Thursday night, the Carl Sandburg Auditorium was filled with upraised hands, upturned faces and the occasional rapturous worshipper pounding the ground and shouting praises in the aisle to the sound of an 11-piece band.

“‘Sound The Alarm’ is basically a youth rally,” said LaShawn Wainwright, NIU alumna and Campus Missions International church elder. “It’s calling together the youth in the area to pray and worship God.”

J.C. Alzamora, a missionary from Venezuela, has spoken at university campuses since his spiritual birthday 22 years ago. He said university campuses are the most influential place in many peoples’s lives, and he has always felt a connection with college audiences. His speech focused largely on the unique position of the current generation.

“[The college] generation is weird,” Alzamora said. “[The generation] sometimes jump out of airplanes with a surfboard. What’s up with that? But actually [the] generation is strange in that [it] can go to a restaurant and have four very different generations there. First, there’s our forefathers, the ones who fought in World War II. Then there are the hippies who grew up in the ’60s. There’s Generation X who had lots of kids, and then there’s you. You are called to be here right now. Not at NIU, but in this global reality, going through what everyone else is going through, facing what everyone else is facing right now. God put you here now for a reason. God is your father;he wouldn’t have put you here unless he wanted you here. Who’s your daddy? God’s your daddy.”

His speech also touched on the topics of leadership, exorcism, love versus lust, hypocrisy, politics and craving for “actual reality and authenticity.” For awhile, his speech took a motivational tone, and pointed out youth today needs to step up and fill positions of leadership, because the next generation will relate most strongly to this generation.

“A lot of this is focused on prayer,” said Julianna Karakas, student-at-large and member of CMI. “When God comes and touches our hearts, he opens us up to real love. The painful, real, living, life love that helps you care about people for real. And when God shows up, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.”

Karakas said music has become a popular accompaniment to prayer recently, even contributing to 24-hour prayer sessions, taken in two-hour shifts.

CMI has two bands, the A Band and the B Band, both practice year-round. To start the evening, the B Band played an hour-long set. The set consisted of popular worship songs like “O Praise Him” and “Sovereign God,” as well as some originals. As the band’s performance wound down, Alzamora took the stage and encouraged the audience to sing along with him.

Following Alzamora’s speech, the Christian parents in the audience prayed together to release the new generation upon the world as leaders, which led into an extended prayer session scheduled until 10 p.m.