The SkyePod - Looking Back on the Asbury "Revival"

so many churches have been relentlessly pursuing cultural relevance.

And yet here's a generation that says,

this culture's killing me.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the SkyPod brought to you by Holypost Media and Wayne Enterprises.

I am joined today by Dr. Kevin Brown, president of Asbury University.

Dr. Brown, welcome to the show.

I am thrilled to be on.

Thanks so much for the invitation.

I'm happy to have you.

You are the 18th president of Asbury.

You started in 2019 before that you were a professor and associate dean in the School of Business at Asbury.

So you've got some history there.

Yeah, I started in 2013.

And I believe you've said this before, was very honored to have you speak at my inauguration on Friday, March 6th, 2020.

And Wednesday, March 11th, we were having meetings about whether we would even stay open the rest of the semester.

So your sermon was titled The Hinge of History.

And we've had several members within our community go back and listen to it,

given that that just proceeded COVID by a few days.

Fascinating time.

I remember, Vivy, I was very honored to be invited to speak at that event.

And it was the last trip I went on in a long time because after that we were all locked down in March of 2020.

It was a really tumultuous season to begin leadership of a university.

Yes, yeah, there's no playbook to pull off the shelf for those things.

So a lot of prayer and yeah, kind of finding your way through.

Well, there's a lot beyond just COVID that you've had to navigate.

That's what we're going to get into a little bit in this conversation.

Part of the reason I wanted you to come on the show other than to reconnect after all these years,

was you did an editorial in Deseret News back in January talking about this ongoing conversation

that's happening in certain pockets of the media about whether or not there's any evidence of a religious revival happening in our country,

particularly among the young.

I know you're familiar with Ryan Burge.

He's a holy post-punnet.

We have him on the show fairly regularly and he's all over the media.

He's a very thoughtful guy.

And he's come on here numerous times to say, listen, there's all these anecdotal stories of different things happening,

but there's no evidence in the hard data to suggest that there's movement of the religious temperature in America.

There's no increase in church attendance.

We don't see more young people identifying as Christian in our surveys.

And you wrote this piece essentially a green with him that there is no hard statistical data that shows any movement,

but that doesn't mean there aren't vibes.

So let's begin with just, why did you want to write this piece in response to these broader conversations about revival or no revival?

Yeah, to be clear, and you said it, like here's what I was not arguing.

I'm not arguing that, no, he's wrong.

There is a revival, that expression, that word has particular theological significance.

I'm happy to let posterity judge the appropriate vocabulary for a moment.

I'm not arguing that there hasn't been a surge in churches.

And I'm not trying to say, oh, you're wrong and my narratives or my anecdotes beat up your statistical data.

So I agree with him there.

I just think it's a little curious is I understand his reasoning and perhaps I'm wrong.

The reasoning is we don't see a church, we don't see a surge in church attendance in the general social survey.

Ergo, there is no revival and there's a kind of nothing to see here tone that accompanies that.

And I think no, stop, there absolutely is something to see here.

There's other data that there's something going on, particularly with young adults, college students.

And the story of revival is not just a story of individual hearts that are changed,

or in live and to religiosity.

It's also a story about our institutions that can receive that spiritual fervor.

And so I just thought to limit the conversation to no church growth in recent years,

among the young, no revival move on.

I think there's more to the story than that.

Yeah, in my last conversation with Ryan, we kind of went down that rabbit trail a little bit,

where I started asking him, again, I can't disagree with his data.

I'm not saying it's flawed or wrong.

But it is possible that something might be happening in our country today that these surveys

were not equipped to find.

Or does a resurgence of spirituality in 21st century America look different than maybe

it would have in the middle of the 20th century or the late 19th century, where maybe the

fruit of whatever is happening right now is not an increase in institutional church attendance,

but doesn't mean that there isn't something happening.

And he admitted that.

I only have the tools I have.

This is what it's showing me, but I think he's open to the possibility that his tools

are not capturing everything that's going on.

Part of the backdrop for this, and if anybody who's unfamiliar with Asbury in Wilmore, Kentucky

might recall that name popping up in their news feeds back in 2023, because in February

of 2023, there was, I'll just say, an event that occurred on your campus that got a lot

of media attention.

Some people were labeling it a revival.

Others are more hesitant about putting that title on to what happened.

But for those who may be forgotten or unfamiliar, from your point of view, in the chair of

the president of Asbury, what happened in February of 2023?

Yeah.

Here's the quick story.

We had a chapel service that was as ordinary of a service as you could imagine.

It was in, it's cold weather, it's overcast, it's bland.

I actually watched it from my office, and then I immediately went to a meeting with someone

else.

And I was supposed to fly out of town that day.

But about 20 students stuck around after chapel, and they just continued to pray and worship.

And just more students came back, and more came back, and it went from, that's curious

to, wow, something, something's really shifting here.

And I started canceling meetings by the end of that day.

I canceled my trip, and that went on for 16 days.

And within that 16 days, and estimated 50 to 70,000 people came to our two stoplight town

in Wilmore.

And I've never experienced anything like it in my entire life.

We've used the expression outpouring to describe that, because it could be an outpouring

of God's spirit, hunger received, hunger met.

But also, if you look at it descriptively, it's an outpouring of people, expression, etc.

So we thought that was a descriptive way to talk about it without assigning, awakening

a revival, or any of this kind of, theologically freighted language on it.

What did those 16 days look like?

I mean, you mentioned students hanging around after the chapel service to pray and sing.

Is that what continued for all those days, or were there other activities?

What did you witness in your up close point of view?

Yeah, a few Google ads-bare revival, which is how it was described in the media.

You'll see these really long lines around our campus and kind of packed with a lot of

different people.

The first few days was really just our community.

And students went from worship to a period of testifying.

And that was really, really powerful, but also it was very real because they were not

self-editing what they were testifying to, even though staff and faculty and professor

or administrators are in the room.

There was, so there was this kind of confession, there was repentance, and then in the midst

of all of that worship.

Those were the first few days that weekend, the world kind of started showing up.

And I just want to say, when other started coming, I think it's important to mention that

I've described this as an uncoordinated humility among people who work here because our marketing

team quickly decided, do not post anything that's calling attention to this or naming

this or saying, look at us.

Well, we never had a discussion about that.

They just knew that was the right thing to do.

And the vice president for advancement told his team, do not raise money.

Don't even go out, just go over and serve in our Chapel Hughes Auditorium.

We never had a discussion about that.

There was never a discussion about not prioritizing Gen Z and our students.

That always seemed to be on the forefront of people's minds.

So I just appreciated that was in the water and nevertheless, through social media and

other outlets, people just began to come.

And there were people from all over the United States.

We counted almost 300 different colleges or universities that were represented.

We had this whiteboard where students from other schools could write their school and

someone kind of tallyed that up.

That was really amazing.

And then we had people come from other countries, which was just incredible.

In 2021, we had scheduled to have the college day of prayer on our campus for February 23rd,

2023.

And I think that's important to mention because it seemed very coordinated with what was

happening and it absolutely wasn't, which it just happened to be on the schedule.

And what that is, you basically will simulcast a prayer event on your campus to all of these

other colleges and universities throughout the United States and even the world.

In fact, that's occurring at the end of February this month at Liberty University this year,

the CDOP.

And so that was scheduled and we thought that might be the best way to wind down what was

happening on our campus and release that to go out into wherever it goes and to all

the world.

But it was amazing to have that scheduled at that time.

So it was a lot, there was a lot of stress on our community, our staff, our faculty and

our students.

But it was the greatest act of collective godliness and hospitality.

I think that I've ever witnessed.

The overwhelming thing I hear over and over again from testimonies of people who come

is just a strong sense of peace, God's presence and a kind of John 17 unity in the room.

You mentioned how various faculty and administrators responded and you didn't have to step in and

say don't raise money on this, don't publicize this.

That's really encouraging here.

It says something about the culture of Asbury that was pre-existent before all this happened.

When this was unfolding, what did you think your job was in the midst of this as the president?

Yeah, well, I was just interviewed by someone related to this and he asked what I may have

brought to the table.

I think I gave an odd answer, but it's a true one.

I was saying how unimaginative I am and what I mean by that is when things were unfolding

that first day, the pastor who spoke in Chapel that morning came up to me and he's like,

I think you should email the community and invite them to come and pray.

Don't call it anything.

I was like, really?

You think so?

You can see it and then that evening another person who was helping us kind of in a leadership

team said, hey, I really think you should consider leaving Hughes Auditorium open the entire

evening.

And again, I didn't see it.

I was like, really?

You think so?

And we went down in the basement.

There was kind of a leadership team and I was like, hey, you guys, you think we should

leave this open all evening and just immediately, like, yeah, absolutely and I'll take ten until

midnight.

Everyone's just filled up these slots to kind of superintend over the space.

And I say that because originally, I think my role was to have this kind of imaginative

interdependence, like I can't see what's happening, but I can see it through your imagination.

And I think later, folks could see some things through my imagination as a fiduciary for

the school as someone who's supposed to steward our mission in our students.

And I just share all that.

I think that was something really beautiful happening throughout those two weeks as we

all were kind of like foring inside and out one another's imaginative landscape to discern

the most spiritually responsible and faithful thing to do at a given time.

Later, about a week into it, I was feeling more the weight of my role and so were my

colleagues.

I've said at the very beginning of that, something like that is a fruit of our mission,

but it's not our mission.

Like we wake up and we think about intellectually rigorous, spiritually edifying and formative

education for our students, that's our mission.

And so there was a point where I called all the leaders together and was clumsily trying

to speak to them and I said something along the lines of, I think this is bigger than

us and I think something special is happening that will narrate in the future is something

bigger than us and someone finally cut me off and they said, what are you asking?

And I said, you know, are you with me?

I'm asking, are you with me?

And I think this is really a significant sky because if you go to any college or university

or church or whatever and say, hey, I'm going to change the carpet color, you're going

to have a massive fight and especially in universities, I mean, there are opinions.

But every single person in the room was like, we're with you.

We're with you.

Like we agree.

And I just remember having the sense of like, I could run through a wall at that point.

Like I was so encouraged and we knew there needed to be a horizon to all of that, but there

was in a moment agreement between key leaders in the school that we think we have a responsibility

to foster and to be hospitable to what's unfolding before us.

And then about a week after that, we felt the weight and responsibility to not perpetually

localize what was happening and to return to university continuity for the sake of our

students and the day-to-day work that we do.

That was a question I had.

You mentioned earlier when you stepped into this role, there's no handbook for how to lead

a university during a global pandemic.

There's also no handbook to how to lead a university when there's an outpouring of this

sort among your students.

The normal functioning of the university just get put on hold during those weeks.

And how did you know when to return to some kind of normalcy?

I wish I could outline, I mean, it's such a Sunday school answer.

It was the Lord.

I mean, there was just an intuition.

And again, really borrowing one another is imaginative landscape for thinking about what

to do next, but there was just a clear, it's really time to, yeah, this is not something

where we want to keep bringing people to our campus.

Now, some of that was practical.

Our town was severely stressed.

So it was estimated the second Saturday, 15,000 people came in one day.

And so we had local authorities, and they were putting up signs outside of Wilmore, saying

revival is packed.

That's what they were calling it.

There's no room in town.

And that was wild, there was a lot.

Some of our students were understandably freaked out.

They live here, and they have thousands of people coming to campus, and a mentor of mine

said, a bright light will attract all manner of bugs.

And so, yeah, there were some amazing people who came, and some might come in like blow

a show far outside of a student's window or something.

So that's unsettling, and we just felt the weight of our responsibility to our students

and their families, and kind of the promise that we make to them.

But there was also, I think, a spiritual sense, and this metaphor, kind of a merge from

our group that was really helpful to me, that a fire is brightest when it is largest.

And in that sense, I think we had this kind of multi-week, massive spiritual bonfire.

But a fire is hottest when it is, you might say, moving into burning hot embers, kind of

simmering into these hot embers.

So even though it might look like something is dying down, could actually a kind of heat

be increasing, and do we have some responsibility to send that heat out, and to, again, not try

to make that about us?

And I think that's the final thing I would say in that intuition.

Again, this is a fruit of our mission, but it's not our mission.

Things like this have happened at Asbury.

There was a very famous revival in 1970 that is credited with sparking the Jesus movement.

But I have never had a strong sense that this was by us and for us.

And so the number one question I have been asked in the last three years is, what is Asbury

like now?

And I've joked, I want to give this sarcastic answer, you know, students are in monastic

robes floating around, singing hymns, holding candles, and no, I'm like, our campus is amazing.

Our students are amazing.

The atmosphere is great.

The spiritual temperature is high.

But when I'm asked that question, I'm always like, I think it's important to broaden your

gaze.

I just think there's something stirring in this younger generation that is not just about

what's going on at Asbury, what's going on with young adults?

And why is there this desire to raise some of these ultimate questions in a new and fresh

way among younger generations?

And that to me is a far more interesting story than the spiritual environment on our campus

in a post outpouring context.

OK.

I want to get to that in a second, the post outpouring context and the broader dynamics

that you're seeing among this generation around the country.

But before we leave the 2023 event, one last question on that front.

Your mentor's metaphor of a bright light draws all kinds of insects is a good way to think

about it.

You've spoken really powerfully about what you did internally to try to protect the students

and make sure that you are following the imagination of the whole leadership team around

this thing and sensing what is God calling us to do.

How did you protect your campus and your students from, let's just say, those less benevolent

insects that were drawn to this light?

What guards did you put up?

I know.

I heard stories of people who heard through the media what was happening on your campus

and wanted to leverage it or use it or bask in the glow of this event for their own influence

or fame or whatever.

It might be, how did you protect it from that kind of misuse?

Well, there were some practical things.

We asked people not to stream or record some did anyway.

But if it was visible that they were doing that, we asked them not to.

We set up security.

One of our VPs has a really strong background in media communication with large scale media

outlets and he knew what to do.

So kind of controlling different groups that were coming in and just explaining to them,

especially groups that may not be familiar, this all looks really weird to them.

There were some practical things, as mentioned, like how you facilitate a line who's allowed

in the building and who is not.

There were other campuses, I say campuses, there were other sites like churches and as

very seminaries across the street, so folks could go there as well and what was happening

in Hughes Auditorium with Simon Cass there.

There was also just some amazing stories of stories I heard where people came with malintent

or perhaps selfish intention and it just dissolved.

It just, nothing came of it.

There was a guy who had made a comment about he was invited to preach at the Asbury Revival

and he put this on social media and it's just not true, no one invited him and that wasn't

how we were organizing that anyway.

But he came and he actually, and this is a well-known figure, he actually just sat in

the Auditorium and he left and he actually wrote a nice post about it.

There were others who came, I think, that had malintent and nothing never came of it.

It certainly would have been an opportunity for some kind of event.

There was a shooting during that time, I think at Michigan State and so that was kind of

in the imagination of people and even someone came, I don't know if you know this story,

someone came who had measles we discovered and so the day after this all ended, we had

a huge group of our staff on a Zoom call with the CDC and they're like, you're going

to be ground zero for one of the largest measles outbreaks in America and we were all exhausted

and kind of freaking out, nothing came of that.

There was a sensibility to bring orchestration and protection, but I really have a hard

time not describing just the Lord's guiding hand of protection upon us as well.

And again, that might be a simplistic way of talking about it, but I don't know any

other way to talk about it, it was not our ingenuity, it was not pulling the playbook

off the shelf, the manual on how you handle outpourings.

So I'm just so thankful for how that was stewarded by the people around me, but also God's

hand of protection during that time.

Let's pivot to the year since then and maybe back to what you wrote about in this article

because no doubt it was informed by your experience in 2023.

What do you see going on, particularly in the generation of students that you're leading

right now, apart from the data, why did so many tens of thousands of people come to your

campus when they heard what was happening?

What do you think is driving young people that you're seeing in a way that maybe prior

generations didn't experience in the same way?

What's in the atmosphere right now that is awakening them to these questions and hunger?

I think a couple of things that I've seen, I had a really interesting experience where

a news publication call is a very well-known outlet, but their question was a little different

and similar to what you're saying, why Gen Z, why are they responding this way?

And I made the comment, look at what they've experienced just in recent years, like the

social upheaval, look at this completely dysfunctional political environment.

There's economic uncertainty, they're familiar with global wars.

We have this pandemic that's accelerating all of these challenges.

Look at the church, if you look at very popular ministries and institutions, there have

just been very public moral failures among leaders, which create skepticism.

So I ended all that by just saying, I think they want something more.

And I was with a group of students the next day and I said, hey, you guys, I was asked

this question and this is the answer I gave, what do you think of my answer?

And there was a really intelligent student who considered this and he was like, yeah, I

think that's right, but I wouldn't put it the way you did.

He said, we don't want something more, we want something less.

And I thought that was a facet, I was like, we'll talk about that, what do you mean?

And in his answer, he's basically saying, we don't want, don't worry, this is not the

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