See You at the Pole
annual Christian youth prayer meeting
See You at the Pole (SYATP) is an annual gathering of thousands of Christian students at school flag poles, churches, and the Internet for the purposes of worship and prayer. The event officially began on September 12, 1990 in Burleson, Texas, United States, when a group of teenagers gathered to pray for several schools.
Background and growth
In April 1990, a group of teenagers part of a Christian youth group retreat drove to several schools around Burleson, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, to pray for spiritual awakening in schools. The event was commented on soon afterward at a Baptist General Convention of Texas, and leaders in youth ministry decided to expand the event. At the first official event, held on September 12 that year, over 45,000 students met in four US states, and the movement quickly spread across the country. In 1991, 800,000 to one million students participated. By 1994, almost two million students were noted to have participated. It is now an international event; in 2005, over two million students in the U.S. participated, as well as students in Canada, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Malaysia, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Scotland, Singapore and South Africa.
Historian Benjamin Young has linked the movement's background to the previous move away from school prayer toward the Equal Access Act allowing equal access for extracurricular student-led clubs, and toward "a more nebulous standard condoning, even celebrating, 'student-led, student-initiated' religious expression."
In 1994, Christianity Today described the then-new event as part of a growing trend of Christian prayer movements, along with New Apostolic Reformation leader C. Peter Wagner's teachings on spiritual warfare through prayer and territorial spirits, spirits linked geographically to certain areas. The related spiritual mapping had begun to spread several years prior in Cindy Jacobs' Charismatic circles in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, one of the first regions where the concepts took hold before spreading more widely in Evangelicalism.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “See You at the Pole” is annual Christian youth prayer meeting. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pole, annual and Christian, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “annual Christian youth prayer meeting” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7445570. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1991, 1994 and 2005.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “See You at the Pole”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow See You at the Pole primary sources, See You at the Pole archive and Pole research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “See You at the Pole”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “See You at the Pole” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.