NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – What began as a mandatory chapel service at Asbury University in Kentucky more than a week ago has turned into a massive movement, now viral on social media and making national news.
It is known as the Asbury Revival, and it is now bringing in people from all over the world.
It was ignited when several students stayed after chapel last Wednesday to continue praying and worship. That still has not stopped.
For 24 hours a day, going nine days and counting, people have come to the chapel for prayer, worship, and to hear testimonies and messages from ordinary students and attendees.
The movement has reached people in Arkansas, with several making the hours-long drive to see it firsthand.
Bill Elliff is the Founding and National Engage Pastor at Summit Church in North Little Rock. He went to Asbury last week, just a few days after the movement began, to see what all it was about.
He said he quickly noticed this has the potential for a spiritual awakening for generations to come.
“Real Christianity – when people see it and it’s not filled with pride and all that – people are drawn to that like crazy,” Elliff said. “It changes lives.”
The last time he saw something like it was in the 1970s during a similar movement that spread across the country. He experienced it himself at his college, Ouachita Baptist University.
More Arkansans have started making the trip to Asbury University over the last week.
This week, Kathryn Maack, Jack Meckfessel, and David Legge traveled together from Arkansas to see it all for themselves. They are still there now, taking it all in.
“It’s shocking because it doesn’t make sense why people would be coming to what it is, other than it has to be God moving in some very unusual way,” Maack said.
Meckfessel said the entire town of Wilmore, Kentucky is filled with people there to experience the revival. Roads are filled with traffic, restaurants are overwhelmed, hotels are full, and there are more people in town than even the number of bathrooms available.
“It’s thousands of people lined up to get into the chapel and all the overflow places are now full,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Legge is originally from Ireland and said this movement is spreading there as well.
“It’s caught international attention of many people who are hungering for something similar in their own nation,” he said.
Elliff, along with all three of those I talked to who are there now, said they believe what is happening in Kentucky is coming to Arkansas, and anywhere else that is hungry for God.
Elliff said to get in on this, we do not have to go to Asbury. God is here.
“We have cried out for 25 years… A quarter of a decade…that God would send something like this to our city to central Arkansas, and I believe we are going to see it,” Elliff said.