Revival Spreading Across College Campuses
by David Briggs, Associated Press (From the Oakland Tribune, 4/29/95)
In Illinois, Wheaton College students lined up until 6 a.m. to publicly confess their sins. Drugs, alcohol and pornography were symbolically dumped in garbage bags as young men and women spoke of the differences between their public and private lives as Christians.
At Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass., students who normally fidgeted through the 40 minute morning chapel service sat spellbound for nearly six hours as classmate after classmate felt impelled to make public confessions. That night, the service ran from 9 p.m. until 1:30 a.m.
In a rejection of the Generation X label characterizing them as cynics who blame the sins of baby boomers for their own perceived apathy, students at evangelical college campuses across the nation are embracing a revival calling them to repentance.
“The call that’s going out is a call to return to the Lord,” said Chris Robeson, 21, a senior at Howard Payne University in Brown wood, Texas. “People are hurting, and we really don’t know one another. What I’ve been seeing at amazing levels in places that I’ve been is people have been set free.”
The origin of the national revival is traced back to a Jan. 22 service at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church in Brownwood in which Robeson unexpectedly got up at the end of a service and confessed his sins of complacency and apathy. An older woman joined him at the altar and, in the following weeks, many members of the congregation–which includes a number of Howard Payne students–came forward with their own confessions in services that lasted up to 3 1/2 hours.
Then, at a revival at the college, a number of students rose to give public confessions. From there, students at Howard Payne and the Rev. John Avant, the pastor at Coggin Avenue Church, visited other campuses telling of their experiences. The revival has now spread to at least 30 campuses, according to Avant. “I’ve never seen anything like it, except in history,” he said. “We haven’t seen a student revival since the Jesus movement days of the late 60’s and early 70’s.”
During the revival at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, a white student who confessed to the sin of racism was immediately embraced by two black students, as others at the service applauded and wept, Avant said. One of the black students is now his prayer partner.
At Eastern Nazarene College, junior Amy Zimmerman said after the chapel service of public confessions that she went out and mended a friendship she never thought would be mended. Although the dispute was over “big, serious stuff,” the two friends kept telling each other they were sorry….
After the revival began at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., a student came to church historian John Woodbridge’s office and confessed he had cheated on an exam. “I have never seen anything quite like it in 25 years of teaching here,” Woodbridge said of the revival.
Even some school officials who were initially skeptical say they have been impressed by the sincerity of the movement. They say students are not trying to outdo one another with sensational confessions and that few youths are exhibiting the emotional cries and movements of some earlier revivals in U.S. history.
“What I have been sort of touched by, very moved by in this phenomenon, is the soberness, the propriety, the orderliness if you will, of what is taking place,” said Kent Hill, president of Eastern Nazarene College. “The reason that I felt that it was genuine and it was Christian and it was biblical was the depth and breadth of what the students were sharing,” said the Rev. Stephen Kellough, Wheaton chaplain. “It was clearly a genuine expression of sorrow.”
From the June, 1995 edition of the Intercessors for America newsletter:
At Iowa State University, 300 Christians spent several hours praying and repenting of sin. Male students at Colorado Christian University expressed a desire to be morally pure and to be trained as leaders. Over 500 people at the Illinois Baptist Convention spent hours in prayer and repentance after hearing accounts of the campus revival….
At a March 19 service lasting 10 hours, Wheaton students confessed and repented of sin, prayed for one another and filled five bags with pornography, alcohol and secular music. Lengthy services continued for days, involving half of the school’s 2,200 students.
Similar reports are coming from Indiana Wesleyan College, Gordon- Conwell Theological Seminary, Judson College, George Fox College, Multnomah College, The Criswell College, Houston Baptist University, Murray State University, Olivet Nazarene University and Louisiana Tech….
Many observers see parallels to the 1970 Asbury College revival in the early days of the “Jesus Movement.” At some colleges the video A Revival Account: Asbury 1970 (available for $22.50 incl. postage from IFA, Box 4477, Leesburg, VA 22075) was shown at the meetings where revival broke forth.
(Ed. Note: I am excited to hear these reports of revival on college campuses. Please pray that this revival will spread throughout this land. God, send us revival!)
Ministry News
Most of you should receive this letter before the SOS-San Francisco outreach ends on July 8. Again, we want to urge you to join us for the outreach and pray for us. A detailed schedule is included with this newsletter. This year, we are planning to witness after our orientation meeting on Friday June 30. On Monday and Tuesday, Steve Gregg, founder and director of the Great Commission Bible School in McMinnville, Oregon, will teach on evangelism and lead worship at the meetings. On Saturday July 8, Family Worship Center in Concord will minister at our final noon rally, at 5th St. and Market. Also that afternoon, we will be working with several local churches, giving out two semi-truckloads of food to the poor. The food is donated by Operation Blessing and the 700 Club. We will be sharing the gospel with those who receive the food.
On Saturday May 27, about 2000 Christians participated in the San Francisco March for Jesus. We brought out two boxes of tracts, which Christians gave out to almost everyone who watched the march. Robin Woodruff ran the P.A. system at Embarcadero Plaza, where the march began. We were very happy to join with other Christians to worship our Lord and proclaim His goodness publicly in this city.
At the March for Jesus, I spoke with a friend who had been doing follow-up on Robert S., who contacted us last fall through one of our tracts and prayed to receive Christ. He is doing well spiritually, attending a Bible study in San Mateo, and talks with this brother every week. Please pray for others who have responded to tracts this past month: Patrick (San Francisco, saved one month ago), Dominador (Oakland), Gary (San Francisco), Peter (Rohnert Park), and Yi (an unsaved man from Communist China, now living in Hayward).
On June 3-4, four of us went to Placerville to participate in an evangelism seminar and outreach. Steve Styles, who lived in our house for three years, has started an outreach ministry there. I spoke at the seminar on Saturday afternoon and at Family Christian Fellowship on Sunday morning. God is using this new ministry, Born Again Evangelistic Association, to help unify the churches in the area and challenge them to reach the lost.
We are still having problems with our Park Permits and may need to take legal action. We received a letter from the Park Department granting us our permits, but the letter said “if there are any complaints in regards to an event, all future dates will be canceled and this permit will be revoked.” I sent a copy of the letter to Benjamin Bull, a lawyer at the American Center for Law and Justice (affiliated with the 700 Club, chief counsel Jay Sekulow). Mr. Bull wrote a letter to the Park Department informing them that revoking a permit based solely on complaints, known as the “heckler’s veto,” is unconstitutional. Numerous case citations were given and a demand was made that this language be removed from the permit.
On May 22, I went to the Police Department to get our loudspeaker permits for SOS. They said they were considering making changes in our permits because of the complaints they received on us last summer. These changes would involve filling out a separate form and paying a fee for each date (increasing our cost at least 300%), and shortening our time at Embarcadero from 1 1/2 hours to 1 hour. The good news is that we did get all our permits for SOS this year. Please pray that we will continue to be able to get permits at a low cost, that we would get legal help if needed, and that God will give us wisdom in responding to them.
On July 19-21, we have a special outreach with a youth group of about 80 from Shoreline Community Church in Seattle. We have scheduled afternoon rallies at Union Square, Washington Square and Embarcadero Plaza. Call us if you can join us. On Saturday July 29 we are planning to join The Ark Church in San Francisco for an outreach at Dolores Park, 18th St. and Dolores.
A Final Word
Once again, I want to thank each of you for your prayers and financial support for this ministry. There are a lot of expenses in SOS-San Francisco and we appreciate your help in enabling us to pay every bill.
When we lead a person to Christ, we never know how God will use that person. In 1855, a Sunday school teacher named Edward Kimball witnessed to a Boston shoe store clerk named D. L. Moody, who preached the gospel to over fifty million people in forty years.
Another great evangelist, R. A. Torrey once wrote, “I would rather win souls than be the greatest king or emperor on earth; I would rather win souls than be the greatest poet, or novelist, or literary man who ever walked on earth. My one ambition in life is to win as many as possible. Oh, it is the only thing worth doing, to save souls; and men, and women, we can all do it!”
Our Tape of the Month is Evangelical Fervor: Explosive Bible principles to set you “on fire” for the kingdom of God by Ray Comfort. Ray is speaking at this year’s SOS outreach.
Yours in His love,
Larry Rosenbaum
