On September 11, at 7 A.M. in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a single junior-high girl stood at the base her school’s flagpole.
“Do you want me to stand with you?” her mother asked. “No, I’ve got to do this myself,” the young lady said, adding, “After all Jesus did for me, I can do this for him.”
More than 1 million students joined in nationally for “See You at the Pole—National Day of Student Prayer.” The event was patterned after last year’s “See You at the Pole,” which occurred in Texas and drew about 45,000 students in 12,000 Texas junior- and senior-high schools. That event was the brainchild, in part, of Chuck Flowers, youth evangelism associate for the Baptist General Conference of Texas.
Several groups joined forces with the Southern Baptists to promote this year’s national event, including Focus on the Family, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth for Christ, the Evangelical Free Church, and the National Network of Youth Ministries.
Students met at their schools’ flagpoles and prayed for about five minutes or more for their teachers, fellow students, and their own ministries. Flowers says students are made bolder as they unite with other believers they may not have known were in their schools. Flowers emphasizes that the movement is student-led. The strategy is to encourage Christian students to be bold in expressing their faith at school. The net effect is a positive expression of Christ to the school, he says.
As one group of students in Columbus, Mississippi, was praying for their teachers, seven teachers were so moved by the prayers that they continued to pray at the pole after the students left. A senior at Carns High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, was delighted by the solidarity with other Christian students she felt during the event. “I didn’t know some of them were believers,” she said.
The national event was not without its more sobering side, however. Two high-school girls in Massac County in southern Illinois were arrested on charges of “mob action” by the county sheriff’s department at the urging of their principal. The two were eventually released. Flowers said another “See You at the Pole” is scheduled for September 16, 1992.
