Some Thoughts On Asbury

I’ve waded through a lot of hot takes, knee-jerk reactions, profound reflections, critiques, praises, and personal testimonies the past two weeks concerning the events in Asbury. First, I will overviews what’s happening (or by the time I publish this, ‘happened’) at Asbury. The overview will not be unbiased, as I am going to push back against some of the outsiders looking in based on what I am reading from the insiders looking out. Second, I will offer some observations about how to put theological guardrails around moments like these so that good movements of God don't go bad.

It began after a chapel message that the speaker thought had completely flopped. I listened to the message.[1] It was an excellent challenge about the importance of loving other people as Jesus would have us love them. It started like this:

“I hope you guys forget me but anything from the Holy Spirit and God’s Word would find fertile ground in your hearts and produce fruit. Romans 12. That’s the star, okay? God’s Word and Jesus and the Holy Spirit moving in our midst, that’s what we’re hoping for.”

After he challenged them to love others with the love of Jesus, he noted that doing this sounds impossible, and it is – unless we have Jesus. He reminded the students that our ability to love others well will come from the love Jesus has shown to us flowing out of us; in my words, we can only pay forward what God has given to us through Jesus. He gave them a particular challenge: if you are having trouble loving others well, you need to pray that you understand and experience the love of Jesus. That’s the only way it will work.

I’ve heard some criticism of this sermon for not preaching “the whole gospel.” Listen. It was one of three-times-a-week chapels at a Christian college. This sermon had a particular focus on a particular morning. It was great. Speaking as a pastor who preaches a lot, if someone would take one isolated sermon and judge me or our church based on that one sermon, I would find it grossly unfair. Same with the times I've spoken in chapel at the local Christian high school. It’s like judging the plot or message of a book based on one chapter. Sermons (and chapels at Christian colleges) occur in a much broader context. Speakers don’t cover everything every time.

The next unexpected spark in what would become a fire[2] was a public confession/repentance from a student shortly after that message. I don't know what this student confessed, but if it built from the message, it was inspired by a conviction to love others well. One student reported that, in the following days, she observed students who couldn’t stand each other praying together and reconciling.[3] That tracks with the focus of the sermon.

It quickly swelled as a grass roots movement characterized by repentance and personal renewal/refreshing. Remember: the focus was on the importance of understanding and experiencing the love of Jesus – which is what many are reporting to have felt strongly. To criticize this moment for not necessarily going beyond that seems to me to be unfair. Meanwhile, there wa a lot of Scripture reading interspersed, a sermon every night, clear calls to repentance,[4] and people making first-time decisions to follow Jesus.

Stephen King's 'Revival: A Novel'

Stephen King has never been one to shy away from wrestling with the most important issues of life. He knows how to use the horror genre effectively as a vehicle for sobering reflections on God, good and evil, human nature, love, hope and despair, and the meaning of life.

King is also disturbingly inventive when it comes to portraying evil in all its gory detail. It's been said that we all have a better handle on evil than good because we understand it better. Maybe King's just more honest than most about following that trajectory to its conclusion.

In Revival: A Novel, King has reminded us once again why he is the master in his genre. By blending a number of significant influences in his life (Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan,"  H.P Lovecraft's  Cthulhu, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) as well as his religious upbringing, he has crafted a tale that I can best describe as bleak. To give you an idea of just how bleak, I offer something  Bertrand Russell wrote in A Free Man's Worship as a means of comparison:

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."