A new program created by the Alumni Association called “Wildcats United in Prayer” has been created to connect alumni and students through prayer.

Craig Fisher, associate vice president for advancement and alumni, said that the goal for this program is to allow for another avenue for alumni and students to be connected directly.

“What our goal here is to link our alumni and our students,” Fisher said. “Our alumnus are always interested about what’s going on and how we can bless our students.”

Calling today’s climate “unprecedented”, the alumni association approached this knowing that many students are struggling physically and emotionally in ways they haven’t seen in a long time.

“We wanted to find a way to keep our alumni engaged right now especially in this avenue of ‘We’re in one of the most unprecedented, stressful, weird times that we’ve ever been, what’s one way we can bless our students?,'” Fisher said. “So, we planned to pray for them.”

The program will connect students directly with an alumnus/alumna with whom they can share any prayer requests they have.

“Our focus now is to link a student with an alumna so that student knows ‘I’ve got this person praying for me’ for the rest of the school year,” Fisher said.

Fisher said that, although registration is not over with, students have already begun to submit their prayer requests in.

“Plenty of students have already put in prayer requests so we can tell the alumnus ‘Hey, this is exactly what students are needing right now,'” Fisher said.

Because students and their prayer partners will stay connected throughout the school year, Fisher said the alumni association has come up with ways to allow those connections to stay intact.

“There will be touch points such as in the spring where we’ll ask the students if there are any other things that they would like to send to their prayer partner,” Fisher said. “There’ll be a portal for the students to send in additional prayer requests so they can continue that connection.”

Mandy Collum, senior alumni and university relations officer, said that she is confident that God is going to work in big ways through this program.

“I have big expectations for what will happen,” Collum said. “I think that this is going to a different level where alumni are taking ownership of connecting to our students in this way and I feel like God is going to do big things during this time.”

Registration for students and alumni is available at acu.edu/united until Nov. 6 with notifications regarding prayer partners to be sent out by mid-November.