Young heads bowed across Mid-Missouri Sept. 27 to lift up heartfelt prayers and straightforward petitions, while encircling the flagpole on their various school campuses before classes started.
The national See You At the Pole event announced the 2017 theme as "Fix Our Eyes," drawing from Hebrews 12:2.
At Russellville Elementary School, nearly 30 students gathered for a few student-led prayers before dismissing to classes.
At High Point School, nearly the entire student body gathered in front of the school to pray together, led by the seventh- and eighth-grade students. Then, they sang "Amazing Grace."
In California, about 65 youth and their families attended a rally the evening of Sept. 27, where the Rev. Jeremy Barnard, pastor of Lebanon Baptist Church, spoke on Acts 12 and music was provided by Zachary Holliday and Brooks Crawford.
More than 30 California elementary and middle school student gathered at 7 a.m. Sept. 28 around the flagpole and memorial arch.
The prayer gathering grew out of a DiscipleNow weekend in 1990, after which a group of teenagers from Burleson, Texas, were burdened for their friends and compelled to pray one night on each of three school campuses.
That summer, Texas youth leaders challenged thousands of youth to follow that example, meeting at respective school flagpoles on the same day. More than 45,000 teenagers in four states participated Sept. 12, 1990.
A year later, an estimated one million students gathered for the second annual See You At The Pole from Massachusetts to California.
In a few years, the movement crossed the globe. Students from more than 60 countries have participated.
Bible clubs, weekly prayer meetings, and other ministries have begun on campuses as a result of the event.
See You At The Pole is set for the last Wednesday in September. And the week of, this year Sept. 24-30, has been set aside at the Global Week of Student Prayer.
More than 3 million students, from elementary through college, participated this year in more than 20 countries.
The First Amendment guarantees students the right to pray individually or in groups on school grounds during any non-instructional time, according to the Liberty Counsel.
"All students may express their opinions verbally or in writing before or after school, in between classes, during the lunch hour or on the playing field, according to the federal guidelines on prayer in public schools," a release said.
See You At The Pole is a Constitutionally-protected form of free speech, affirmed by the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision Westside Community Schools v. Mergens and the 1995 Department of Education guidelines for "appropriate religious expression on school grounds."
Events with religious content before or after school are on the same terms as other non-curriculum activities on school premises, the See You At the Pole website said.
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