A religious service and revival meeting at Asbury University, a private Christian school in Wilmore, Kentucky, has continued without stopping for over a week.
The service started on Feb. 8, and continued as students decided to stay after the scheduled end of the event.
The revival, having now attracted national attention with the help of social media, has drawn visitors from across the country. The service has, by lasting longer than a week, gone longer than even the 1970 revival at the Methodist school, which lasted 185 hours straight.
“No big lights or big media or anything like that. It’s proof the Lord is working. Right now. Amazing to see. We just wanted to be a part of that desperately,” Aniston McClellan, who traveled to Wilmore from Nashville, Tennessee, told WKYT-TV.
The throngs arriving at the school have grown so large that there are lines of worshippers waiting to enter the service as of Thursday afternoon.
Just drove by with my husband at the Asbury Revival taking place in Wilmore, Ky and amazing and so sweet to see people waiting in line some without umbrellas waiting and hungry for God! pic.twitter.com/96lnTeJfK8
— Sally McCowan (@sally_mccowan) February 16, 2023
Observers have attributed the groundswell of faith to the student body.
“It started with the students. I think they’re the most important component,” Craig Keener, a biblical studies scholar at the Asbury Theological Seminary across the street, told the Lexington Herald-Reader newspaper.
The seminary separated from Asbury University in 1940.
“I have experienced God this week in a way I haven’t before, but the radical change of others seems more significant. I feel like a bystander in the story that is unfolding and continues to unfold. I feel like a reporter. A witness to the testimonies of lives changed, tears shed, hugs shared, and utter joy and peace that is indescribable,” sophomore Eliza Crawford told local news site Kentucky Today.
School officials, meanwhile, attribute the event to the divine.
“We would say there is just a spirit of the Lord in this place. Really, burrowed its way into the hearts and minds of our students, staff, faculty and our community,” Asbury University President Kevin Brown told WKYT, the CBS affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky.
Thus far, the peak crowd size occurred Tuesday, with 3,000 people inside the chapel and four overflow facilities throughout Wilmore. Over two-thirds of the people that night were from out of state, Mr. Brown told NBC News.
Some visitors from out of state included students from other schools, who have since returned and started their own meetings; these offshoots include services at Lee University in Tennessee, Ohio Christian University and Anderson University in Indiana, according to NBC News.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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