Thousands of College Students Respond to the Gospel, Hundreds Baptized at Unite Cincinnati

He said that was when a friend reached out to him and told him, “’Hey, this is my mother-in-law, Tonya (Prewett). You know, she’s got a big vision, she’s been praying, and would you do this?’ I said, ‘Sure.’” Prewett is the founder and visionary of UniteUS.

Pokluda decided to speak at the event and shared that what he thought would be a group of “600 college students ended up being somewhere between five and 6,000 in [Auburn’s Basketball] arena.”

“At the end of the night, this young woman had never been baptized. So she texted and said, ‘Hey, I would really like to get baptized tonight.’ Which then led over 250 students getting spontaneously baptized in a pond a half-mile away,” said Pokluda.

“It was magical. All these pickup trucks lined the pond and we baptized this young woman and just clarified that she knows the gospel—that Jesus died for her sins and raised from the dead,” Pokluda recalled. “It was really 250 gospel conversations. It was not just like line up and dunk. It was like lots of conversations.”

 

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What he thought was a “one and done” type of event led to college campuses calling UniteUS requesting the group hold the same type of event at their schools.

RELATED: ‘God Is Moving’—Unite Keynoter Jennie Allen Shares Video of Baptisms at University of Tennessee

Pokluda told ChurchLeaders that he doesn’t know if what they are seeing across our nation is a revival or an awakening. “I don’t—I think we get clumsy with our words. Like, I don’t have a better word than ‘revival.’ And ‘awakening’ doesn’t bother me…a movement of the Spirit,” he said.

Pokluda continued:

It just seems like God is turning hearts toward him. And he’ll use anybody. Like, I’m living proof he’ll use anybody. I’m a chump from, you know, a small town in Texas with a two-year degree in art. And I’m just telling them about Jesus—the same Jesus that changed my life. I’m like, “Listen, this guy died and raised from the dead. And if there’s a heaven, like what else are we going to live for?” And it seems like people are responding to that. It’s happening in prisons, it’s happening in universities. And there’s just something right now. In fact, if any believer is paying attention to this, I hope that we are mindful to share the gospel, because the doors to hearts have just swung wide open.

“Christians cannot be stale. We cannot be dead in our skin,” Pokluda said as he encouraged the church to boldly proclaim the gospel. “If we understand that God defeated death through his Son, Jesus Christ—if we understand that the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in us—then we have to tell everyone around us how they can live with God forever.”

“God’s going to do something tonight, I believe it. He’s been doing it,” he added. “But he’s going to do something in your grocery store line, in your cube farm, in your favorite coffee shop, in your bank, you know, wherever. In your community, in your neighborhood, in your school—like he wants to do something special through you too.”

Will you be willing, Pokluda asked, to say the words, “Here I am Lord; send me”?

UniteUS will hold events on the campuses of N.C. State University on Nov. 11 and Clemson University on Nov. 18.