People Met Jesus Deeply Here: Craig Keener on the Asbury Outpouring

I teach at Asbury Seminary, which is a distinct institution from Asbury University, but my wife Médine teaches French at the university and both my kids attended there. So, I don’t feel guilty cutting across the university campus to get to work.

Three years ago, I was cutting across the campus when a zealous African-American freshman named Lena Marlowe stopped me. We had never met, but she asked if she could pray for me. Lena is now a senior, and she was one of the members of the gospel choir singing when the Spirit fell on February 8.

People in our community had prayed for another outpouring since the last one here, fifty years ago. Asbury experienced significant outpourings of the Spirit in 1905, 1908, 1950, and 1970. Anna Gulick, a French professor at the university in 1970, assured me that during that outpouring one could feel the presence of God from blocks away. Robert Coleman, a professor at the seminary in 1970, told me just enough professors at the seminary were on board with shutting down classes that the seminary joined in.

Hughes Auditorium, February 8, 2023

The university normally has chapel at 10 am three days a week for 45 or 50 minutes. Chapel on Wednesday Feb. 8, 2023, started like chapel any other day. Zach Meerkreebs preached a very ordinary message. The gospel choir closed the service with a song. It was not unusual for a few students to stick around to sing an extra song or two, but this day the gospel choir was so caught up in worship that they didn’t stop. And soon others wouldn’t stop either.

Student Zeke Atha continued to worship in his seat, and then went to class. After class, however, he heard singing still continuing in the chapel. As he entered, he recognized that God had begun pouring out the Spirit and he joined others in spreading word. Eventually hundreds were worshiping God. Some students began to openly confess their sins, weeping and dedicating their lives to Christ.

That evening after small group in our house some friends texted my wife Médine. “You’ve been praying for this!” she called, interrupting my commentary writing. “Why aren’t you there?” It was her way of announcing that an outpouring had begun. We donned our shoes and headed over to Hughes Auditorium.

I didn’t feel much different that evening from what I usually feel when I pray, but it was obvious that some people were being touched deeply. It wasn’t about “feeling” anyway; it was about a holy God who deserved our best worship. Meanwhile, I was finding it unusually easy to pray, with biblical insights coming to me as fast as I could write them down. My son and I stayed about three hours that night.

While I didn’t “feel” much that night, something shifted over the next few days—especially as I moved from trying to feel something to seeking to serve. As worship continued, the sense of God’s presence in a special way became palpable. Walking even beside the chapel or across the street at the seminary, I could now feel God’s presence in an extraordinary way. The university was making no effort to publicize what was happening, but word spread. Soon so many people were visiting from outside that I quit trying to get into the auditorium myself. But even as I served as a doorkeeper at one of the exits, I was caught up in the Spirit of worship. As I joined in the singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I pondered how sad it was that some Christians today object if you sing a song too many times. Yet the glorious living creatures before God’s throne do not rest from crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” What a foretaste of heaven we enjoy in the beauty of God’s presence during worship.

Radical humility

The focus on the Lord himself and his holiness pervaded most of the worship I experienced and witnessed there. It was the sense of his holy presence that led so many—first students and then others—to consecrate their lives more deeply to God.

Although famous preachers and singers visited and worshiped as part of the congregation, they did not lead. The campus leaders maintained the ethos with which it began. Lena and other students continued to lead worship. Zach and others regularly involved at the university periodically preached, including messages about the gospel and holiness (which continued to be needed as new people continued to visit). When they did invite anyone new to help in leading worship, they first succinctly explained the worship “culture” to them: radical humility and racial unity.

No names, no introductions; the focus belonged on King Jesus alone. The outpouring surrounded God’s own manifest presence, and the leaders were careful not to quench his gracious Spirit. Recognizing who God is puts everything else, including ourselves, in perspective: in the presence of a holy God, no flesh can boast. Zach insisted, “Jesus is the only celebrity here” (See further: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/february/asbury-revival-outpouring-protect-work-admin-volunteers.html).

Worship continued seamlessly as worship teams rotated day and night. The worship was low-tech and without human fanfare, promoting neither those on the platform nor Asbury itself. For journalistic and historical purposes, I would share more names of those who displayed sacrificial devotion, but they insist that the honor should go only to Jesus.

Many administrators had joined in and sacrificed sleep to serve. Sarah Baldwin, VP of Student Development at AU offered a sample of some others, “Most of the people coming have no idea that their usher navigating wheelchair through the rain has a PhD and their prayer minister is a retired seminary professor.”

I was not one of those secret-identity professors she mentioned, but my seminary colleagues Tom McCall (https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/february-web-only/asbury-revival-1970-2023-methodist-christian-holy-spirit.html) and Jessica LaGrone certainly were among those at the front line, as were even more professors from the university. Médine was often up front praying for people one on one, but I stayed more in the intercessor room, engaging the many visitors outside, or (when the chapel began closing at night) praying with students and visitors in the student union.

Eventually I shifted more of my attention to trying to field interviews and calls. As a seminary professor, I was not at the heart of it the way many others were, but those at its heart were tied up on the front line, and I finally realized that I could be of greater service trying to write and speak and counter misinformation. I nevertheless shared a concern that one of the campuses’ ministers expressed to me: pouring out continually to serve during this time, she did not want to miss out on what the Lord had for her as well as for others. Me neither; as the old hymn pleaded, “While on others Thou art calling, do not pass me by!”

Radical unity

While the university is in the Wesleyan tradition, it welcomed all traditions hospitably, occasioning a few complaints from some outside critics (Those don’t like charismatics, for example, have sometimes complained that charismatics attended. But everybody else attended too).

As the movement became too large for the 1500-seat university auditorium, it spilled over to the seminary chapels (for 1000 more seats), gymnasium and cafeteria, and into local churches, including the nearby Baptist, Christian, and Methodist-Vineyard churches (the latter two share facilities). When I first saw the lines extended across the front of the campus and up its side, I felt like I was living in an alternate reality. It reminded me, however, of how Jesus had compassion for the crowds. Volunteers guided the crowds and provided water. The Salvation Army, which has always worked closely with Asbury, provided food and other care onsite. The university rented some porta potties and the community pitched in with good Kentucky hospitality (Contrary to how a quotation of mine was taken out of context, I was not complaining about all this. I was marveling).

The spirit of unity transcended denomination. One participant who has worshiped in several denominations over her life shared her appreciation for how believers from all denominations were worshiping in one accord. There was nothing there to divide us because it was all about Jesus, the one we adore. Michael McClymond, the St. Louis University revival historian who came to report on the outpouring for Christianity Today, shared that what he experienced in the auditorium was what Acts 1:14 calls homothumadon—a unity of heart with others worshiping in the same place. Believers who had never met before and would never meet again in this life experienced a common heart.

This was often evident outside the auditorium as well, as many of those crowded on the lawn outside the auditorium worshiped and prayed together. Some Korean friends from another evangelical seminary came to visit and we worshiped together on the lawn before moving to one of the overflow destinations. I had more fortuitous, Spirit-led encounters, including with visitors from various nations, than there is space or need to describe.

A Back Story

In 2010, Asbury Seminary interviewed me for a position. Being a night person, I don’t remember what I said at the morning interview and have no idea why they hired me. But afterward I stopped at the university’s Hughes Auditorium, already vaguely familiar with the 1970 Asbury Revival. As I peered in, I was struck by the words “Holiness Unto the Lord” emblazoned above the altar, and I felt the wind of the Spirit sweep through me. I felt there were embers still there, ready to be fanned into flame when God would move in such a way again.

Since then, my wife and I have prayed for revival, all the more so once our son and daughter were students there. But as mentioned earlier, we were far from the only ones. Indeed, Anna Gulick noted that before the 1970 outpouring, various students around the campus had been praying together.

Nor will we stop praying for the Spirit’s work among us: the believers who continued together in prayer before the day of Pentecost (Acts 1:14) continued together in prayer afterward as well (2:42). Kevin Pringle, originally from my hometown in Massillon, Ohio, tried to articulate his experience in visiting the outpouring. It was not just “a one-time, unique experience,” but an “invitation from the Father to engage and embrace his presence!” What we should seek is not an experience of “revival” per se but the Lord himself.

What we call revival is a collective experience of God’s presence that transforms us (cf. Acts 2:4; 4:31; 8:15-17; 10:44; 13:52; and 19:6). In Matthew 7:11, Jesus promises that the Father will give us the good gifts we request, but the parallel passage in Luke 11:13 focuses on the best gift of all: God’s own presence by the Holy Spirit. That insight struck me deeply. One night when I was teaching in Indonesia, I dreamed that the most important insight from the decade of work on my four-volume Acts commentary was how often the outpouring of the Spirit follows prayer.

Scripture offers many prayers for empowerment by or revelation from the Holy Spirit (Ps 143:10; Rom 15:13; Eph 1:17; 3:16), but in Luke’s second volume he develops at greater length this theme of the Spirit coming after prayer (cf. also Luke 3:21-22). After believers spend some days praying together (Acts 1:14), Jesus pours out the Spirit (2:4, 17-18, 33); they pray again with the same effect in 4:31 and 8:15. Although God can pour out the Spirit whenever he wills, often (and in Acts, especially when the outpouring involves those who are already believers) he first moves his people to pray for this. Concerts of prayer also preceded many outpourings in the history of the U.S.

A few years ago, many students at the seminary, especially international students, were meeting together in small groups for prayer. One of the most ardent advocates of revival on campus was Malaysian visiting scholar Hong Leow. He had one time not given much stock to dreams or spiritual experiences, but after a dramatic dream in which he saw God pouring out revival on the campus, Hong insisted that revival was coming and we should be ready.

While in principle I was expecting God’s Spirit to move based on Luke 11:13, I was afraid that perhaps Hong was fasting too much. I warned him that we need to leave the timing and the form up to God. He explained that a revival here would touch the world, and that when it began, I needed to speak out for it. I doubted that my voice would be needed—but sure enough, when revival came, people began asking me to comment (yes, including Pneuma Review). Thanks so much, Hong, for giving me a couple years’ heads up.

One big encouragement of this outpouring was that God does hear our prayers. For the first week or two I was walking around disoriented. Something I was used to praying for, I was now seeing, and at a level beyond what I had imagined. I had prayed for an outpouring of the Spirit in our community; I hadn’t expected it to connect so closely and quickly to what he was also doing elsewhere.

But while years of prayer preceded this experience at Asbury, the timing and manner took us all by surprise. Actually, I will confess a secret here (so don’t tell anybody!): in my arrogance, I had sometimes hoped that maybe revival would happen when I preached in chapel or taught my New Testament class at the seminary. But God in his gracious wisdom did it in a way that nobody else could even try to take credit for. The outpouring was God’s action, his initiative. His Spirit fell as students were caught up in worship.

Divine Coordination

Within the first week of the outpouring we heard that the Spirit was now also stirring worship on Christian campuses such as Lee University and Samford University. We also heard that on a nearby secular campus students stirred by the Spirit were sharing their faith boldly and baptizing new believers in public fountains.

Of course, this can happen here or there at any time, but it seemed like it was happening in a special way right now. In fact, it looked coordinated—by the only One who could have coordinated it.

Long before this outpouring began at Asbury’s campus, representatives from a range of campus ministries united to reignite the historic Collegiate Day of Prayer in 2023. Because Asbury University already had a history of campus revivals, the last being in 1970, they settled on Asbury as their host campus for the 2023 event, scheduled for February 23. At that time, campuses and prayer partners around the country would band together through a simulcast to pray that God would stir this new generation of students with his heart. Francis Chan narrated the announcement days before the outpouring began.

Gabe, a freshmen on the university’s planning committee for the event, says that he started praying that God would get the campus ready. God surprised Gabe, along with everybody else, with an answer that began a couple weeks before the human schedule. Most of the students who just kept worshiping on February 8 probably had no thought about the Feb. 23 event. (There are lots of events on campuses, and though I had heard about the planned event from a friend months earlier, I didn’t remember when it would be.)

Nobody humanly planned for more than fifteen days of mostly nonstop prayer before the prayer meeting, and nobody humanly could have recruited most of the participants to engage in such intense prayer. But the inaugural February 23 event now became the closing event of the outpouring’s public phase. Students from other campuses joined those from Asbury, sharing testimonies, reading Scripture, and banding together in worship. Meanwhile, the closing service was simulcast far beyond the walls of Hughes Auditorium (I had planned to watch the simulcast, but got to attend this one in person. A friend snuck me a seat. That’s a secret, though, so don’t tell anybody I was there).

This was not, as originally planned, a prayer for revival to start. It was gratitude for what God had already begun, and a commissioning service for those beyond Asbury to continue the call elsewhere to recognize God’s holy presence. What happened at Asbury was not meant to be simply perpetuated on Asbury’s campus for “revival’s” sake. Nor was it meant to be kept at Asbury as if it was the location that made the difference. The simulcast spread this final service around the country—though the outpouring had already been spreading to other campuses long before this.

God had been getting things ready. Zach Meerkreebs, the humble and low-key preacher from February 8, felt he bombed his sermon that day. But he told me that for a year before he had been feeling that revival was coming.

Nor was Hong the only person at the seminary to feel confidence that God was sending revival. A few years ago, some new students at the seminary insisted that God told them that revival was coming, and they wanted to be here when it happened. One even said God showed him this in a vision. Donna Covington, the seminary’s vice president of formation at the time, told Médine and me about a prophecy that revival would come in Kentucky; she felt that it would begin at the university campus first.

Not unlike Hong, I had dreams in which revival fell. In one, it came during worship, and I just came in the back and joyfully sang in tongues (and somersaulted through the air, which I can do with great agility—in dreams). In another, revival started in Hughes Auditorium, and we were going out into the community to welcome people. As I knocked on one door, an older African-American man asked if he would be welcome. “That,” I answered in the dream, “will be how we know if it’s a true revival.” But happily God fixed that from the beginning, since many of the members of the gospel choir where the outpouring started are Black. Racial unity was one of the outpouring’s central foundations.

Divine coordination also happened on an individual level. To give one example, although Riely Mikrut had led worship at her old church for years, she was not doing it at her new church. On February 5, she journaled, “Lord, I don’t want to be a ‘good’ worship leader; I want to be an anointed one.” Without God’s anointing, she resolved, she didn’t ever need to get on a stage again. On February 10 she was with her former worship colleagues at her old church and insisted, “The Lord would have to force a microphone in my hand right now for me to get up and lead again.”

The next evening she and some friends traveled to Wilmore to experience what was happening at Asbury. Médine and I had just slipped out of the balcony before she arrived. The Lord spoke to her heart that he had made her for leading worship. The next day, as she was kneeling at the altar, one of the worship leaders approached her and declared, “You’re a worship leader, aren’t you?” How could she have known that? Riely wondered. Then the leader shoved a microphone in Riely’s hand. Riely had led hundreds of hours of worship over the previous decade, but she had never felt the fear of the Lord and his presence like she did for the next two hours. God had reconfirmed his calling in her life.

Some piercing observations for a young generation

Madison Pierce, a seminarian from the same generation as the university students, has allowed me to share here some of his experience and insight.

I come from a spiritual background that has left me weary of hype in a culture of spectacle. I’ve grown tired of disingenuous representations of divine work but it is clear God is moving in a surprising and transformative way.

The movements of the spirit in western evangelicalism always exist in the middle of a cultural moment. A generous interpretation of these movements reveals unique traits for each one. For example, fervor for the great commission at the Mt. Hermon Conference, overwhelming joy in Toronto Outpouring, zeal for the lost in Brownsville Revival, acts of healing at the Kansas City awakening, and manifestation of tongues at the Azusa Street revival. In each move of the Spirit, God clearly manifests in a specific way for that generation. I find it interesting that God would mark this [present] outpouring with:

• A tangible sense of peace for a generation with unprecedented anxiety.
• A restorative sense of belonging for a generation amidst an epidemic of loneliness.
• An authentic hope for a generation marked by depression.
• A leadership emphasizing protective humility in relationship with power for a generation deeply hurt by the abuse of religious power.
• A focus on participatory adoration for an age of digital distraction.

It feels as if God is personally meeting young adults in ways meaningful to them. My generation was formed differently than previous generations and so the traits of this revival are different than revivals of old. The new outpouring is not the signs and wonders nor zealous intercession nor spontaneous tongues nor charismatic physicality nor the visceral travail. It is marked by a tangible feeling of holistic peace, a restorative sense of belonging, a non-anxious presence through felt safety, repentance driven by experienced kindness, humble stewardship of power, and holiness through treasuring adoration.

I too witnessed brokenness when I prayed with people, for example, a young man broken by being abused as a child, but now finally able to feel God’s pure love for him. Others struggled with fear or need for direction.

You don’t need to be at Asbury

The university and community labored to receive hospitably the tens of thousands of visitors who came. But the university also wanted everyone to be clear that this wasn’t about Asbury. It was about Jesus. You don’t need to come to Asbury to experience humble adoration of the Lord.

The new movie, Jesus Revolution, brought back old memories of my early Christian experiences at High Mill Christian Center in northern Ohio, a movement that in the 1970s brought some of the fruit of the Jesus movement to our community. The Spirit moved in remarkable ways, with the pastor, Chuck Schumacher, regularly calling out issues by the Spirit and people being converted in virtually every meeting.

Fel Bagunu, a friend from the Assemblies of God Bible college I attended in 1978-82, remarked to me how what happened at Asbury reminded him of our experiences of days of outpouring there. I have thought of these as well; there were times after chapel that we actually tried to make it to class, but the sweet presence of God was so overwhelming that the hallway to the classrooms was lined with those of us who could do no more than keep worshiping God. There were times in personal prayer when I sensed God’s gracious presence so deeply that I begged him to take me home to him rather than let this experience stop.

Likewise, there was a brother named Ernie at the Assemblies of God Seminary when I was there, who was just so full of the Spirit that it didn’t take much extra for him to spill over. One of us would say something about the Lord; the other would say, “Thank you, Lord!” and within a few moments we would both be worshiping in tongues and prophesying, even there in the seminary corridor (Yes, the Spirit can be expressed that way; note tongues in Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6; prophesying in e.g., 2:17-18; 19:6; Num 11:25-29; 1 Sam 10:5, 10; 19:20-25).

When I was teaching at a predominantly African-American seminary attached to Livingstone College, our undergraduate campus ministry joined up with New Generation, an African-American campus ministry. One year, the moment we entered NGM’s conference, the Spirit was so strong I heard God’s voice immediately. When we returned from the NGM conference, we planned to pray together for half an hour each evening at 5 pm. Instead, the praying and prophesying went on for a couple hours each time; it was just too hard to stop. On Sunday, at the end of that prayer-filled week, the campus minister got up to preach in the campus church. She was also my seminary student, and I was feeling worthless as a professor as I listened to what I thought was a horrible sermon. Then she gave the altar call and one-third of the congregation came forward to give their lives to Christ. I may have underestimated the sermon, but too often we all underestimate prayer.

God is available and even eager to touch us by his Spirit everywhere. Again Luke 11:13: “So if you, even though you’re evil, know how to give your children good gifts, how much more will your Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

But is it “revival”?

One cannot readily identify long-term effects when we are still the short term. What we can say for sure is that the Holy Spirit met us. I am grateful to the leaders for their openness to the Holy Spirit. This time around it was accomplished without canceling classes (except when individual teachers chose to do so). That is fine; God is at work in the ordinary too. When you combine the ordinary and the extraordinary, though, you are doing double duty. Many of us were exhausted after the most labor-intensive period of hospitality and ministry, so the opportunity to rest felt timely.

Some of the spiritual healing that occurred was actually among those who had been burned out by artificial, humanly orchestrated “revivals” (One thinks of a period in the “Burned Over” district in upstate New York during the Second Great Awakening). Some people experienced healing from religious and spiritual abuse. The outpouring was not manufactured “holiness,” but (at least for those most deeply touched by it) a beautiful experience of God’s holy presence, a holiness full of grace that invited fuller consecration to him.

Sometimes people have preconceptions of what revivals should look like. Some say they have to include healings, or conversions, people falling down and shaking, or massive cultural transformation. But different revivals in history have taken different forms, and part of the problem is that we have lumped a range of different expressions of God’s work under the label “revival.” During the First and Second Great Awakenings in the U.S., many people did fall to the ground, shake, and do other things that Christian descendants of those converted in those awakenings criticize when they happen today. But as Jonathan Edwards pointed out, it’s not such “manifestations” that prove or disprove revival. It is changed lives.

“Revivals” come in different shapes and sizes. The First Great Awakening spanned decades in the eighteenth century, was most prominently Calvinist (on this side of the Atlantic) and especially impacted churchgoers. The Second Great Awakening lasted for half a century (about 1790 to 1840); it was more Wesleyan-Arminian, evangelized the unevangelized, and mobilized Christians against slavery. It included revivals such as the Cane Ridge Revival in Kentucky for nearly a week in 1801, a revival that involved Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. God has sent revivals among Calvinists (such as the Hebrides and West Timor Revivals) and Wesleyans (such as the Azusa Street Revival). Some events called revivals last for years; some (such as most college revivals, including past Asbury revivals) only for a week or weeks.

The Bible doesn’t use “revival” the way we’ve used it historically, so nobody can, on biblical grounds, claim that something must or must not be defined as a revival. But outpourings of the Spirit are certainly biblical (Acts 2:33; 10:45). As in historic revivals, so in the Bible not everybody showed up for the right reasons (cf. 5:1-2; 8:18-19), but that did not stop God from changing the lives of many others in ways that ultimately shifted their direction and often the course of history. This was often called an “Asbury revival” because that’s the nomenclature used for the earlier outpourings at Asbury, but as I asked in an earlier article (https://julieroys.com/opinion-what-revival-happening-asbury/): “Who cares what we call it?” Let’s not miss out on what God is doing in many people’s lives.

Some outpourings of the Spirit in history led immediately and directly to conversions, and some want to impose that template on any outpouring. While many were converted on the Day of Pentecost, however, it is not stated for the next outpouring, in Acts 4, or the next in Acts 8, or most others in Acts. Yet it did happen at Asbury, as some who had not been sincere Christians met Jesus (I am not sure who was keeping count, but the estimate I heard was “hundreds”).

But the key purpose of outpourings of the Spirit in Acts was to empower God’s people for mission (Acts 1:8), and that has characterized all the Asbury outpourings so far. In this one, many, touched by God’s holiness, consecrated their lives to his service (Meanwhile, those who want to make Acts 2 the only template are often the same people who complain about speaking in tongues [2:4] or onlookers thinking disciples are drunk [2:13]. And imagine the uproar if we get so radical as share many of our possessions, 2:44-45!).

Weeping characterized many past revivals, but some worried in the 1990s when cathartic laughter occurred—even though Acts does not describe weeping during outpourings yet once describes being “filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” God does not always do things the same way and does not fit our boxes. Yet early in the outpouring at Asbury many were weeping in repentance for sin, before forgiveness turned their sorrow into joy.

Healings, conversions, and consecration for mission in the world happened here. Falling down and shaking, not so much. If there’s been any recent revival more tame evangelicals could be comfortable with, it should be this one. If someone can’t stomach what happened here, they’re probably not up for much of any outpouring of the Spirit. When students from Generation Z passionately seek God, those who have been passionately praying for this to happen should rejoice. Not everyone is rejoicing, but critics have proliferated during every outpouring in history. Jesus had to confront religious people in his day who, though all of heaven was rejoicing, found only grounds for complaint (Luke 15:7, 10, 32). (I confront critics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VQd3kwbJl8; on the Asbury revival more generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMgDlth8J9E).

In the final analysis, people met Jesus deeply here. We thank God for the obedience of Lena and the gospel choir, who, overwhelmed by the Spirit, just kept worshiping. By the time they were done, tens of thousands of other people had joined in worshiping the same Lord.