A Little Child Shall Lead Them
College students are hardly “little children.” In fact they are young adults, legally furnished to act as full citizens of our country (and of God’s Kingdom) in every way. But I could not help remembering a phrase from Isaiah 11:6—“a little child shall lead them”—when thinking about the Pursuit meetings I have attended this semester.
Pursuit is the student-led prayer and praise meeting that has occurred every Monday night during the school year for the past 20 years at Northwest. It is a freer version of our daytime chapels, not so constrained by time nor by the pressures of the academic day. Students come prepared to “let their hair down” spiritually. While they may invite older people like me to speak to them from time to time, they lead the meetings and have remarkable freedom to express themselves in worship, preaching, exhortation, and the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit in Pentecostal-Charismatic fashion. Several hundred students typically attend, with numbers depending on the flow of the academic calendar.
In previous years, I have found it really difficult to walk across the street at 8:00 PM on Mondays to attend the meetings, usually tired from the first day of the week and often fully settled into coveted hours with Kathleen. But this year, my strong desire to see revival on campus has motivated me to attend every Monday if not traveling. The students asked me to speak for the first meeting of the year, and I gave an extended personal testimony based on the text of Psalm 71:17-18: “Since my youth, God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds. Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.” In my old-man thinking, I wanted to create hunger in younger Christians to see God work miraculously in their lifetime as I have in mine.
By the end of the second meeting, I realized that today’s students want to see God’s power at work among them even more than I did. From week to week throughout the semester, I have returned, trying to catch up to their zeal, desire God with their same intensity, call out to God for greater holiness and consecration and grace. The students have become my examples, my professors, my leaders.
In truth, revivals always spark among young believers. Never, to my knowledge, has a major revival-with-legs come through the primary leadership of older believers--who, in fact, stand in the greatest need of revival. The mighty acts of God have more hold on older people as memories than as something likely to see repetition. Older people can have a role in sharing their wisdom with the young, but unfortunately, their hard-earned moderation sometimes serves more as a damper than as kindling fire.
Recently, our students celebrated what they call “Acoustic Pursuit.” While everything was still electrified and amplified, they played primarily acoustic instruments (pianos, wooden guitars, drums) that produce a softer tone. They set up in the middle of the nave of the chapel rather than up on the platform, with students mostly standing in a circle around the central group of singers. Smoke machines gave the whole atmosphere a soft, diffused glow, but careful light management produced a warm, bright flare at the center. When I commented later that it seemed like we were singing around a campfire, the leaders insisted that they had tried to produce that very effect—an indoor bonfire in the middle of the chapel. It totally sold me! The video work that other students managed projected the whole middle scene to large screens and in the front and rear of the chapel, allowing a transparent view from multiple angles. The whole mise-en-scéne produced the holy atmosphere of a camp meeting from the early 1970s and the Jesus Movement. (For older people who think this represents too much theatre or emotional manipulation, I would only point out how old churches produced an analogous result with darkened interiors, artwork, stained glass, and other low-tech special effects). It was the best worship experience I have had in at least 15 years.
Amidst all the production elements, the leadership of the students provided the most important part of the evening. Beautiful young people, singing with all their hearts, faces lit up with incarnate love for God and harmonic voices adorned with passion, made me want to revive spiritual memories and idealistic hopes that God could show up and do, literally, anything. Such expectations arose easier in my twenties, but seeing them afresh among the students of Northwest University that evening taught me once again that pursuing God with all your heart leads to renewed encounter with the God who can do anything. If any Christian reading these reflections has worried that Generation Z will not be able to lead the Church and forcefully express the Kingdom, let them teach you better. If you’d like to see the service, it’s generally captured here. If you feel like my description sets up a “you had to have been there” thing, come out on a Monday night at 8:00 PM and see for yourself. Let yourself be led by the young.