Spurgeon College Launches 30-Day Pray Scripture Challenge Through Psalms

Spurgeon College has introduced its first Pray Scripture Challenge, a 30-day invitation for Christians to pray through the opening thirty Psalms during November. Baptist Press reported the initiative on November 11, while the college’s official challenge page explains that participants who register receive a text message each morning containing the day’s passage and an audio recording of a Spurgeon College leader praying through it. The sequence begins with Psalm 1 and advances one Psalm each day through Psalm 30, giving individuals, families, small groups, and congregations a shared biblical path rather than a collection of disconnected inspirational prompts. Campbell Terry, director of the college’s Ministry Cohort, led the prayer connected with Psalm 11, and college leaders and faculty members provide the other recordings. Many of those leaders also serve as pastors, which gives the project an explicitly church-serving character. Samuel Bierig, Spurgeon College’s vice president of Biblical Studies and college dean, told Baptist Press that the idea grew from the school’s desire to serve God’s kingdom purposes and local churches, including congregations that send students to the college and later receive better-equipped servants back into ministry. The result is both accessible and substantive: no travel is required, the daily material arrives on a familiar device, and the content keeps Scripture itself at the center. For believers who sometimes struggle to know how to begin praying, a Psalm supplies language for praise, confession, lament, trust, thanksgiving, and petition. For churches, the common schedule can also create a shared vocabulary that carries into small groups, ministry teams, family devotions, and pastoral conversations throughout the month.

The challenge matters because it treats biblical prayer as a practice to be learned by doing, not merely a subject to be discussed. Each morning’s combination of written Scripture and a spoken model allows participants to read the text, hear how a Christian leader responds to it, and then continue the prayer in their own words. That pattern can help believers resist two common problems: prayer that becomes detached from the revealed character and promises of God, and prayer that grows repetitive because it draws only from the concerns already occupying the mind. Moving through Psalms 1–30 introduces a wider range of biblical themes, emotions, and petitions while preserving a manageable daily commitment. The college’s design also respects the role of the local church. The recordings are not presented as a substitute for gathered worship, preaching, pastoral care, or congregational prayer; they function as a resource that pastors and lay leaders can adapt within those relationships. A practical way to use the initiative is to read the assigned Psalm slowly, note a truth about God, identify a response the passage calls for, listen to the audio prayer, and then pray the passage personally for one’s household, church, community, and mission. Ministry teams could begin meetings with the same Psalm, parents could use a few verses at breakfast, and small groups could compare how the text directed their prayers without turning the exercise into performance. Donald S. Whitney’s book Praying the Bible is a particularly fitting companion because it explains a simple method for letting the words of Scripture guide sustained prayer. The nationwide digital format makes the challenge available beyond Kansas City, while its content remains concrete: thirty days, thirty Psalms, one daily text, and one audio prayer intended to help Christians grow together in prayer shaped by God’s Word.