Asbury revisited

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 11th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Asbury University after what some called a revival.

For sixteen days in February, students were joined by people from around the world to worship God. But now that the crowds are gone and the semester goes on, how are the students involved processing what happened?

REICHARD: Associate correspondent Lindsay Wolfgang Mast visited Asbury recently. She brings us the story.

TOUR GUIDE: We’re not going to go in here but this is where the fine arts building is. So we have nine different worship bands.

LINDSAY WOLFGANG MAST, REPORTER: On a cold Kentucky morning, Asbury University senior Michael McClellan leads a group tour for prospective students. The campus is just waking up—the first day back after Spring Break.

PARENTS CHAPEL: [CHATTER AND WORSHIP MUSIC]

By 10 a.m.—chapel time—chatter fills Hughes Auditorium. A golden glow comes through the stained glass windows.

CHAPEL SOUND: Sing a little louder.

From the wooden seats in back, the worship band may sound similar to what you’d have heard here “before.”

Before February 8th, when a scheduled chapel service turned into 16 days of continuous worship.

Before an estimated 50-thousand people swarmed the campus.

Before the school became a national news story.

But this is “after.” And people are still talking about it.

CHAPEL SOUND: [How many of you know that people converged here from around the world because the world is desperate?]

Laurel Bunker from Minneapolis is today’s chapel speaker. As the students finish the year, she wants them to remember what happened here.

She may be preaching to the choir. After all, it was students here who never left that day… who led the ongoing prayers, testimonies and music… who suspected a revival was in the making.

ZEKE ATHA: God has wrecked me in the most beautiful of ways, to see how limited my view of him was before this.

Zeke Atha is a junior Christian Ministries major from North Carolina. He led the chapel benediction February 8th. Now, over lunch, he says had no idea what was about to unfold.

ATHA: I went back in there and it was just so joyful and I was like “what in the world is going on” and I went and ran around campus and told people chapel was still happening, and it just exploded from there.

CHARITY JOHNSON: Zeke and another student came in and said “Revival is happening! Revival is here!”

Senior Charity Johnson sang in the gospel choir that morning…then off and on for nine more hours that day. Both students spent a lot of time in the auditorium over the next couple of weeks.

ATHA: Living in Hughes, eating in Hughes, sleeping in Hughes.

The students and faculty describe the event with words spanning the emotional spectrum. “Beautiful.” “Exhausting.” “Exciting.” “Difficult.”

JOHNSON: I was torn trying to handle classes because classes were still happening but trying to be faithful to what God is calling me to but also to rest so there was a lot of juggling going on and it’s still a balancing act.

Mentors, parents, Bible study groups, journaling…all essential as students try and figure out what comes next.

Just before a physical therapy session, freshman cross country runner Ava Miller says she joined a witnessing group that quickly formed in February.

AVA MILLER: That’s been a really beautiful piece for us to just have that freedom in life right now to do whatever and to say Yes to whatever He has for us.

Current students came of age during the uncertainty of the last few years. Ava says her generation needs what they found in Hughes Auditorium.

SOUND: [CHAPEL MUSIC]

“Peace.” A word nearly everyone uses for the overarching feeling in Hughes during those days.

MILLER: Something a friend has said is we see in different generations God shows up in different ways. So to a tribal generation, He might show up in strength and power but to our generation, He’s shown up in peace as we struggle with so much depression and anxiety.

Sarah Baldwin is Asbury’s Vice President for Student Affairs. She sees it, too.

SARAH BALDWIN: You know revival comes not from any great reward but revival comes because things aren’t right and God wants to set them right so I think we received that, the Holy Spirit moving in such a way because there’s so much desperation in this generation and in the world overall.

Asbury’s website records eight previous campus revivals. They say they’re comfortable calling something like this a revival once it bears fruit.

But spiritual fruit takes time to grow. It’s hard to track. Even some of those past events Asbury terms “revival” are quantified only by the length of time spent worshiping, or the number of people involved.

Larry Schweikart is an author and historian. He says revivals that have gone down in the history books have some similarities to what happened at Asbury. But those generally lasted for months, even years, and involved noticeable changes in large swaths of the culture.

LARRY SCHWEIKART: There’s no way of saying “Well, this revival saved this many souls and as a result society did XYZ,” but you can definitely see a difference in Victorian society than what was done in England prior to that.

We’re in desperate need of a real revival but I think it’s going to take a lot more than a small college in a single location to pull that off.

SOUND: [PARENTS CHUCKLING]

The families on today’s campus tour came from locations as far away as Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Not all of them because of what happened in February… But Asbury senior Michael McClellan says he’s seen an uptick in tour numbers. International interest? Also up, according to the admissions department.

No matter how the event gets recorded, student Zeke Atha says he’s ready to share about it anywhere he lands.

ATHA: I just can’t wait to see our class reunions ten, 20 years down the road when people are doctors and missionaries and journalists and teachers. I just can’t fathom how much God will continue to use Asbury students across the world.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Wolfgang Mast in Wilmore, Kentucky.

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