As students trickled into Hughes Auditorium and took their seats last Monday, Sept. 9, a table and two chairs sat on the stage by the organ. It is not uncommon for a speaker to use props in his or her sermons, but students were unaware of the simple truths that Rev. Zach Meerkreebs was about to demonstrate.
Meerkreebs has been a staple on campus for a couple of years, his time mainly marked by his involvement in the Outpouring in the Spring of 2023. The Asbury Seminary student works as the pastor-in-residence and men’s soccer assistant coach at Asbury University.
After an introduction by Rev. Greg Haseloff and worship led by one of the Asbury Worship Collective bands, Meerkreebs took to the stage and after sharing a personal story about the time he went to see “Passion of the Christ,” knocked down one of the chairs at the table.
Meerkreebs continued on, dragging the chair away and bringing it back. Dragging it away again, this time bringing the remaining chair. He used it to make the point that Jesus walked away from the table, hung on the cross and died for our sins.
“The reality is, all this stuff we talk about in chapel, even the stained glass windows, don’t mean anything if you don’t know Jesus died on the cross for you,” Meerkreebs preached. “We can’t talk about a cross-shaped life, we can’t talk about sanctification, until it means salvation for your life. The cross means salvation, or it means nothing.”
The first evening service took place eight hours later, where a quietness spread through the room as two young girls climbed up on stage, joining their dad in the center. Eden, seven, and Mercy, two, stood by Meerkreebs’s side and bravely looked out at the hundreds of students. Eden prayed over the crowd and the week’s sermons, then worship began.
In his first sermon, he preached on themes of guilt and shame, using stories from 2 Samuel and 1 Corinthians 2. He encouraged students who needed help to stand so that the whole room could pray over them. Meerkreebs often employs this community-oriented praying method, and the crowd felt that it helped them feel closer to the Holy Spirit.
Throughout his sermons on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Meerkreebs continued to expand on “The Cross-Shaped Life,” which he describes as “the call on all of our lives as Jesus followers.” He covered guilt and shame, the torn veil that lets us experience relationship with God and how the Lord is abba, or Father.
Thursday evening, Asbury Fall Revival took a turn and introduced a new speaker, Tyler Staton, the lead pastor of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Ore.
Staton’s sermon was rooted in the Gospel of John, quickly captivating the attention of the students present as he exclaimed Jesus’ name as the bread of life. Using various verses throughout John 6 and an analogy of a wheat grain, Staton kept going back to the provision of Christ.
“Start by knowing His name,” Staton said. “‘I am the Bread of Life.’”
At the end of Thursday’s evening service, Pastor Greg broke bread and led the audience in Communion. Emotion filled the room and gratefulness sprung anew as Asburians came together and shared Communion. The authenticity that was emphasized by Meerkreebs and Staton came to life at Fall Revival.
In the midst of a week devoted to learning about Jesus and this cross-shaped life, Staton described God as, “a God we can’t perfectly understand but who we can perfectly trust.”
The week-long sermon series came to a close on Friday, Sept. 13, as Tyler Staton gave an intense and emotional sermon on suffering. Staton, a man who has been battling cancer since earlier this year, had the ears of the entire auditorium as he introduced the cross in a new way: something that shows Christ is the redeemer of suffering.
The hundreds of Asbury students who attended Fall Revival walked away with a new understanding of the cross and what it looks like to follow Christ in a cross-shaped life.
