– Asbury Revival Is going Viral On Social Media! The Simplicity Is The Emphasis!
A Christian meeting at a college chapel in Kentucky has ignited into a non-stop prayer and worship session and some people have tagged it a “revival.” Thousands have joined after people saw viral videos on TikTok, traveling miles to get to the venue.
According to university employees, the growing event began as a routine chapel service at Asbury University, a small Christian college in Wilmore, Kentucky. At the end of the meeting, a couple of dozen students gathered informally to continue in prayer and worship but the gathering has now continued for 24 hours a day, for nine straight days.
“The first day we had a very ordinary service, I would call it unremarkable,” said university President Dr. Kevin Brown. Following a morning service on Feb. 8, a multicultural gospel choir sang on stage. Some students stuck around afterward, and by evening more and more had trickled into the sanctuary creating something special, said Brown.
“It has absolutely been social media that is the mechanism that people found out about this,” said Mark Whitworth, Asbury University’s vice president of communications.
The setup is simple. No projector screens or high-tech integrations, just wooden sanctuary chairs filled with people, and an open altar call with an invitation to prayer that still hasn’t ended.
That equation has been a powerful recipe on social media.
On TikTok and Instagram, videos hashtagged “Asbury Revival” are racking up millions of views. At the time this article was published, the hashtag #asburyrevival had 24.4 million views on TikTok.
Tuesday night drew the largest crowd ever: 3,000 worshipers piled into the college chapel and four facilities overflowed throughout the college town. According to Brown, at least two-thirds of the attendees are from out of state.
So far, students and staff from 22 schools have visited with groups from Hawaii to Massachusetts, university faculty said. He added that the arrival of traveling students from Singapore and Canada is expected soon.
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Although social media has served as a lightning rod for the event, Asbury faculty said they are careful not to market or brand what’s happening.
“The university deliberately decided not to publicize it because we wanted to be very respectful of our students’ experience,” Brown said.
With the exception of the regular three-hour weekly live stream from the chapel, the videos viewed online all came from the participants.
Historically, Christian revivals, like the Great Awakening, have been marked by conversions and wildfire growth — a reason — for now, at least — that many people are wary and simply calling it an outpouring gathering, a gathering, or simply a non-stop worship meeting.
