By Peng Shi

On the evening of Feb. 6—MIT’s registration day for the spring semester—MIT’s campus Christian groups united together in praise to kickoff the semester.

Remarkably, almost all campus groups helped to plan and put together the event: the worship, setup, and prayer teams included members of nine different fellowships—MIT Intervarsity (MIT-IV), Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), Greek Intervarsity (GreekIV), Asian Christian Fellowship (ACF), Asian Baptist Student Koinonia (ABSK), Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF), Chinese Evangelical Fellowship (CEF), Gospel Choir, and Cross Products. Professor Cullen Buie from MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department preached from Matthews 7 on building our house on the rock by putting Christ’s words into practice, so we can withstand whatever storm the new semester heaps on us. The evening ended with a time dedicated to confessing our sins to one another and reconciling relationships. 

As I was a part of the intercessory team, much of the event for me took place away from the actual worship, as our team prayed before the event during the practices and the setup and during the event at a separate location. As a first year graduate student, this was my first time as part of such a prayer team, and it was for me a great encouragement to get to know brothers and sisters from different fellowships, different backgrounds and with slightly different ways of relating to God, yet praying with one spirit for the event, as we together lifted up each member of the worship and setup teams by name and asked the Lord to do a mighty work of unity, healing, and personal revival among all who attend. It turned out that many others were praying for us as well: a sister in Singapore joined our prayer team during the event by Skype; Justice House of Prayer (JHOP) dedicated much of an evening service to pray for this event; a church in Vancouver somehow heard about us through a friend of an organizer and was praying for us. The amount of prayer dedicated to this event was eye-opening for me. Praying with the team also made me feel a lot more connected with the Body of Christ at MIT.

What made the event most meaningful for me was the focus on reconciliation. As a requirement of being on the prayer team, I had to make sure to confess my sins before the event and reconcile my relationships. As I searched my heart the weekend before, I found that tucked away in a corner is some amorphous bitterness toward a brother, a vague but real sense of tension hard to define exactly. I realized that I had some minor grievances which I stored up and allowed to fester, and which mixed with some of my jealousies and past hurts in similar situations had grown into a much bigger bitterness. Before this I made excuses for myself that it was not so big that I need to deal with it, or that the original grievances were so small that talking about it would be awkward; but this requirement to reconcile gave me increased conviction, and thankfully I got the chance to talk with this brother and by God’s grace experienced this wonderful reconciliation. I felt such a burden lifted; it was so freeing. This by itself would have made the whole thing worthwhile.

Beside my personal reconciliation, I also had the privilege to see reconciliation taking place among the bigger Body. At the event, it was awesome to see that once an organizer called for confession and reconciliation, despite this being a new concept and many would probably feel very uncomfortable about this, people in the room gradually all started moving, many to find specific people to apologize to and reconcile with. To me this was the most beautiful music that night—more poignant than when we united our voices earlier in singing praise. For in this blended-together chatter of reconciling relationships, I saw the most genuine and undeniable testimony of “one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Another great encouragement for me related to the event was participating in and witnessing the unity of the worship team. Although the team came from many different fellowships which usually seldom meet together, and although almost half the team were freshmen undergrads who probably had little experience as part of any worship team before, by the end of only three practice sessions they had bonded much as a team. The worship leader especially focused on building up the team rather than on the actual performance, so that above all each group member can grow through this experience and better worship God with their lives. As part of the prayer team I was included in the worship team’s email list, and it was a wonderful surprise that even after the event was over, someone on the worship team still emailed the list to share personal burdens, and immediately people responded to arrange a time to meet up and pray. I also had the privilege to take part in a gathering of the worship team 3 weeks after the event, in which I heard many powerful testimonies of how this experience made bigger impacts on their lives, in some cases being a key catalyst to a commitment to return to seriously follow Jesus, to read the Bible more seriously and to keep God as the center despite the many conflicting demands at MIT.

In light of these experiences, I look forward to seeing what God would continue to do at MIT, as he works powerfully to unite the Body, reconcile relationships, and reinvigorate the life of every Christian to be a better vessel of His glory, so that God’s light may shine bright in this place and many souls may come to know Jesus and grow in relationship with God.