We’ve been here in Hughes Auditorium for over a hundred hours — praying, crying, worshiping, and uniting — because of Love. We’ve even expanded into Estes Chapel across the street at Asbury Theological Seminary and beyond. I can proclaim that Love boldly because God is Love.
— Alexandra Presta, Asbury University
Asbury University, an Evangelical institution in Wilmore, Kentucky, is presently experiencing what is commonly called in Evangelical circles a “revival.”
The Lexington Herald Reporter reports:
As you may have heard in news reports, a spontaneous religious revival broke out Feb. 8 at an ordinary, scheduled chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore. As I write this, nearly a week later, it’s still going, 24 hours a day. The faithful and the curious have flooded into Wilmore from around the state and the nation to be part of the experience.
“It’s not winding down,” said Craig Keener, a widely regarded biblical studies scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary, which is across the street from the university. “People have been praying for it for years,” he said. “I was hoping it would happen before I retired.”
At some points the university’s chapel has been so crowded the seminary’s chapel is being used as an overflow site. The two schools are separate institutions. Keener emphasized he wasn’t involved with the revival’s outbreak and isn’t a leader of the ongoing events. But he’s attended services at the university multiple days. “It started with the students,” he said. “I think they’re the most important component.”
He said the gathering has been marked by prayer and worship, mainly, with an occasional sermon, too. This past Saturday, Feb. 11, roughly 1,000 people took the Lord’s Supper together.
The awakening began with an ordinary, regularly scheduled 10 a.m. chapel service. For some reason, this one didn’t end. People didn’t want to leave. They felt what they interpreted as an unusually palpable presence of God.
Students felt an “unusually palpable presence of God.” More on that in a moment.
Charisma News reporter Anna Lowe adds:
I sit in the back row of the Hughes balcony. My legs are starting to ache from stiffly sitting in the same position for so long. Voices echo throughout the high ceilings as the pounding beat of a drum rattles my bones. The light shifts with the sun through the yellow, artfully crafted, stained-glass windows facing me.
“Our affection, our devotion, poured out on the feet of Jesus.”
Over and over again, this refrain repeats.
I sat here on Wednesday, I sat here on Thursday and I sat here on Friday. Hopeful to connect with Jesus in the earth-shattering way it seems everyone else has. Or at least in the way their Instagram stories make it seem.
After my 1 p.m. class on Wednesday, I felt called to go to Hughes. Lately, my heart has been incredibly hardened. It was full of frustration due to so many situations in my life that I felt unheard and unvalued. For the sake of complete transparency, it had even been impacting me physically with a tightening in my chest, a bodily response from being unable to access my emotions. When I arrived at Hughes, my immediate inclination was to take photos and record what was happening through interviews, as my job typically requires. In my heart, I felt an outer nudge to be still. And so that’s what I did.
Nothing immediately happened to me or changed in my heart. A beam of light did not cast itself upon me, and thank goodness, the Lord did not immediately smite me out of existence even though I deserved it. I did not let the lack of immediacy deter me, even though I thought about leaving. All that mattered at that moment was our Creator. The transfer of my focus nudged me to ponder how infinitesimally small we are. The situations that enraptured my mind were mere specks on the horizon compared to eternity.
My heart shifted, and a resentment that had followed me for months was lifted by the grace of God alone. Walls of bitterness and agitation released themselves from my mind. I felt them cast out of my mind and heart to the point where I have almost completely forgotten the prior feeling. Knowing myself, I am confident this shift is not of my own volition. I was set and satisfied in my resentment, but God had different plans for me.
This moment of absolute peace shifted my reality. My conversations with friends are deeper. Reconciliation is genuine and pure in heart with no intent to harm. God-prompted, open discussions are strengthening beliefs in ways I never could achieve on my own.
Evangelical Peter Greig had this to say about the Revival:
Having preached here in Kentucky’s Asbury chapel, where I had the privilege of leading hundreds of students in prayer late into the night, I am thrilled to hear the credible reports of a significant new work of the Spirit breaking out there over these last six days, and now beginning to spread to other universities.
I am particularly grateful to those who seem to be stewarding this humbly, wisely and well. (Some of them will be joining me tomorrow night for a time of impartation at an online seminar organised by @reviveeurope and @247prayer)
Let me also say that I understand the cautious questions being asked in some quarters. These are natural and sensible.
But after a quarter century thinking and praying about such things, and with much on my heart, for now I simply want to say just two things:
Firstly, as has often been said, when it comes to reports of revival I would far rather be gullible than cynical. As Gamaliel said to the Sanhedrin: “If this teaching or movement is merely human it will collapse of its own accord. But if it should be from God, you cannot defeat them, and you might actually find yourselves to be fighting against God!” (Acts 5:38-39, J.B. Phillips)
Secondly, we need this. What’s happening at Asbury is not everything but it is something and right now we need something to shock the system so that this generation can experience for themselves the life-changing power of God. We need repentance and holiness. We need the kind of outpouring of the Spirit on campuses that can incubate and detonate a new generation to preach the gospel with greater confidence, fight injustice with greater defiance, and transform society with greater intelligence.
Beyond human programs, products and personalities, we need God’s power, presence and perspective. In other words we need a sovereign inbreaking of the Holy Spirit.
America was built on such awakenings. The UK was saved by them. And they always, always, always begin in precisely this way: with seasons of concerted prayer.
The desire and need for revival (renewal or awakening) is baked into the DNA of millions of Evangelicals. Churches regularly pray for revival, pleading with God to set their souls on fire again.
Those of us raised in Baptist churches likely sang the nineteenth-century hymn Revive Us Again countless times:
We praise thee, O God, for the Son of thy love,
for Jesus who died, and is now gone above.Refrain:
Hallelujah! Thine the glory, hallelujah! Amen!
Hallelujah! Thine the glory, revive us again.We praise thee, O God, for thy Spirit of light
who has shown us our Savior and scattered our night. [Refrain]We praise thee, O God, for the joy thou hast giv’n
to thy saints in communion, these foretastes of heav’n. [Refrain]Revive us again, fill each heart with thy love.
May each soul be rekindled with fire from above. [Refrain]
My wife, Polly, and I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the 1970s. Revival was on the lips of professors and students alike. We pleaded with God to send revival, and, at times, he did. Virtually every week, we would sing Set My Soul Afire during daily chapel services:
Set my soul afire Lord, for Thy Holy Word,
Burn it deep within me, let Thy voice be heard
Millions grope in darkness in this day and hour,
I will be a witness, fill me with Thy pow’r (chorus)Chorus
Set my soul afire Lord, set my soul afire.
Make my life a witness of Thy saving pow’r.
Millions grope in darkness, waiting for Thy Word.
Set my soul afire, Lord, set my soul afire!Set my soul afire, Lord, for the lost in sin,
Give to me a passion as I seek to win;
Help me not to falter never let me fail,
Fill me with Thy Spirit, let Thy will prevail. (chorus)Set my soul afire, Lord, in my daily life.
Far too long I’ve wandered in this day of strife;
Nothing else will matter but to live for Thee,
I will be a witness for Christ lives in me. (chorus)
For those reading my writing for the first time, I was raised in the Evangelical church, particularly the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. I pastored Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan for twenty-five years. I spent fifty years in churches where talk about revival was common. The churches I pastored held one or more revival meetings every year. In one church I pastored, we had protracted revival meetings — fifteen days, three Sundays of non-stop preaching, singing, and testifying. I have witnessed and experienced firsthand God’s “unusually palpable presence.” Souls saved, lives transformed, sins confessed, wrongs made right. People lingering for hours after church, not wanting to leave. There were numerous days when we saw the Shekinah glory of God and felt his presence in our midst.
I have been a student of revivals all of my adult life, both as a pastor and now as a vocal critic of Evangelicalism. I have read and studied the source materials for the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, the Azusa Street Revival, the New Hebrides Revival, the Brownsville Revival, and other mighty moves of God. I read countless biographies of the lives of notable revivalists such as George Whitefield, Nikolas Count Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, John and Charles Wesley, Barton Stone, Asahel Nettleton, Charles Finney, Christmas Evans, William Williams, Hudson Taylor, David Livingstone, DL Moody, CT Studd, Billy Sunday, Andrew Murray, Evan Roberts, and others. I am confident that I understand the history and nature of revivalism, both from what I have read and heard, but also from what I have experienced firsthand. I have personally felt the presence of God in my life; felt the Holy Spirit come upon me in unusual and powerful ways. The question now, for me — now that I no longer believe in the existence of God — is what do I make of my own personal experiences and that which college students are presently experiencing at Asbury?
Is the revival at Asbury an “unexplainable” event? Defenders of the revival will point to its spontaneity and suddenness as evidence that God is the primary mover and shaker. However, I am convinced that there is an earthly explanation for the Asbury Revival, and every other revival before it. Every revival can be explained from a sociological and psychological perspective. Indoctrination, conditioning, and tribalism naturally prepare Evangelicals for experiencing “revival.” Is it any wonder that the primary recipients of revival at Asbury are young adults, many of whom have been raised in revivalistic homes and churches their entire lives? Some of them were homeschooled or attended private Christian schools. My wife and I have six adult children, all of whom were homeschooled and/or attended a private Christian school operated by their parents. They spent their formative years hearing about and experiencing “revival.” Our children read countless biographies about the great revivalists. They were primed and ready for revival.
Years ago, our two oldest sons went to a conference in Louisville, Kentucky sponsored by People of Destiny (PDI)/Sovereign Grace Ministries. Both boys were serious about their faith, and this conference was an opportunity for them to spend several days with like-minded young adults. Upon their return, it was evident the conference had made a difference in their lives, especially son number two. He was on fire for God. He came to Polly and me and informed us that he was packing up his stuff and moving to Louisville. He was certain that was what God wanted him to do. Fortunately, I was able to talk him off the ledge, telling him to wait awhile; that if he still felt that way later, I would support his move. Sure enough, several weeks later, the “voice” of the Holy Spirit receded and his desire to move abated. As I talked to my son tonight about this time in his life, he told me, “truth be told, I think the real reason I wanted to move was that there were a lot of girls in that church. As you remember, Dad, our church didn’t have many girls my age.” He is not the first Evangelical young person to feel revival in his genitals.
My son’s revival experience can easily be explained by looking at the various earthly factors that led him to believe God wanted him to move away from his family and join up with a new, exciting megachurch. Mom and Dad, at their country storefront church, couldn’t compete with that.
What happened at this conference? Preaching, music, and personal testimonies were used to emotionally manipulate those in attendance. This is exactly what is happening at Asbury. The methods of revival have always been the same: use powerful preaching, extended singing, and passionate testimonies to stir the emotions of attendees. Used correctly, these things will always produce “revival” — no God needed. Young adults, in particular, are vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
I was a pastor for twenty-five years. It was not long before I learned to use the tools of my trade to produce “revival” — particularly at Somerset Baptist Church in Mount Perry Ohio, a congregation I pastored for eleven years. Over six hundred people were saved and countless Christians got right with God during my time at Somerset Baptist. People would drive from as far as an hour away to hear me preach and experience God’s mighty work at our humble country church (which had grown to be the largest Protestant church in Perry County). At the time, I thought God was using me to do his work. What else explained what was happening in our midst?
Of course, all “good” things come to an end. Revivals come and go. By the end of my tenure at Somerset Baptist, things returned to “normal.” Attendance dropped and people stopped driving for an hour to hear me preach. I became just another country preacher declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ on a rural hilltop. In time, I moved to San Antonio to co-pastor a young, fast-growing Sovereign Grace church. God was in our midst again. Today, both pastors are gone and the church is a shell of what it once was. Where did God go?
If the Holy Spirit (God himself) lives inside of every believer, why is there a need for revival? If God is all Evangelicals claim he is, why do believers need revived? Evangelicals hear two to four sermons a week, read their Bibles, and consume countless books that purport to tell them how to have fulfilled, Holy Spirit-powered lives. Yet, despite all of these things, Evangelicals still need revived. Why is that?
When we study revivalism from a sociological and psychological perspective, we can easily see the human causes of “revival.” What is attributed to God can just as easily be attributed to human influence. Polly and I have been married for almost forty-five years. We have experienced a lot of ebb and flow in our years together; times when passions ran hot, and times when they didn’t; times when we craved intimacy, and times when we were consumed with other things. So it is in churches. There will be times when it seems the whole congregation is on fire for God. There will other times when the church settles into a comfortable marriage. I pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity Ohio from 1995-2002. I loved this church. Great people. Over the course of seven years, we only lost three families (they didn’t like that we were using praise and worship music). It was all love, peace, and kumbaya at Our Father’s House. Attendance reached the 50s. Few people were saved. We were just another boring Evangelical church filled with good people, loving people; a church where nothing meaningful was happening and no one seemed to mind.
Both what happened at Somerset Baptist and Our Father’s House have human explanations. Believers willing to honestly examine their spiritual experiences will come to the same conclusions: that human instrumentality is behind everything. Of course, for those presently experiencing revival at Asbury University, no amount of rational explanation will change their minds. When you are dealing with alleged supernatural experiences, reason and rationality play no part. When faith and the supernatural are invoked, no rational discussion can be had.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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