Since Jesus taught his disciples to pray, Christians have practiced and valued offering prayers for one another. We assure you that the administration, staff, and faculty of Ignite Christian Academy also recognize the value of intercession, and we pray not only for each other but also for all of you who comprise the ICA family at large.
In recent months many of you have begun receiving emails containing a web link and inviting you to log on to that link at a specific date and time to participate in an online class being led by one of our faculty members. These classes are being offered to enhance learning in our various core subjects.
We plan to utilize the same application to enhance our ability to pray for one another. Consider yourself invited to participate in Monday morning prayer. Our prayer sessions will be brief (perhaps seven to ten minutes), but they will be regular, that is, every Monday morning at 8:15 a.m. (CST). Going forward, students using SOO should watch for the Monday Morning Prayer link in SOO Message of the Day. Students using SOS will find the link sent directly to them in SOS. LIFEPAC students who would like the link should contact their ASR if they do not receive an email with the link embedded.
Various faculty members and others here at Ignite Christian Academy will take a turn leading the Monday prayer sessions. At this time, the application will not easily allow us to use audio or to pass leadership to one another. However, there is chat available during the session, which means that those of you who log on and participate will be able to pass along thanksgivings and requests via chat. In fact, you can type in your own brief sentence prayers as you are led, when reading items others share through chat.
Please email your prayer items to your ASR or faculty advisor. Kindly stipulate in your email if you would prefer that names not be mentioned in spoken prayers and in prayer site postings. (See below.) These items will be reviewed by our faculty prayer leaders in their preparations for each Monday morning prayer session. With these online, interactive prayer sessions, we intend to demonstrate Christian love for one another by lifting up one another in timely, intercessory prayer.
We also have a secure network site which includes important proprietary information necessary to fulfilling our various roles in the academy and carrying forward the mission of our school. Included among the common place items you would expect like policies, phone directories, and calendars, etc., is a site called "ICA Prayer Requests."
The prayer requests posted there include items regarding ICA staff and many items from our ICA family at large—that is, from you. As we interact with students and their households—whether as an academy services representative, a faculty member, an advisor, a family advocate or an administrator—we regularly learn about circumstances that call for prayer. When we offer to pray with a parent or a student, that person nearly always welcomes our doing so. Sometimes this leads to an impromptu prayer together over the phone, but always it leads to a new prayer posting on the prayer site.
Sometimes students will include a prayer request in a message to their teachers in Switched-On Online or Switched on Schoolhouse versions of the curriculum: "Please pray for my mom who has surgery tomorrow" or "Please pray for my grandpa who was taken to the hospital last night." Teachers who receive such messages also post them on the prayer site. A new posting on the prayer site leads to automatic alerts going out to all of us at the academy and to many "sentence prayers" being offered to God silently and individually for the student or family.
All of us consider it a profound privilege to be able to pray, sometimes with you personally on the phone, but also for you, as you communicate your items for prayer and for praise via email, chat, messages or the phone. With both excitement and humility, we welcome the possibilities afforded us for developing Christian community across the miles and the time zones that separate us in our distance learning academy.
"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21).