October 29, 2026
FORT WORTH, Texas — The Day of Prayer held outside the Naylor Student Center at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on Oct. 20 drew upwards of 200 participants and signaled a fresh vitality as the campus community celebrated the Lord’s answers to prayer in recent years.
Trustees on campus for their regularly-scheduled October meeting gathered with students, staff, and faculty to pray for specific requests as they stopped at various points along the walk. Each of the seminary’s schools of education and its various departments provided prayer requests at each station.
Bryan Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church Roanoke, Virginia, and a first-year trustee, noted that the optimistic spirit on campus is due in part to the clearing of the school’s debt and an upward-trending student enrollment under President David S. Dockery.
“I think the concerted effort of prayer, especially led by Dr. Dockery and those who are serving with him, has not only been honoring to the Lord, but the Lord has honored those prayers,” Smith said.
Tables circled the campus lawn where participants stopped to pray. Some prayed silently. Others formed circles as they voiced their prayers.
The event opened with a brief time of worship and concluded with a panel discussion on prayer moderated by Coleman Ford, associate professor of humanities at Texas Baptist College, with Richard Ross, senior professor of student ministry, and Dean Sieberhagen, dean of the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, as panelists.
Madison Grace, provost, noted the impact the emphasis on prayer has made.
“Any momentum we’ve had is 100 percent due to the favor of the Lord,” Grace said. “Our primary focus is on prayer that is made in the right posture before God, and that is dependent on God. This is His seminary. We are called to pray in our role as servants of the Kingdom.”
The seminary family rallied to Dockery’s leadership to make prayer a consistent part of campus life. The earliest effort continues with faculty, staff, and students gathering on Mondays in the Rotunda of the B.H. Carroll Memorial Complex to pray together.
The example set by Dockery, who “led on bended knee,” encouraged others’ commitment to pray, Grace added.
Melana Monroe, director of prayer ministries, noted that the fall prayer walk is one of the “many threads in the fabric of prayer” on the seminary campus. Other groups meet on a regular basis to pray. In the spring semester, one chapel service is dedicated to prayer as a community.
“We pray together, and we bond and love each other,” Monroe said. She added, “Everybody has realized that this has been God’s grace that has pulled [Southwestern] up, … morale is sky high.”
Monroe said that when she stepped into her role four years ago, she enlisted the support of churches, the Woman’s Mission Union, Baptist state conventions, and other organizations to join Southwestern in prayer.
“Everywhere I went that had a prayer ministry, I asked them to pray,” Monroe said. “And everybody did, of course.”
Fiona Shannon, a Texas Baptist College student pursuing a Bachelor of Music in worship studies, said she is a beneficiary of the seminary’s focus on prayer.
“[The prayer walk] is equipping me and helping me grow personally in prayer,” Shannon said. “I know that we are called to gather together to pray. … We can talk to the Lord about anything.”
Lunch was provided for participants in the Student Center following the prayer walk during the panel discussion about prayer.
The panel discussed ways of keeping prayer time fresh, such as praying Scripture and the Psalms. Sieberhagen noted that praying Scripture transforms prayer with “new ways, new words, and new thoughts.”
Unlike other religions, the Christian faith is relational and personal, and believers can speak to God as Father, the panelists reminded listeners.
In closing, Ross urged attendees, while they are young, to search Scripture and allow Scripture to convince them of God’s goodness and faithfulness in order to be prepared for moments of crisis.
“Once you settle that, then the rest of your life you interpret everything that’s going on in your life in light of that. That’s your filter,” Ross said. When heartache comes, a believer will be able say to God, “‘You are good, and You know what You’re doing. … Help me fit in with your ways and purposes.’ That’s fundamental.”
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