Anna Lauren Jacobs, Contributing Writer
Asbury has a long history of revival over the 129 years since its inception. Every year, the start of the fall semester features Fall Revival, and spring semester begins with Holiness Emphasis Week. These weeks provide students time to refocus their attention on God and the responsibility to both personal and corporate holiness.
This year on Jan. 28-Feb. 1, Asbury alum and Salvation Army Captain Andrew Miller III ’02 spoke in chapel and during the evening services, and guest musician Josh Lavender led worship. Miller lives and works in the Tampa Bay, Florida area, and Lavender, who graduated from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2012, resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. The week focused on the theme of “Wake Up” and was centered around Ephesians 5.
Miller spoke around a central quote by John Wesley, which defines holiness as “love excluding sin.” The theme allowed students to recognize and surrender the areas they guarded against God’s presence. Junior Betsy Oda remarked that “all the students seemed to be of one mind” in chapel services.
Freshman Caroline Bailey also noted this singularity of mind “allows us to pursue holiness as a community but also to keep each other individually accountable to the standard of holiness this week has created.”
On Monday and Wednesday evening, teaching services were held in the Student Center. Tuesday and Thursday boasted powerful worship nights with additional teaching in Hughes Auditorium, which demonstrated, as Lavender reflected, that “worship shapes what we love. If holiness is love excluding sin, then worship’s role in shaping what we love is instrumental in developing holiness.”
Students also got involved in the ministry of Holiness Emphasis Week. Some students were trained as altar ministers prior to the beginning of the week and prayed with students at the altar during services. Students in the worship arts program led worship alongside Lavender, while still others read Scripture and prayed over chapel and the nightly services. On Friday night, the student-led WHAM event was a perfect culmination to a week of engaging God and pursuing holiness.
Throughout the course of this week, there was a powerful refrain from one of the liturgical aspects of Ephesians 5. The charge was to wake up, to allow God to flow through this campus, bursting into every part of individual lives. The student body responded to a rallying cry Miller repeated:
“Wake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you!” (Ephesians 5:14).
With this exhortation, Asbury is in a unique place to wake up and be involved in God’s work on campus and throughout the world.
