“I just want to see it happen!” exclaims junior art major Maggie Hazen as she sits across the table outside Common Grounds. “It’s so funny because all this stuff has just been thrown into my lap. I haven’t done anything except for talk to people.”

But Hazen is talking to the right people about her big vision for Biola’s campus.

“When she said ‘We’re going to meet with Dr. Barry Corey,’ I thought it was a joke,” says her friend Gabby Cacanindin, a sophomore business major.

“Oh no, he Facebook’ed me!” laughs Hazen.

So after a wall post from DBC and a call to his secretary, the two girls had an appointment with Biola’s president to discuss their proposal.

For the past year, Hazen and Cacanindin have been dreaming about bringing a 24-hour prayer room to Biola’s campus. They envision it as a place where students can go to pray, be prayed for, worship God, and experience community with fellow students.

“I know for me personally, it’s hard to find a spot where it’s just you and God,” says Cacanindin. “When you need prayer, where do you go?”

“The benches outside the library?” suggests Hazen, doubtfully.

Both girls recognize the need for a specific space where students can encounter God.
Although the quaint Rose of Sharon chapel is open to students 24 hours, its pews, stained glass windows and traditional decorations contribute to certain social norms. Hazen and Cacanindin would like to create an environment that promotes artistic freedom of expression as well. The new prayer room would allow people to engage in prayer and worship on many different levels.

“The concept of the 24/7 prayer room is that there will be times of intimacy and times of inner quiet, but then there will also be times of corporate prayer where you can play drums and paint and draw on the walls,” Hazen explains.

Though Hazen and Cacanindin have discussed the possibility of renovating the Rose of Sharon prayer chapel, many students are attached to this landmark campus feature and don’t want to see it changed. So, in their presentation to President Corey last month, the girls proposed adding on to the back of the Student Union Building in a currently unused patio space outside the Collegium.

See these locations on this interactive campus map.

But the question on everyone’s mind now is: Are Biola students ready for something like this?

“I don’t want to build a prayer room at all if no one’s going to pray in it,” Hazen says.

24/7 prayer rooms were offered at the Torrey Conference last November and Missions Conference earlier this month, but they were not used around the clock. In 2007, Biola’s SMU sponsored a campus-wide 40 days of prayer project, but some of the prayer rooms were empty.

But Cacanindin says she has seen growth in the student body since then. When she put up post-it notes for prayer requests in her floor’s bathroom, the walls were soon covered with responses.

“People are asking for it,” she said. “They’re asking for encounters with God.”

“People are so hungry,” Hazeen agrees. “They are just sick of being lonely and depressed and alienated and isolated and forgotten. When you pray with people, you don’t feel that at all.”

Biola’s progress towards a 24/7 prayer room lines up with a larger movement around the nation and the world. The organization 24-7 Prayer International wants 2010 to be an unbroken year of prayer on college campuses. The group’s Campus America initiative is calling all U.S. colleges to pray, and 24/7 prayer rooms are foundational to this effort.

The International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City is a prayer meeting that has been going on for the past 10 years and is a source of inspiration for both Hazen and Cacanindin. The girls are not alone in their dreams of spiritual renewal for this generation.

“Dr. Barry Corey wants this; he wants to see revival,” says Hazen.
And with the green light from Biola’s president, the girls are moving forward with their dream. The next step is to clear the proposal with AS and SMU, and then pitch the idea to the Student Development department.

“We don’t know how it’s going to happen, just that it’s going to happen,” says Cacanindin.

“It’s going to get done. I’m not worried at all because this is on God’s heart,” says Hazen. “I know that for sure.”