Sometimes God does amazing things when His people start to pray.
In January of 2023, Tonya Prewett – married to Auburn University Assistant Basketball Coach Chad Prewett – became vividly aware of the opportunities that were under her nose to reach Gen Z with the gospel. As a coach’s wife with a love for campus life, Mrs. Prewett was already involved in the lives of college students, but the Lord gave her a particular awareness of the anxiety and depression that many of them were experiencing.
Beginning with an unassuming Bible study hosted by Tanya, God began to stir a magnificent movement of His Spirit at Auburn. At first, five young women attended Tanya’s study, but within a month that number had grown to over 200. Everything I’m describing was fueled by humble, intentional prayer. You may have seen national media coverage of the powerful worship and preaching that took place at Neville Arena – with about 5000 in attendance – that resulted in a couple of hundred unexpected baptisms in the lake at Auburn’s Red Barn. As you might imagine, as is always the case, that didn’t happen without some very public pushback.
When I first read about what was happening among university students in Alabama, I remembered what I had witnessed the previous year at Asbury University, when Eileen and I traveled to Wilmore, Kentucky, to the very chapel where my seminary studies had begun in the 1980s. In that place very sacred to me, it seemed undeniable that the Holy Spirit was doing something new and marvelous among young adults – among the very people whom many in my generation assumed to be “the least spiritually inclined.”
Not true. Not true at all. When Auburn hit my radar screen, I found it marvelous that – whatever God was igniting – the flames of it were spreading from a safe Christian institution to a riskier “secular” environment. God was moving among Gen Z in America!
A revival is a spiritual awakening. It’s a work of God’s unearned sovereign grace. You and I can neither manufacture it, nor accomplish it, but we can – and we must – pray for it. Revival comes from God’s hand, and in God’s timing. J.I. Packer defined revival as “a characteristic work of God visiting communities of his people to deepen his work of grace in their lives and to extend his kingdom in this world.” Jonathan Edwards, a vital participant in the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 40s, described revival as “a recurring work of sovereign mercy, like successive waves breaking on the seashore.” Closer to here and now, I’ll quote Dr. Ben Carson on the subject: “As Tanya and her team have shown, a small prayer group can lead to a movement that transforms lives and brings hope to a generation … Revival is not just a distant dream; it is within our reach.”
Perhaps Asbury and Auburn were just the beginning of what may well be an awakening in our day. Could we really be experiencing a new wave of the mercy of God?
This fall, credible reports continue to pile up that God is doing great things among widespread pockets of college students, particularly in the Southeast – but well beyond. Campuses recently impacted include the University of Arkansas, Baylor University, the University of Florida, Florida State University, the University of Georgia, Mississippi State University, the University of South Carolina, and Texas A & M Corpus Christi. One evangelical organization reports a total of 70,000 students who’ve gathered for worship on eleven campuses, but representing within their mix students from at least 400 colleges and universities, including international students – who in many cases will take the gospel home to their countries of origin. Data collected from the aforementioned ministry translates to more than 5000 professions of faith in Christ, and more than 2000 baptisms, in their camp alone.
And it keeps happening. On October 30, more than 10,000 students packed into the basketball venue at the main College Station campus of Texas A & M University, where hundreds of eager young people rushed to the altar to publicly commit their lives to Christ. A social media post by Unite US reads as follows: “We are absolutely blown away by how God moved tonight in Reed Arena as over 10,000 college students gathered to lift the name of Jesus!”
I don’t have to tell you that – among these statistics – are more than a handful of real-life future world changers. That’s how our God does things! Behind the scenes, He’s always moving in ways that are more astonishing than we could ever imagine.
Let’s do our part to love these Gen Zers. They’re completely enmeshed in our fast-clipped digital age – they’ve never known anything else – so they’re quite familiar with the vast brokenness of this world. If our inquisitive youth here in Green Hills are any indication, they’re not afraid of hard questions. Smartphones open up a world of possibilities, but also a world of mental health challenges. Feelings of helplessness and panic are not foreign to this generation. But I believe that they’re craving authentic community. That’s where we come in.
But, when it comes to helping young adults answer their hard questions, you and I have to learn to stop talking and start listening. This isn’t particularly easy for us, as we’re generally uncomfortable with conversational dead space of any kind. Societally and deliberately, Gen Zers have been tilted toward an atheistic worldview. Social media platforms are like a Broadway stage on which Gen Zers feel like they must perform and – don’t miss this part – compare themselves to everybody else. The comforts of tradition – including traditional understandings and underpinnings of faith – get regularly sidelined by the latest trends. Such pressure to forsake the past and keep all options open is enormous and relentless.
Your relationships with Gen Zers will require time and patient investment on your part. There are few immediate successes. What I’m calling you to today is the long haul of love. In time, once a relationship is established, God will give you the creativity and opportunity to speak gospel truth into the struggles that your Gen-Z friend is almost certainly experiencing right now. As you share honestly your own struggles with guilt, shame, and unhealthy comparisons, trust that the Lord will open the door of your friend’s heart. And never forget that, when it comes to impacting every generation, your joy in Jesus is highly contagious.
I appreciate the paraphrased version of Proverbs 36:5-6 that’s found in “The Message”: “God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, His purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing gets lost; Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.”
Friends, let’s pray for these young people like they matter. Because they do.
Surf’s up!
Pastor Charles
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