In public schools today, students aren’t allowed to engage in school-sponsored prayer, but groups of students across the city, county, state, nation and world converged on Wednesday to offer up prayers for their schools and for the people around them.

These groups were participating in See You at the Pole, which is an international event held every year with the purpose of letting Christian students join together at their schools’ flag poles and pray for their schools, teachers, friends, family, countries and leaders.

The idea for the event came about in 1990 when a group of teenagers from Burleson, Texas, felt burdened to pray for their friends. The group drove to three different schools and prayed at the flagpoles for many issues and people.

After lots of organizing, the first See You at the Pole event was held in September of that same year, and more than 45,000 teenagers in four states participated.

The event now includes millions of participants in 20 countries and this week, students from Russellville Middle School and Russellville High School joined with all the others by gathering at the RHS flagpole to participate in the event that was sponsored and organized by Christian Students United.

“See You at the Pole is important because it gives us, as Christian students, a chance to pray openly as a group with other schools all over the nation,” said Katelynn Gordon, an RHS junior who serves as CSU president. “I hope the event showed a few nonbelievers what we are about and helped us as believers to grow in our faith.”

Besides students, several faculty members and members of the community showed up for the early morning event to show their support of the group’s efforts.

“I think we had a great turnout this year and the CSU club at RHS did an excellent job organizing the program,” said Richard Parker, the youth minister at First Baptist Church in Russellville who was present for the event. “This event allows students to see how big the body of Christ, not just their church, is in the area. It also brings students together for one common purpose to pray and to demonstrate their faith, and I definitely think that goal was reached.”