At Asbury University, every class gets a nickname at the beginning of their freshman year. The class of 2023 was named “Surrendered” four years ago.
On Feb. 8, a wave of worship started at Asbury in Wilmore, Kentucky, and subsequently swept across several other college campuses. The Asbury outpouring, as students and staff refer to it, officially paused after 16 days of services. But a spirit of unity, reconciliation and renewal that started during those two weeks is still present on campus, said Alison Perfater, who served as student body president her senior year.
“I think Asbury will be marked by that for a very long time.”
Searching for ‘something real’
“It’s not a word to be thrown around lightly.” That’s how Abby Laub, Asbury’s director of strategic communications, describes revival. Students and staff started using the word “outpouring” to describe the spiritual awakening on campus because that’s what they saw when they looked around, she said.
“They were experiencing an outpouring of God’s love, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit,” she noted. “And that just kind of stuck.”
Three months after the outpouring at Asbury, the people who were there from the beginning describe it as something they couldn’t have started on their own, or even imagined.
“It was clear God was moving among these students,” Laub said. What started as a regularly scheduled chapel service in Asbury’s Hughes Auditorium transformed into an ongoing prayer meeting. Within the first day, she said, students from other colleges had shown up too.
Kevin Brown, Asbury’s president, reflected in a video posted on the university’s outpouring web page, “There was a deep desire for something real, something authentic, something that satisfies.”
He noted students were looking for “something not dressed-up or expensive or cutting edge or entertaining or cool. Something real, something good, something right, and something true.”
The first day of the outpouring happened to be Asbury’s scholarship competition day, when prospective students were on campus for interviews. Several of those students gave their lives to Christ, Laub said.
Perfater had been away from campus that morning but drove back in time for chapel because she felt a pull to be there.
“That was definitely God,” she said. She was aware of the strain her leadership style had caused between her and other students and members of the administration. God’s work at Asbury moved her and others to apologize and seek forgiveness. “That first week was marked for me at least by reconciliation,” she said. And she wasn’t alone.
“I do feel like it’s brought this new peace and unity on campus,” Laub said.
The class of 2023 finished their freshman year in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. In fact, their whole college journey prior to the outpouring was marked by upheaval.
“Even though there would be tens of thousands of people here on any given day,” Laub noted, “you would walk into Hughes and the presence of the Holy Spirit and the peace that comes with that was palpable.”
‘He is still moving’
After that first week of reconciliation, Perfater said, “the world showed up.”
Asbury saw visitors from more than 280 colleges and universities, with students representing 39 states.
And the crowds weren’t just college students.
The university estimates 50,000 people were on campus throughout the course of those 16 days. Some waited in long lines for a seat in Hughes, which seats 1,500. Others filed into overflow space across the street at Asbury Theological Seminary.
Perfater was interviewed on national television. Reporters from all over the world came to Wilmore to get the story of what was happening at Asbury.
Still, Laub said, unity pervaded the gathering.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever in my adult life been in a place with such a large gathering of people,” she said, “where there was truly just one common purpose.”
The university decided to hold the last outpouring session on Feb. 23 in order to uphold Asbury’s responsibilities to students and families, and to their community. But Laub and Perfater both quoted the university president’s reminder that no one can stop something they didn’t start.
Just the beginning
At Asbury, students and staff say, the recent outpouring is just the beginning.
“We are at a point where we decide whether to nod and smile and say, ‘Yes, it was incredible,’ and move on, or view this as the beginning,” said recent graduate Alexandra Presta in her video testimony. “Because I believe, and I know I’m not the only one, that what happened on Feb. 8 was a launching point for a movement of God that we cannot understand, that He wants us to be a part of. He is still moving.”
In the days after the outpouring, Laub said, the university also worked to connect students with mentors and small groups, acknowledging that helping them navigate life after the revival has been a key priority.
“We recognize they experienced something remarkable that most people will never experience,” she said. “And therefore, they’re going to experience great spiritual attack because of that.”
Traveling the world to share
Three months after the outpouring began, teams of students from Asbury are traveling the world to share what God did at their school and how other Christians can help young people develop into mature followers of Christ.
The outpouring’s greatest immediate impact might have been on social media, where it generated millions of responses.
In an age where many are rightfully concerned about the affect of social media on this generation, Laub said, the events at Asbury showed God can use anything for His glory — even TikTok. She said she starts crying every time she thinks about what students experienced this year.
“I just feel like it was God going, ‘This generation, they’re mine too.’”
To read more stories related to Asbury University, click here.
