I love Tim Keller’s definition of revival: “The intensification of the ordinary operation of the work of the Holy Spirit, occurring mainly through the ordinary ‘instituted means of grace’—preaching, pastoring, worship, prayer.” It’s broad enough to not overly specify the forms a revival might take while narrow enough to give you a sense of God at work, helping you identify the signs of revival when you see them.
Today, I wonder if we’re seeing the beginning of a revival among Gen Z, particularly those in college. As I survey the landscape, I see signs of hope and renewal that strike me as unexpected and remarkable.
Generational Awakening?
Late last year, Kyle Richter and Patrick Miller reported on the renewed interest and enthusiasm of the college students in their area and pointed to similar outbreaks of spiritual fire elsewhere. They believe this generation may be primed for spiritual renewal.
Gen Z is spiritually starved. The disorienting circumstances of the last three years—a global pandemic, countless mass shootings, the woke wars, a contested election, rapid inflation, and widespread abuse scandals—created a famine of identity, purpose, and belonging. Gen Z is hungry for the very things the empty, desiccated temples of secularism, consumerism, and global digital media cannot provide, but which Jesus can.
As I meet with pastors and church leaders or visit churches and universities, I see signs of this spiritual hunger. The Asbury Awakening in 2023 was a big news story—an ordinary chapel turning into an ongoing service of praise and worship, confession of sin, and celebration of salvation, which garnered attention from all over the country and sparked similar stirrings of spiritual intensity in other colleges and universities.
I pondered the question Asbury presses upon us, and I noted Asbury Theological Seminary president Timothy Tennent’s wise hesitation to call the awakening a “revival.” “Only if we see lasting transformation,” he wrote, “which shakes the comfortable foundations of the church and truly brings us all to a new and deeper place can we look back, in hindsight and say ‘yes, this has been a revival.’”
In the last two months, I’ve spoken at two churches associated with The Salt Company—City Church in Tallahassee, Florida, and Cornerstone Church in Ames, Iowa. Both churches are teeming with students—passionate, spiritually hungry, mission-minded. “On fire for Jesus,” as we used to say. Cornerstone Church has experienced tragedy in recent years. In 2022, two young women were shot and killed before the start of a Thursday night service. The church has come through a season of grief, but God has been at work in it all, bringing about evangelistic fruitfulness.
Signs of God at Work
During my visit to Cornerstone, I asked pastor Mark Vance, who’s in contact with a wide range of leaders in churches and ministries across the country, what he’s seeing. What are the signs that God is up to something?
1. Conviction of Sin
Vance notes intensified conviction of sin among believers. Repentance is normal. Consistent. There’s deep remorse and a heartfelt desire to turn from sin.
Some of the repentance stories are remarkable, including a girl who was living with a boyfriend and came under conviction during a message on holiness—and decided to move out that very night. The church scrambled to facilitate lodging for her so she could follow Jesus in this area. Vance can recount many stories. Conviction of sin, assurance of salvation—these are the signs that sleep-walking Christians are waking up.
2. Heightened Desire for Spiritual Disciplines
Another rumbling of revival among young people is the yearning for spiritual discipline, for an encounter with God through ordinary means, such as deeper study of God’s Word, and a yearning to pray well and often.
Old traditions are back. Fasting during Lent. Rituals deeply rooted in church history. Kneeling prayer. Prayer at fixed hours of the day.
“Believing prayer,” Vance says. He tells me of a young man who—inspired by godly older women in the congregation who’d been coming alongside students in faithful prayer—started a voluntary “boiler room” ministry. He took the name from members of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in the days of Charles Spurgeon who met in the boiler room every week to cover the service in prayer.
Vance believes the embrace of spiritual disciplines is motivated, in part, by the chaos of the world, a false understanding of freedom that thinks restrictions are inhibitive. Christianity offers a fuller vision of freedom that sees patterns and rhythms as the necessary conditions for flourishing and growth. The spiritual disciplines provide a rule of life, one way of experiencing a gospel-centered source of stability.
3. Missionary Fervor and Purpose
Young people are experiencing an increased intensity of passion to live on mission for Christ.
When I’m visiting Cedarville University or a Salt Company church, or watching the spread of Send Network churches, I see college students engaged, often renouncing physical comfort or better career prospects if it means joining in the work of kingdom expansion through church planting. I couldn’t count all the stories of students moving across the country, making life decisions based not on financial considerations but on the bigger mission of building up the church and extending the kingdom.
There’s sacrificial movement taking place, a real sense that life is more than money, more than influence, more than endless scrolling, more than political battles—there’s something bigger afoot, and it’s the advance of the gospel amid cultural opposition.
4. Ground Zero for Apologetics
Speaking of opposition, apologetics is still a key focus for students—but, Vance tells me, the focus has shifted away from the traditional questions of proving the existence of God or explaining the evil and suffering in the world. Almost everything now centers on the question of identity: What does it mean to be a human person? What’s the significance of being made in God’s image? What behavior is appropriate for us as sexed beings? Are our bodies sacred? What do they signify? What do they tell us about ourselves, about creation, about God? How do we relate to one another as male and female?
Naturally, the hot-button issues of sexual attraction, sexual identity, and transgender theories all show up here. The old way of thinking about apologetics or seeker ministries was to avoid the hot topics. But Vance can testify that young people aren’t put off by these conversations. On the contrary, they lean into them because they’re hot.
The cultural craziness of the moment is an opening. Students first encounter the ministry, saying, “I know what they’re telling me at school about gender is wrong.” They see close up the wreckage of the sexual revolution. They’re hungry for someone to speak sanity into their lives—to testify to reality. To dispense with the fads and fashions that stir up more confusion and to deliver good news that accords with nature, God’s good design in creating us as creatures.
5. Increase in Conversions
Vance mentioning conversions is no surprise. In a season of revival, Tim Keller wrote last year, churches grow. “Many in the community come to faith in Christ, partly because when sleepy Christians wake up and nominal Christians get converted, it beautifies the church. The church becomes an attractive place. It becomes a powerful place.”
At Cornerstone, the number of adult converts being baptized, which for years has been significant, has doubled in the past year. Vance receives similar reports from other churches associated closely with college ministries across the country.
The conversion stories fall into two categories. For many churches, the students have grown up around the gospel and have some kind of church experience, and yet suddenly they come alive as if the Spirit just electrified their hearts. For others, the background stories are crazy, including dramatic circumstances, total turnarounds, and people far from God who are suddenly on the church’s doorstep primed and ready for salvation.
6. Beautified Church
In the end, the most powerful apologetic for Christianity—whether it’s the nominal Christian who needs to encounter grace afresh or the person far from God who’s entering a church for the first time—is the presence of God’s people. And not just young people. Vance notes the spiritual fervor among college students and teenagers, but he sees the fire spreading through the prayers of older believers who love to cheer on God’s work.
The display of grace-filled gospel Christianity is irresistible for many. To see the joy of intact families, of young people striving for holiness—this is desirable because it’s profoundly beautiful.
The moral witness of the Christian faith shows why it’s better to desire the commitment and stability of marriage than to settle for casual hookups or the loneliness of pornography. It’s better to desire to invest your life in kids born from the fruit of your love than to seek ever more comfort and material wealth in the name of independence. It’s better to live sold out for Jesus as a single man or woman, in community with God’s people, than to experience the grim life of self-reliance and self-independence that, in the end, implies being alone.
I don’t want to name something a revival too soon. There are good reasons, prudential and wise, to refrain from naming what God may be up to. But I do wonder if we’re seeing the rumblings of a revival among Gen Z, if this is the start of something that will bear fruit for generations to come. Lord, may it be so.
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