Tyler Harnett reads a Bible in a prayer room in a Lawrence apartment. Harnett is part of a group of Kansas University students participating in an around-the-clock prayer movement.

Katie Laird, a paraeducator in the Lawrence public schools, has cut back on sleep for the last week.

As a part-time ministry leader for the Kansas University student group Ichthus, Laird is celebrating Holy Week through “24-7 prayer.”

The group invited members to pray around the clock, starting at midnight April 1 and ending at midnight tonight. An apartment near the KU campus is the temporary prayer room. Participants write their names on an hourly roster, printed on neon green paper, to indicate when they came.

“I would say that it’s creating space for God,” Laird said.

Ichthus, a group of about 30 to 40 KU students, is taking part in an organic 24-7 prayer movement sweeping parts of the Christian community nationwide. It has spread particularly among the younger generation through word-of-mouth and the Internet.

Mark Brown, director of the KU branch of the national Christian ministry Campus Crusade for Christ, said he first heard of 24-7 prayer from other Campus Crusade directors.

“It’s basically joining a network of people on the Internet who are in continual prayer,” he said, adding that people sometimes add fasting to that schedule. “Other people are doing it with you, at other places all over the world.”

Statistics on the number of grass-roots 24-7 prayer rooms are difficult to find. One Web site, www.24-7prayer.com, lists 46 groups across 10 countries. Several groups meet on college campuses. Brown said he knew of several ongoing prayer communities around Lawrence, but many of them are not registered on a Web site.

Laird is comfortable with the description of 24-7 prayer as the spiritual equivalent of camping out at Allen Fieldhouse for a Jayhawk basketball game. She believes 24-7 prayer should be part of what she calls the lifestyle of the New Testament church.

Early Christians “were devoted to prayer and to Jesus’ teaching,” she said. “They were being together, breaking bread.”

She said Ichthus tries to work that lifestyle into its community by meeting members’ needs and returning to a culture of prayer. The fish, or “ichthus” in Greek, became an early Christian symbol as the individual letters were an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”

Laird voiced concerns about publicizing or promoting 24-7 prayer as an event. She said she didn’t want the focus to be on the movement rather than its purpose, which she defined as “the heart of knowing Jesus.”

“I think 24-7 for me is really cool, and I think it’s kind of hiplike – dangerously hip, actually,” she said.

Nicole Schmidt, a Manhattan sophomore studying biology and education at KU, said Ichthus had conducted 24-7 prayer since her first semester here in 2005. She is one of the group’s ministry leaders.

“It’s a really comfortable place to come,” she said. “It’s encouraging to know that my peers are also using that space. “Laird noted more people came between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. than in the early afternoon or evening.

“People really take care of each other,” she said. “They’ll make coffee for people that will last usually for the rest of the day and have brought breakfast food.”

In previous years, the group discovered it didn’t have enough members to fill every hour on the roster. This time, people write on the roster only after they have completed their shift as an encouragement to others.

“To me, it’s not just the practice; it’s the heart,” Laird said. “It’s like the heart of looking for God.”