Yesterday a former student came to see me. She currently serves in a ministry to college students on a state university campus, and sees the spiritual need there. She asked me a question, knowing my interest in young people and in awakenings.
“Do you think we could see a spiritual awakening in our time?” She asked. I told her I actually am hopeful. A growing focus on the gospel (which, by the way, was what great awakening preachers hammered in their sermons), a rising recognition that morality and institutional religion is as dead as secularism, and a massive number of young people actually encourages me.
Make no mistake, it will take the work of a sovereign God to awaken our land. But it always has.
Let me remind you of the work of God through young people in earlier spiritual movements as I summarize in my Evangelism Handbook:
Pietism, the experiential awakening of the eighteenth century, grew through the impact of students who graduated from the University of Halle, then spread the spiritual-missionary emphasis to points across the globe. Zinzendorf graduated from Halle, the man who said, “Preach the gospel, die forgotten.” The one-hundred-year Moravian prayer movement begun through his influence at Halle was essentially a movement among young people.
The role of youth is abundantly clear in the First Great Awakening. Jonathan Edwards, commenting on the revival in 1734–35 under his leadership, referred to the role of youth in its origin: “At the latter end of the year 1733, there appeared a very unusual flexibleness, and yielding to advice, in our young people.” This happened after Edwards began speaking against their irreverence toward the Sabbath. The youth were also greatly affected by the sudden death of a young man and a young married woman in their town. Edwards proposed that the young people should begin meeting in small groups around Northampton. They did so with such success that many adults followed their example. Concerning the revival’s effect on the youth, Edwards commented,
God made it, I suppose, the greatest occasion of awakening to others, of anything that ever came to pass in the town . . . news of it seemed to be almost like a flash of lightning, upon the hearts of young people, all over town, and upon many others.
In England, the Evangelical Awakening featured such notable leaders as the Wesley brothers and George Whitefield. Their ministries grew out of a foundation built in college through the Holy Club. Whitefield was only twenty-six when he witnessed remarkable revival in the American colonies. These young men never let their youthfulness hinder their impact.
The Second Great Awakening featured powerful revival movements on college campuses. Hampden-Sydney, Yale, Williams, and others serve as bold reminders of what God can do in our day as well. Churches could not have experienced the depth of revival they felt apart from youth. Bennett Tyler collected twenty-five eyewitness accounts of pastors during the Second Great Awakening. Twenty of these revival reports described the important role played by young people. Ten accounts noted that the revivals began with the youth, and five documented the fact that revival in their area affected young people more than any other group. Only one account out of twenty-five asserted that no youth were involved.
Colleges experienced revival in the 1857–59 Layman’s Prayer Revival as well. One pivotal feature of this revival in relation to young people was the impact it had on Dwight Lyman Moody, who was twenty years old at the time. In 1857 Moody wrote of his impression of what was occurring in Chicago: “There is a great revival of religion in this city . . . [It] seems as if God were here himself.” Biographer John Pollock reports that “the revival of early 1857 tossed Moody out of his complacent view of religion.” Moody went on to make a dramatic impact for Christ during the rest of the nineteenth century. At the same time a young man named Charles Spurgeon began to preach in London, inaugurating a ministry of biblical teaching, prayer, and evangelism (and church planting, though this is often overlooked).
An aspect of Moody’s influence regarding students that cannot be overlooked was his leadership in the Student Volunteer Movement. Although this movement’s roots have been traced to the Second Great Awakening and the Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806, it was Moody who invited 251 students to Mt. Hermon, Massachusetts, for a conference in 1886. As a result of these meetings, highlighted by A. T. Pierson’s challenging address, one hundred students volunteered for overseas missions. In 1888 the Student Volunteer Movement was formally organized with John R. Mott as chairman. Over the next several decades, literally thousands of students went to serve as foreign missionaries.
According to J. Edwin Orr, the Welsh Revival of 1904-05 was greatly influenced in its beginning by a church in New Quay, Cardiganshire, and the testimony of a teenage girl. Pastor Joseph Jenkins led a testimony time in a service in which he asked for responses to the question, What does Jesus mean to you? A young person, fifteen-year-old Florrie Evans, only recently converted, rose and said, “If no one else will, then I must say that I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart.”
Her simple testimony caused many people to begin surrendering to Christ, and the fires of revival fell. The revival spread as young people went from church to church testifying. An itinerant preacher named Seth Joshua came to New Quay to speak and was impressed by the power of God. He then journeyed to speak at Newcastle Embyn College. The next week he spoke at nearby Blaenannerch, where a young coal miner named Evan Roberts, a ministerial student at the college, experienced a powerful personal revival.
Roberts felt impressed to return to his home church to address the youth. Seventeen heard him following a Monday service. He continued preaching and revival began there. The revival spread across the country, and news of the awakening spread worldwide. Many colleges reported revival. A good example was the revival reported at Denison University in Ohio.
Many colleges witnessed revival in the 1950s as well. In Minnesota, Northwestern School, St. Paul Bible Institute, and the University of Minnesota were touched. The year 1951 saw a notable spiritual stir on the campus of Baylor University. President W. R. White commented favorably about revival at this school.
A powerful campus awakening was experienced at Wheaton College in February 1950. After numerous prayer meetings were inaugurated by student leaders the previous fall, the revival began when a student shared a testimony of his changed life in an evening meeting. Others began testifying, and this continued for more than two days. Asbury College in Kentucky experienced revival as well. One of the stronger movements in the period in the opinion of historian Clifton Olmstead was Youth for Christ, a parachurch movement that began in 1944.
Finally, the Jesus Movement described was actually a youth awakening. Many of the leaders of churches, denominations, and parachurch organizations were touched by this revival. A significant number of evangelistic pastors and other leaders trace their zeal for the Lord to the impact of the Jesus Movement on their life.
Students are perhaps the most fertile field for the working of the Spirit of God. If only churches would tap into the zeal of youth! I would encourage you to challenge students in the gospel, to call them not to simply live a little better for Jesus daily, but to see his absolute Lordship over all of life. I could be wrong, but I believe if we in fact see a movement of God in our time, young people will be at the heart of it.
For more information on the role of youth in historical movements see Alvin Reid, Join the Movement: God Is Calling You to Change the World (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007).
