Tag Archives: Shane Claiborne

What’s Going On at the Asbury Revival?

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Asbury University Revival (February 2023).

True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.

— Jonathan Edwards

“After Thursday, I was like, okay, I’m going to go sleep. But [God] was like, ‘No, I have more for you.’”

— Lauren, Asbury University student

On February 8 the morning chapel service at Kentucky’s Asbury University concluded, as usual, with a spiritual song. Then most of the students filed out to go to class, but the band kept playing, and a few stayed behind to sing along around the altar. What happened next has startled the world.

“I was like, all right, we’re just going to be around here for one or two more songs, and we’re going to go to class,” said Lena, an Asbury student. “But there was like something in my soul that said no-no-no, we’ve just got to stay here. So I just stayed. A little while later I thought I had only been there like maybe an extra 20 minutes. It had been like 3 hours. It just started turning into something bigger and crazier.” 

Word spread through the campus that people were still singing and praying in the chapel. Classrooms and dorms began to empty, and by the end of the day the 1500-seat worship space was packed with students and faculty, singing, praying, and testifying to the power of God in their lives. Two weeks later, it’s still happening, day and night without ceasing.

Live video on social media quickly went viral. People from all over North America began to converge on Asbury to join in. Still others flew in from faraway places like Finland, New Zealand, and Indonesia. University officials estimate that tens of thousands of pilgrims have shared in the experience. The line to get inside can be hours long.

It’s been called the Asbury Revival, but some are wary of this designation. Too many have been wounded or betrayed by manipulative gatherings and domineering evangelists in the name of “revival.” Some prefer to call it an “outpouring” (the university’s preference), a “renewal,” or an “awakening.” One student said she was switching from “revival” to “encounter” because the divine presence, not the internal experience of the worshipper, was the central meaning here. 

Whatever is happening, the watchword has been “radical humility.” Student Asher Braughton says, “I truly believe that the revival has been built on humility; that this revival isn’t focused just on one person—not one worship leader, not one pastor, not one speaker, not one student. It’s focused solely and only on Jesus Christ.” Or as one of the event’s speakers put it: “The only celebrity in this house is Jesus.”

During the “Great Awakening” in the eighteenth-century, the emotional excesses of the revivals worried the church establishment. Was it sincere? Was it of God? Historian George M. Marsden summarizes the criticisms in vivid terms: “Using vulgar appeals to sentiment, they would generate mass hysteria that they encouraged people to regard as evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit. Scores or even hundreds of people would shriek, swoon, or fall into fits.” 

Although one student leader, mindful of the building’s aging fabric, had to announce that there would be “no jumping allowed in the balconies,” the tone in the room has been generally mellow. A youth minister described it as walking into “a holy hush.” There have been moments of exuberant cheering and clapping, but much of the music and prayer invites a tranquil surrender to the spiritual flow. Watching it online, I thought of Thomas Merton’s gently fervent plea: “Sink from your shallows, soul, into eternity.”

On the first day, Asbury professor Clint Baldwin was having lunch in the cafeteria when someone stopped at his table to say, “You know, the students are still in there, and they’re still worshipping the Lord. You should go over and see what’s happening. It’s a sweet, sweet thing.” Baldwin soon joined the awakening and saw that it was good. “This was just people saying we’re going to stay on and sit in the presence of the Lord and see what the Lord would have for us.”

Lauren, the student quoted in the epigraph, described the worship as all-consuming: “Nothing else matters anymore except being in the presence of Jesus and worshipping him for the rest of my life.” She acknowledged the hyperbole of this—she would of course continue with the life of a student—but her perspective on everything had been transformed. “Ways I have of viewing people negatively—it doesn’t matter anymore. Anxieties and worries that I have, it doesn’t even matter.… Whenever you can just let go and surrender and forgive, then, you’re just set free.”

The majority of worshippers are under 25. Living through a time of immense stress, they hunger for the healing peace of God. In spontaneous prayer groups around the chapel, or in testimonials from the stage, many have openly shared their deepest griefs and heaviest burdens. Their vulnerability has been met with tenderness and love. When a young woman shared her story of attempted suicide before the whole assembly, a multitude of women came forward to lay their hands on her. “An hour later she was dancing and smiling with a joy on her face that I had never seen before,” said one witness. 

“God is moving through this generation that has been so affected by mental health,” says Asher. “Once this revival ends, we can carry this message of goodness and forgiveness … The chains of suicide, the chains of depression, the chains of anxiety can be broken in Jesus.” Many of the songs reflect this hope in their melodic repetitions of heartfelt cries: 

Jesus, Jesus, you make the darkness tremble— 
your name is a light the shadows can’t deny …
You’re never gonna let, you’re never gonna let me down … 
He is for you, He is for you, He is for you …

There are of course critics and skeptics. All religious experience is bewildering, even suspect, for those who stand outside it. It is a reality both given and received, not grasped or possessed. Its truth abides in its own domain of experience. You can’t judge it at a distance, as a spectator. You have to go inside it, open your heart to it, be in loving relationship with it. As the mystics testify, certainty is only found within the experience.

Among believers, there is certainly a proper concern about delusion and self-deception. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). But religious experience can be tested by its fruits. Asbury’s president, Kevin J. Brown, is an encouraging witness to the Outpouring’s authenticity:

“Since the first day, there have been countless expressions and demonstrations of radical humility, compassion, confession, consecration, and surrender unto the Lord. We are witnessing the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Some may worry that the strongly personal nature of the Asbury Outpouring excludes concerns beyond the self like racism, social justice, global conflict, and the fate of the planet. However, nothing I have seen or read so far suggests that these young people disconnect personal transformation from social change. Surrendering to God is inseparable from a lifetime of service to neighbor and world. One’s own soul is too small a kingdom for the Lord of history. The collective witness and shared compassion of the Outpouring bears witness to that truth. 

As for the abundance of deep feeling, vulnerability, open-heartedness, and the ecstatic willingness to be swept away, we need more, not less of that in the Christian life. Those kids are singing and praying and testifying as if their lives depend on it; as if God matters more than anything; as if Jesus will wipe away the tears from every eye; as if a new reality is breaking through the cracks of our broken world. 

But can it last? The particular happening in Asbury’s chapel is winding down this week. The university needs to resume its institutional mission, and the town of Wilmore, hospitable as it has been, can’t handle the crowds forever. “It is not ours to hold alone,” Brown says. “We are not the keepers of this movement … Pray that what is happening here will spread.” 

Although it seems a bit sad that this foretaste of heaven—singing around the throne for all eternity—must come to an end in the temporal world, the Holy Spirit blows where it will. Outbreaks of public Christian fervor and collective spiritual passion may turn up elsewhere, take new forms, or return to a dormant state until the next eruption. Revelation, not longevity, is the point of epiphanies. They have their moment and vanish, but their impact—and the truth they manifest—endures in hearts and minds and communities.

I have no doubt that many of those who are living through this experience will be forever changed by it, as will the worlds they inhabit and the people they touch. Professor Baldwin, recalling similar revivals at Asbury in the 1950s and 1970s, notes that “people still talk about those [past] moments in revival that shaped the trajectory of how they chose to live for the sake of the Lord onward from that. That’s a hope that we would have for this.”

Even watching online from afar, I have found myself deeply moved by the Spirit-filled assembly. I especially love the heartfelt singing and the manifestation of shared joy. One of my favorite parts was today’s invitation for people to come forward and recite their favorite verses from Scripture. When a small African-American boy read from the prophet Joel (2:28), delivering that luminous text with his boyish voice—innocent as Eden—I was blown away: 

Then I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; 
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
your old ones shall dream dreams,
and your young ones shall see visions …

Joel’s prophecy has taken flesh at Asbury, day after day since the eighth of February—all those beautiful young faces, shining with God’s future. Like the rest of us, they will lose it and find it again and again. But they have set their feet upon the sacred Way. God bless them.

The Outpouring will continue to be streamed by Asbury University through Thursday, February 23, at https://www.asbury.edu/outpouring/

The words of Clint Baldwin, Asher Braughton, Lauren, Lena and Kyle (the youth minister) are taken from a February 12 conversation with Shane Claiborne on his YouTube channel, Red Letter Christians: “Update from the Asbury University Revival”

The words of Asbury President Kevin J. Brown can be found at the Outpouring link above.

Changemaking Churches and the Transformation of Neighborhoods

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From "This is not a gentle poem" by Arne Pihl, part of "All Rise," a Seattle art happening about neighborhood change and social struggle, 2014-15 (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

From “This is not a gentle poem” by Arne Pihl, part of “All Rise,” a Seattle art happening about neighborhood change and social struggle, 2014-15 (Photo by Jim Friedrich)

It is not so much the gift of tongues that we now need as the gift of ears, not so much the proclamation of our beliefs as the willingness to listen to the ways in which we ourselves are being addressed, not so much the assertion of our knowledge but the silent admission that we are ready to learn. — Alan Ecclestone[i]

 

Does institutional Christianity have a future? We have certainly heard the dismal narratives of decline. Churches and seminaries are closing, congregations are aging, and budgets are shrinking, while the unaffiliated— “Nones” and “Dones”— are on the rise. There are still many pockets of vitality— thriving, growing, committed churches— but their long-term sustainability remains a serious question in the unsupportive habitat of postmodernity.

How many Christian bodies, at either the local or the denominational level, have resigned themselves to a diminished role as complacent and compliant chaplains to the dominant culture, or as harmless historical societies dedicated to the preservation of endangered practices and memories? An English priest of the last century, Alan Ecclestone, warned that such abdication of its changemaking mission would produce a “miserly and unexpectant” church.

Thankfully, we have antidotes for such a fate: resurrection and the Holy Spirit. Resurrection transforms death into rebirth; the Holy Spirit makes all things new. The Book of Common Prayer describes this potency with elegant brevity: “things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.”

Enough with the narratives of decline! It is time to tell Easter stories. And at the recent Inhabit Conference in Seattle, I was blessed to hear many encouraging accounts of new life and abundant Spirit. For two days, Christian changemakers shared stories about doing and being “church” in new ways and new places. Even though many of the speakers do ministry in the lusterless environs of makeshift buildings and impoverished neighborhoods, their stories glowed with resurrection light.

Strangers sharing nothing but a zip code become friends over soup suppers. A trashy vacant lot is transformed into a beautiful park or neighborhood garden. Economic wastelands bloom as social entrepreneurs are raised up locally. The hungry and homeless become neighbors-in-need rather than faceless problems. The powerless organize to make their voices heard in civic planning and development. Police and residents defuse tensions and break stereotypes by socializing together. “Low-status neighborhoods” are redeemed by the work of many hands, becoming places of human flourishing. Such things don’t always happen, but when they do, the Kingdom of God draws near, and the church of God rises from the dead.

The Inhabit conference presenters, many in their twenties and thirties, have committed themselves to simplified and generous lifestyles as residents of the struggling communities they serve. Their “churches” tend to be improvisational— living rooms, storefronts, neighborhood centers, local watering holes, and street corners. If any of their ministries employ a traditional church space, it is usually where the old congregation has been on the verge of extinction.

These youthful pastors understand “parish” in its original sense— designating a whole neighborhood rather than simply the church situated within it. Their ministry is dedicated not to their faith community alone, but to the flourishing of their whole geographical parish. Don’t just feed the hungry; get to know them by breaking bread together. Don’t just serve the poor; help them get the skills and opportunities they need. Don’t just care about people, but work with them to challenge and change the forces which impact their lives. Organize for parks and housing. Educate. Demand justice. Reclaim the commons. Foster hope. Develop local economies. Lift up social entrepreneurs. Build equity. Break barriers. Nurture relationships. Network solutions. Innovate. Improvise. Advocate, organize, include, connect, encourage and empower. Be Jesus for others. Imagine.[ii]

The mission statement of Parish Collective, one of the Inhabit conference sponsors, summarizes the vital work of fostering communities of belonging in the forgotten corners of an alienating and divisive society: “We seek to reconcile fractured relationships and celebrate differences by collaborating across cultural barriers and learning to live in solidarity with those in need.” Or put more simply, “Living local together” for “street-level renewal.”[iii]

All of the speakers were passionate about making a difference in the neighborhoods they inhabit. But they are careful to act “with” rather than act “for” the local community. They don’t arrive as colonists imposing their vision, or saviors with the big idea for everyone else to follow. They come as relentless listeners, with the gifts of ears and respectful attention. As one speaker said, “Love listens.” Another added, “Let the neighborhood speak to us, rebuke us, teach us.”

This is not easy work, nor is it quickly done. As one pastor told the conference, “Our church is in the oven, not the microwave. It starts slow and takes longer, but it tastes better.” Sometimes faith is a lot like patience. The Tree of Life doesn’t grow overnight. But still we believe in the promised fruit, as Shane Claiborne, a young Christian changemaker, reminds us:

“Faith is believing despite the evidence—
and then watching that evidence start to change.”

 

 

 

 

 

[i] Alan Ecclestone, q. in Gordon Mursell, English Spirituality: From 1700 to the Present Day (London: SPCK 2008), 472

[ii] Good recent resources on these themes are The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches are Transforming Mission, Discipleship and Community (Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, Dwight J. Friesen; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014) and Live Like You Give a Damn: Join the Changemaking Celebration (Tom Sine; Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016)

[iii] http://parishcollective.org