A Time to Worship
Reported By: Ellaynah Brown
The room was flooded with guitar melodies, bowed heads, and hearts attentive to Jesus. All are welcome in this space, free to come and go as they please. Offering a time of peace, reflection, prayer, and worship, The Burn is an annual campus event since March 2018.
The longest student-led event, The Burn lasts 12 hours, beginning at 6 p.m. and ending at 6 a.m. This year, it took place on Jan. 25 in Canyon Commons, bringing students and faculty together to spend time with God. Focusing on drawing attention to God, the event organizers envisioned it as“a ‘grass-roots’ kind of effort by students to intersect our campus' love for God and love for neighbor,” University Pastor Rusty St. Cyr said.
The Burn was introduced to campus by a Spiritual Life Office (SpiL) student chaplain that accompanied what was previously recognized on campus as “Shalom,” a student-led chapel that took place in the evenings.
GFU student Colin Thomas spearheaded this year's event. With the help of several other students, faculty, and SpiL, the all-night event included worship sessions segmented into hour-long sets students could sign up to lead. Looking back, Thomas realized that even when it seemed uncertain whether all of the slots would be filled, everything fell into place.
Thomas’s first experience at The Burn was as a first-year, and it made a lasting impression on him as one of his favorite events. “It’s a really unique worship experience because it's focused on simply being with God rather than doing or learning anything about God and it is entirely made up of people who want to be there,” Thomas said.
Not only does the fact that this event is almost entirely put on by students set it apart from other chapel experiences, but the incentive for attending is also not driven by chapel credit. All who attend have chosen to on their own accord.
Students came and went throughout the night as they participated individually and in community with peers, listening to Bible readings and meditating on God’s word. Thomas described one of his favorite activities in which students wrote prayers for the world on sticky notes and placed them on a painting of the world.
The mic was open to students and faculty to say a prayer over the group as they felt led. The dusk-to-dawn event “focused on prayer, worship, and creative-stations to help reflect and commit ourselves to serving God locally and globally through action, service, and ministry in God's global mission,” St. Cyr said.
After a brief hiatus due to COVID-19, students are determined to keep The Burn going strong, offering the GFU community a space where “everything is helping us to focus on God and his presence in this place,” Thomas said.