At 6:45 a.m. on Oct. 27, current and former students and faculty — including both Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver and former Union President Hyran Barefoot — gathered in the Carl Grant Events Center to celebrate 200 years of God’s faithfulness at the semesterly Community Prayer Breakfast.
As the sun rose, members of the community ate biscuits and coffee while they heard present and past members of Union’s staff reflect on the Lord’s faithfulness over the past 200 years. Speakers included Carla Sanderson, former executive vice president for strategic initiatives, Luanne Powell, senior program director for the School of Adult and Professional Studies, and Dub Oliver, Union’s current president.
“We praise God indeed for His past faithfulness,” Oliver said. “Through fires and storms, through changes and transformations, from depressions and pandemics, through wars, through good times, through bad times, through all of the challenges, God has been faithful to His people and to this University.”
The Community Prayer Breakfast began in October of 2021 when Catherine Kwasigroh, vice president for institutional advancement, felt called to prepare for Union’s Bicentennial through prayer breakfasts across the state of Tennessee. During the fall of that year, Union held prayer breakfasts in Jackson, Chattanooga, Memphis, and Murfreesboro, expanding in the spring to include Birmingham, Alabama and Paris, Tennessee.
Last year’s prayer breakfast theme — as a preparation for the coming year of celebration — discussed the values of a university, according to Kwasigroh.
“It was more important to have our priorities right and to start with prayer,” Kwasigroh said. “Because in that way, we were preparing for the bicentennial. This year’s theme is more to praise the Lord for all that He’s done for the University.”
Although the prayer breakfasts began in preparation for the bicentennial, Kwasigroh and the office of Institutional Advancement plan to continue the breakfasts across the state after the bicentennial is over.
“It’s a priority, and Dr. Oliver wants us to continue it,” Kwasigroh said.
The state-wide prayer breakfasts are only a small portion of the events that the office of Institutional Advancement has planned for the bicentennial celebration this year, totaling 200 in number. The office seeks to use these events as both a public relations and fundraising opportunity, as the university seeks to raise funds for the development of new academic buildings and advancement of faculty, in pursuit of excellent, Christ-centered education.
“We have bold ambitions,” Oliver said. “We have amazing dreams to pursue and we’re pursuing them. And we — as we do that — we must understand that God is faithful.”
