Amid all the chaos of the world and campus life, some Iowa State students are still finding the time to focus on God and prayer.

The ISU prayer wall was started last spring by Kent Jaeger, member of the Salt Company, a Christian campus organization, and it has been strong ever since.

“The concept is basically to saturate the campus with prayer. All Christian organizations come together to pray — to pray for other people, the community and for the campus,” said Jeff Dodge, leader of the Salt Company.

Three main Christian organizations started the prayer wall last year — Salt Company, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Campus Crusade for Christ. These organizations were recently joined by a fourth, New Life Fellowship, said Mike VanZee, one of the original organizers of the wall.

Each student signs up for a 20-minute prayer slot, and then it is on their honor to uphold it.

“We are basically praying for three things — revival among believers, unity among the different Christian ministries and reaching current unbelievers with the Gospel,” VanZee said.

All three find a positive outcome in the idea of praying as a whole.

“There is a heightened awareness on the part of the people to prayer,” Dodge said. “And anything that can rally people toward God and prayer is a good thing.”

Prayer is also important for other reasons, VanZee said.

“Prayer has been an essential part of post revivals in our country — it allows us to focus on praying for God’s working, so he will open our hearts and renew our Gospel,” he said.

However, a call to prayer on such a grand scale is not always easy.

“The hardest thing is organizing many different groups and having to regroup and reorganize everybody according to schedule,” Dodge.said.

Martin agreed. “The biggest problem is with scheduling,” he said. “We go throughout the whole semester, and each semester we redo it so people can sign up for different times.”

So far, involvement with the wall has been successful, and the wall has been attracting people to prayer.

“We had really good involvement last year with most everyone,” VanZee said.

Martin said three-fourths of the time slots were filled last semester. He said participants are mainly students, but efforts are being made to open them up to various churches and the community.

Various organizations with different religious backgrounds also are coming together to organize the prayer wall.

“I trust that God can bring our groups together, and we can worship him together, because we all believe in the same God,” VanZee said.