Smith: Doulos First Response offers support, prayer

Students at Ottawa University needing support from their peers can add Doulos First Response to their list of resources.

"It is essentially a prayer chain," Junior Jesse Smith said. "The overall mission of this group is to bring intentional, continual and whole-hearted prayer to the campus."

Smith said he formed the chain off of church prayer chains. He sends out emails and texts to students and faculty to inform them of the chain. Once people respond he passes on the requests and concerns to leaders of the other campus ministry groups who inform their members.

"Prayer in general has just been impressed upon me and it was something on campus that would be beneficial," Smith said. "I wasn't aware of any other prayer chain so it was a need I was fulfilling."

Smith wanted to create a chain that would be effective in already existing campus ministries.

"I kind of borrowed the Doulos group," Smith said. "That group communicates what each group is doing to build up the community of campus ministries so I used that ministry to enact the prayer chain."

Smith approached Campus Pastor Bud McCluney a few weeks ago. McCluney helped Smith get the project started and structure how to enact the system.

"I thought it was a great idea," McCluney said. "You can never go wrong with prayer and to me it's showing the campus we care and we take prayer seriously."

McCluney said he and Smith sat down to work through the process of setting the program up so that submissions could be confidential and names were not being used.

"We just talked it out and spent time to work through it," McCluney said. "Hopefully our staff and students will use it and it will benefit them."

Smith said the way the system is set up students can ask for prayer and support to be sent out in a number of ways. The requests stay within the campus ministries and can be submitted anonymously or as a spoken prayer with no name or specific requests.

"I liked the idea but I wanted to make sure it didn't turn into a gossip chain so I was glad names are taken out" Senior Emily McAfoos said. "I hope people use it because our God is a powerful God."

Students can get involved with the chain by joining a campus ministry group or they can submit requests to Smith via email or calling or texting him at 913-731-9871.