Imagine trying to run a Christian student group in a city where bombs fall and universities close without warning. Imagine gathering for Bible study knowing that some of your members have lost family members in the past week. Imagine trying to speak of hope when the evidence of despair is visible from every window.

This is the reality for student movements across the Middle East and North Africa, and IFES — the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students — has published a moving prayer guide this week asking the global Church to intercede for them.

The guide, titled 'As If You Were There', is a deliberate invitation to imaginative solidarity. It asks readers not merely to add a region to a prayer list, but to enter into the experience of the students and staff who are trying to maintain Christian community and witness in some of the most difficult circumstances on earth. It shares specific stories — of a student ministry disrupted by conflict, of a leader who has continued to gather people for prayer despite personal loss, of a young woman who found faith in the middle of a crisis and is now discipling others.

IFES has been supporting student movements in the MENA region for decades, working through local partner organisations that understand the cultural and political complexities of each context. Their approach is patient, relational, and deeply committed to the long-term flourishing of indigenous Christian communities rather than the imposition of Western models.

The prayer guide is a reminder that the global Church is not a collection of independent national congregations but a single body — and that when one part suffers, all suffer with it. To pray for students in the Middle East is not a peripheral concern but a central act of Christian solidarity.