1,200 Students Stake 70 Crosses as Symbols of Passion and Prayer

About 1,200 college students from across the nation gathered at the LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the National Collegiate Week celebration

About 1,200 college students from across the nation gathered at the LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the National Collegiate Week celebration, on Aug. 3-9.

The conference featured popular speaker Jons Randles, who urged students to develop a passion for Christ.

“This isn't the first generation to have passion,” he said, citing the Vietnam and civil rights generation as an example. "But that generation lost it.

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"God has given the passion back to you in a more spiritual, theological way," he added, according to a LifeWay press release.

As a mark of their passion, the youth gathered in the Glorieta Prayer Garden, and staked more than 70 crosses into the ground.

Each cross, 2-feet high, were covered with prayer requests for the nation, friends and college campuses. Some crosses bore simple pencil-markings, others were ornately adorned with purple cloth or the national flag.

“It helped our group come together in unity,” attendant Jon Watanabe, according to the release. "We’re all fighting the same fight."

A similar cross-mounting event was initiated last year as well. Bill Wade, Lifeway’s national collegiate ministry specialist stated that Lifeway would like to make the cross event "an yearly thing."