I’m not a conspiracy kinda guy, so I don’t for a minute believe that the producers of The Jesus Revolution, releasing this weekend in theatres, were in any way involved in the revival which broke out on February 8th in Wilmore, Kentucky at Asbury University.
But it’s an interesting convergence; it’s excellent timing
The Jesus Revolution was the cover story in TIME Magazine in June, 1971. Explo ’72, the first major Christian festival, happened in the year it’s named after. But if we stretch a bit, we could say that by 1973, The Jesus People, Jesus Music and The Jesus Movement really started to intensify.
Which puts it 50 years prior to the events of this month.
Back to the present: On February 8th, a chapel service started at Asbury which didn’t end until it was suspended for 11 hours on February 16th in order to work out “sustainability” details. Those overnight breaks have continued. Wilmore, Kentucky has a population of only 6,000, and well over 20,000 people have been drawn to the campus to experience the event at its ground zero, with lines to get in the main building, or other facilities carrying the event on closed-circuit stretching half a mile. Town officials have had to close access to the town and post signs stating “Revival Over Capacity.”
Today it’s back on, and contrary to most of the early days of the event when they were trying to contain it somewhat, it is available to stream live.
The first two days — before the media heard about it — the chapel service was a mix of music and times of personal confession, prayer and testimony. The confession element is a recurring theme in recorded revivals throughout church history.
But much of the event since has been music-driven. Listening last night was basically hearing a worship music soundtrack of a generation. There have been no sermons. No special guests. No introductions. No extravagance. No unusual manifestations.
That last distinction is important. There has been nothing that would characterize this as a charismatic outpouring. Nothing of what John Wimber would have called “signs and wonders.”
Asbury is a non-denominational school, but identifies as part of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition. By February 13th, the event had spread to other schools.
The Jesus Revolution of the 1970s was also largely music-driven, but Contemporary Christian Music (or simply CCM as it became known) wasn’t the industry it is today and didn’t have the same marketing machinery. Spinoff events — Jesus ’75, the Fishnet festivals, the Creation festivals, etc. — advertised guest speakers front and center. Today, you have to dig deep into the advertising to find the speakers or seminar-leaders list, the musicians totally dominate the event, and are the main attraction for attendees.
But the early days were very grassroots, homespun and organic; not dissimilar to what’s going on in Kentucky et al as I type this. I can tell you, with absolute assurance, that you would not be reading this article were it not for how the wake of the Jesus Movement impacted me and nurtured my growing (and sometimes shaky) faith.
In many ways, my own life has consisted entirely of wanting to share the water from the well I found, whether that be sharing the music as an itinerant youth minister with a traveling video show, a coffee-house performer wholly dependent on the condition of the pianos at the church or venue, a seller of Jesus Music record albums, and later, a champion of Christian books and authors through promoting sales and writing reviews for various publications.
“Part one of the gospel is ‘taste and see;'” I was taught, and “Part two of the gospel is go and tell.'” My sphere of influence never reached far beyond my small corner of the world, but occasionally, especially through my writing, and the early iterations of this blog and its two year spinoff with Christianity Today, I was able to tell the stories of Christian musicians making a difference and using their art to point people to Jesus.
Music is a powerful force. And Christianity is “a singing faith.” The two verses of scripture that speak of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” cause those to arise in one case out of the overflow of God’s word “dwelling in you richly” as the King James puts it, and in the other case out of being “filled with the Spirit.” Either way, it produces a song.
Of course, The Jesus Revolution is more than just a story of music. I haven’t seen the film as I write this, but it’s partly about a pastor who was willing to risk all to bring the love of Jesus to a new generation. It was in many ways radical for its time, until you think of all the social change that was taking place 1966-1969 in the wider world. The changes in fashion and hairstyles, the introduction of hallucinogenic drugs, the Vietnam war protests, the ‘Summer of love.’
All those things teed-up the conditions for Christian youth to find a voice; to find a response.
Asbury University is very different. Although the event is far from organized the college is going to great lengths not to associate it in any way with anything business or politically oriented. Some people arrived with shofars (the ram horns used in Hebrew and Messianic praise) and they were asked to restrain the use of them because people would conflate the event with the January 6th riot at the Capitol building in Washington. Fox News was politely asked not to come, and complied. Their lead reporter said, “…They’re doing something so right, so beautiful, so true that media coverage can’t enhance it and can only detract from it…God bless them for turning us down.”
Early on Brent Williamson wrote:
Nobody was in charge. There was no known leader. There was no known worship team. There was several different people who spoke and you could tell they weren’t in charge.
They rotated the singers and musicians every two hours or so.
There was a guitar, piano, and beat box. That was it.
They asked if you need to talk to someone to please take it into the lobby or outside.
No fancy lighting. Wood seats without cushion. Stained glass windows. The floor was concrete. There was NO words on a screen to sing from. No offerings.
I saw puddles of tears on the concrete. It was a wave of the Spirit that hit certain people at different times.
The altar was full non stop with people weeping and also worshiping at it too.
The Spirit of God was making the altar call.
Mark Swayze wrote:
So who are these college worship leaders at the Asbury Outpouring? Who sits on the “Worship Steward” team?
You will never know.
They are a nameless and faceless generation.
They are rebelling against the celebrity culture infiltrating the church.
Sarah Thomas Baldwin wrote:
Most of the people coming have no idea that their usher navigating the wheelchair through the rain has a Ph.D. and their prayer minister is a retired seminary professor. Most of the people don’t know how huge numbers of you have set aside your jobs, your family time, and your sleep to show up and direct people, check bags, and sometimes set aside your preference in musical style to be up late into the night in prayer. Many of you could preach and teach as you have done around the world and on the Asbury campuses. Yet you are so humble to take out the trash and stand out in the cold to get people inside. You have offered to do what you can and it has been loaves and fishes. We will never be the same.
Humility is a value that resonates with me. The 1970s comparison would be early Jesus Music musicians selling homemade albums out of the back of cars or their VW Microbus. Again, this was long before the CCM marketing machines emerged. The musical epicenter of the movement in southern California was relocated to Nashville, the heart of the music business.
Perhaps this is a cautionary tale for the people in Wilmore.
The Asbury participants however, seem to have managed to produce something that cannot be capitalized on; cannot be easily exploited. I’m sure there will be books on top of countless articles online. Maybe 50 years from now people will buy theater tickets for ‘The Asbury Revolution.’
We’ll have to see what it becomes.
In the meantime, find out everything you can about what’s going on a Asbury and where it leads.
Then, this weekend, watch the film and experience a youth revival that is still making a difference.
Some of the quotations were sourced from the Facebook feed of Regent University’s Dr. Ewen Butler who teaches on Revival and Church History. The picture is from a short article by Craig Keener which appeared on Julie Roys’ website, click here to read. Other information gleaned from the Twitter hashtag, #AsburyRevival and there are some excellent, detailed articles linked there. Thanks also to David Spencer.
For the trailer for The Jesus Revolution film, click here. Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier) plays Rev. Chuck Smith. That alone is worth the price of the ticket! For the sometimes parallel history of CCM and today’s modern worship, check out this article posted here in 2008.
Writing, borrowing or compiling a fresh devotional each and every day for 12 years means that our sister blog (and now primary project) Christianity 201 has a huge back-catalog of devotionals on many subjects. For our February 21st piece, I went though every single article that covered the idea of revival, and highlighted several of them in a single piece. Click this link to read “On the Subject of Revival”
Thinking Out Loud 