Gen Z Experiences Spiritual Awakening
By Keith Jagger
June 6, 2023
February 2023 will become known in history as the month of Gen Z’s spiritual awakening. It was when God gave Asbury University students in Wilmore, Kentucky, a two-weeklong chapel service.
It began with a few students who felt a chapel service was not over. As they stayed on their knees in prayer, they ignited the interest of other students, and in a few days, believers from across the nation filled Asbury’s chapel to the brim.
When JBU students and hundreds of schools around the country noticed and described their own desires for a spiritual awakening, God seemed to say, “I am doing something new for your generation, meeting you in your anxiety and fears. But be patient; I am going to give you something that is uniquely for you.”
During a Tuesday chapel service at JBU, days after the Asbury revival broke out, we delivered a service devoted to scripture and prayer, planned months in advance. The timing seemed perfect. As the university’s chaplain, I prayed for revival at JBU that day in my front-row seat. Expecting to witness an influx of students at the altar, I heard a stirring from God instead to sit still and be patient; don’t force anything. That Sunday night, at our weekly student-led worship service which usually ends at 10 p.m., a few students hungering for revival stayed and prayed until midnight, drawn by the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25 – stay awake and keep watch. But the droves of worshippers didn’t come, and God continued to say, “be still.”
Although some, including myself, had their eyes fixed on the red steps of the Cathedral of the Ozarks, looking for the movement of God’s Spirit, God wanted to spark his work elsewhere – in the campus’ townhouses.
Two nights later, God did just that. A group of student-athletes with no official student leadership titles gathered some friends in two townhomes for prayer and confession. It started in the evening and went into the early morning. That meeting sparked a nightly worship gathering at the townhouses for the next two weeks. Student groups began organizing and praying all across campus. They met one evening, 100 students strong, worshipping in the Walker Student Center. These were all visible signs of an inward shift in the hearts of the student body. Students involved testify to increased spiritual conversations around campus and a palpable fervor in our chapel services.
Similar to the many outbreaks of spiritual awakening across the country, JBU’s students found themselves freed to express their faith more courageously than usual; student leaders found themselves drawn to a humility that broke down a myriad of barriers; and students in our close residential communities met one another for the first time, building a stronger community on campus. God gave JBU students a spiritual awakening, but it was more residential and more visible in our students’ social and relational fabric than something that gained national attention. This is something we celebrate.
These revivals were not about celebrity but about exalting Jesus, gifting believers with true brokenness over sin and injustice and helping them know more deeply the profound grace of God, who longs to redeem it all. In this way, God not only used the faith of the Asbury students as a beacon for a pandemic-weary world in need of God’s touch, but also God used students across the country to lead their peers in a spiritually refreshing time, often in the wee hours of campus life.
If you speak to the students involved, they will tell you they haven’t stopped praying with expectation for God’s fire to keep burning in the JBU community and for spiritual revival across the Church far into the years ahead. I pray and suspect that the history books will talk about this, too – about the start of something which grew into lasting discipleship rooted deeply into the heart of God.
