christians.

“After launching two of our six kids into adulthood, I’ve been astounded at the things other adult Christians have said to my children as they left our house to pursue the vocations God had prepared for them. There’s a consistent theme of fear and discouragement: If you go to that college or move to this place or aren’t super careful, you’ll lose your faith.

These statements come from a place of genuine and justified concern. Many young Christians go to college and never return to church. We’ve all heard of a young person who’s moved out of the house, begun dating an unbeliever, and rejected their faith to live a different life. We know the data. We know the stories. And we are filled with fear. So we impress that fear on our children, urging them to draw their apologetic swords.

But however good the intent, these warnings communicated something more to my kids: Have fear, not hope. Your faith is delicate. It’s fragile. It’s glass. At any moment, it could shatter forever.

… When people ask us about our hope in Christ, that is the surest thing we know, and we can be ready with an answer. We can be ready to explain our hope—our confidence that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us, our trust that we can’t be separated from his love.

I don’t ignore the data about loss of faith in young adulthood, but instead of speaking fear and doubt to our kids as they leave home, we equip them by speaking hope and assurance over them. …

Don’t be afraid. Your children’s salvation does not rest in their own hands; it rests in the hands of Jesus. It always has, and it always will. Their hope—and ours—is not in having the most articulate answer or the government leaders we want, getting into the right school, having our professors’ or bosses’ approval, or leading a suffering-free, easy life. 

Our hope comes from Christ, and Christ alone. Our hope is not in the strength of our faith but the object of our faith. There is nothing more certain we can give our kids.”

Taken from Emptying the Nest in Hope, not Fear – Christianity Today, September 25, 2024.

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Prayer for Students

The following prayer was written by “Daniel Jones, InterVarsity Artist-in-Residence, who led at the student-focused evening service at Knox on October 15th” and taken from the Knox Presbyterian Church‘s weekly email.

Please join us in praying:

for the new students who have arrived on GTA campuses this fall, that they would find places of belonging, that growing friendships and relationships would solidify.
for returning students, that Jesus would protect, and walk with them to flourish and thrive, and lead them to be people of welcome for first years and new students.
for those curious and wrestling and intrigued by Jesus, that He would meet them and find them in their questions and wonderings, and for students who aren’t yet interested in Jesus to encounter Him, that they would make unexpected connections in unexpected places, like conversations over food, or in the midst of study, that will change the trajectory of their lives.
for the campus fellowships on each campus, that Jesus would build communities that would gather God’s people to be equipped and fed by your Word and then sent out to serve those in their midst.
for student leaders of campus fellowships, for boldness and courage in their love and sharing of faith, and for wisdom in conversations, for generosity of hospitality and the ability to share the Word and teach scripture through bible study.
for Christian students, that they would have a willingness to go to the edges of campus, to the uncomfortable places, to love and serve and care for people who may not be like them for the sake of the kingdom.
for faculty and campus workers of faith to be blessing and light, that they would share stories of faith and offer wisdom, and that Jesus would strengthen and empower them.
for the all Campus Ministry staff and volunteers, that Jesus would encourage them and renew their vision; provide partners to love and serve alongside them; grow profound love in them for the students that they know and for those whom they have yet to meet; give them endurance to persevere in the hard seasons, and gratitude to celebrate and share the good stories of your faithfulness.
for all the campuses in the GTA, that they would be places from which God’s people are sent out – into life and into work – and that they would reflect and bring glory to Jesus where ever He sends them!”

Amen.

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Less victim, less pressure, more grace, more hope.

Jonathan Haidt, made infamous for his article on trigger warnings and coddling of the American Mind, was recently in the news again concerning the well-being of teens and young adults (see article, and Haidt’s own words in article1 and article2). The argument once again points to social media as playing a significant role in the well-being of youth (see also Twenge’s now famous article on whether smartphones have destroyed a generation).

Another part of Haidt’s argument about the decreased well-being of young adults is his articulation that certain ways of thinking, “say identifying with, or privileging victims and a victim status, tends to disempower people because it puts someone else in charge of your life.” (Robinson) While we should acknowledge that many of us, and some more than others for various reasons, have been and continue to be victims of unjust behaviour and/or institutions, the problem comes not from recognizing that we are victims, but by allowing being a victim to become one’s sense of identity. Victims have limited agency and there is limited focus on resiliency. Without conversations about resilience and agency, people are more likely to become depressed.

While this is an interesting conversation to be had in terms of how such thinking is affecting young adults, especially at university, it’s also an interesting conversation in wondering, like Robinson, “if there is some cross-over to all this in churches.” Have we lost our sense of agency in the church? Or, more accurately, have we forgotten God’s agency?

Robinson notes that in the “more liberal and progressive church context, there’s a lot of emphasis on the problems of the world, and on what you should be doing about it. Which begins to sound a lot like law, not gospel. It’s all about what you should do or feel or think. If God is in the picture, it’s about what God needs us to do, demands that we do. There’s little emphasis on what God has done or is doing on our behalf or on God’s capacity to bring good out of or in the face of evil. So it’s kind of all on us.”

That sounds exhausting and debilitating.

In a world where so many are exhausted and overwhelmed, when we feel like we have too little agency and too much responsibility, church can’t be a place that tries to give us more of that. Church – and all Christian organizations – need to be places of grace and hope.

Please pray with us that we in the ministry might indeed be one of those places where we extend grace and help people hope.