New York Times:  ‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town, by Ruth Graham:

For two weeks, tens of thousands of people have made a pilgrimage to a tiny Christian college, about 30 minutes south of Lexington, for what some scholars and worshipers describe as the nation’s first major spiritual revival of the 21st century.

Drawn by posts on TikTok and Instagram, plus old-fashioned word of mouth, Christians from across the country poured through a chapel on the campus of Asbury University to pray and sing until the wee hours of the morning, lining up hours before the doors opened and leaving only when volunteers closed the chapel at 1 a.m. to clean it for the next day.

They were hoping “to experience the presence” of God, Brittany Faubel, a Valor student, said.

The unplanned event has strained the campus and kept the little chapel filled at all hours, prompting administrators to wind down the spectacle and disruption. Beginning Friday, the school said, there will be no more public events. Students said they were ready to return to their normal campus rhythms. …

The revival at Asbury began on Feb. 8, when a few dozen students lingered after an ordinary morning chapel service to continue singing and praying together. Word about the spontaneous gathering spread on campus, and by evening, students were dragging mattresses into the chapel to spend the night. Within days, their enthusiasm had exploded into a national event.

The university estimates that the revival has drawn more than 50,000 people to Wilmore, a sleepy town of 6,000 people where the grocery store hosts a weekly Bible study and police cars read “In God We Trust.” Asbury was founded in 1890, and its roots are in the Methodist and Wesleyan-Holiness tradition, which has a historical emphasis on transformative movements of the Holy Spirit. …

“It’s like Woodstock,” said Nick Hall, 40, an evangelist from Minnesota who arrived last week to witness the kind of spiritual outpouring that he and others have long prayed for. “This thing that’s happening there is so organic and raw, not flashy, not cool — it’s the anti-cool.”

By any definition, a revival is characterized by spontaneous long-lasting episodes of collective worship: extemporaneous prayer, stirring music and rousing preaching. The concept has a history stretching back to at least the First Great Awakening in 18th-century New England, when crowds of newly fervent Protestants gathered to hear vivid extemporaneous sermons by pastors like Jonathan Edwards. …

“Never could I have imagined what we are experiencing now,” said Kevin Brown, who has been the university’s president since 2019, and spent several very late nights in the chapel. “There’s a deep hunger born of this trenchant dissatisfaction and disillusionment with what has been handed to the younger generation, and I think they’re just raising their gaze to higher things.”

The campus setting has helped define the revival for many observers as one driven by Generation Z and speaking to their needs. …

Many drawn to Asbury in recent weeks describe an extraordinary sense of peace in the room. Attendees of all ages recall bursting into tears upon entering the building.

“It doesn’t feel like America in 2023 in here,” said Margaret Feinberg, who traveled from Park City, Utah, to attend. “It just melts away.” She was standing against the wall on Friday afternoon and watching quietly as the crowd sang contemporary worship songs like Bethel Music’s “Goodness of God” and older hymns like “It Is Well With My Soul.” The lyrics were not projected on any screens, as they are in most contemporary churches; the crowd knew them by heart, and if they didn’t, they learned as they went along. …

[O]rganizers attempted to keep politics out of the spotlight. None of the big names promoting the revival were invited to take the stage, where a group of student musicians and college chaplains led a distinctly low-fi service, with little of the aesthetic slickness of the contemporary American megachurch.

For some students, the weeks of attention and disruption eventually became wearying; one undergraduate described finding adults sleeping on a bench outside one of her classrooms.

But for a while, at least, the students had been at the center of something special.

• The Atlantic, When a Christian Revival Goes Viral
• Kevin Brown (President, Asbury University), Statement
• Campus Reform, Asbury University Students Have Sparked Christian Revivals Nationwide
• Christian Post, Is Asbury University the Beginning of the Next 'Jesus Revolution?'
• Christianity Today, Asbury Professor: We’re Witnessing a ‘Surprising Work of God’
• Christianity Today, Celebrating Revival in a Cynical Age
• Christianity Today, ‘No Celebrities Except Jesus’: How Asbury Protected the Revival
• CNN, A Nonstop Worship Gathering at a Kentucky School Echoes an Old Christian Tradition
• Fox News, Asbury Revival Brings ‘Beautiful Disruption’ and Multi-Generational Community to Post-COVID World
• The Free Press, Why Students in Kentucky Have Been Praying for 250 Hours
• Inside Higher Ed, Revival at Asbury Spreads to Other Colleges
• New York Times Op-Ed (Ross Douthat), Why You Can’t Predict the Future of Religion
• Washington Examiner, What Is Revival Good For? Asbury, Jesus Revolution, and Finding Faith
• Washington Post, Why Students at a Kentucky Christian School Are Praying and Singing Around the Clock
• Washington Post, Nonstop Worship Service at Kentucky College Set to End After Attracting Thousands

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