Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #196 Highlights from the 2025 Revival Roundtable - Generation Z's Holy Spirit Awakening

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#196 Highlights from the 2025 Revival Roundtable - Generation Z's Holy Spirit Awakening · The OneCry Podcast

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If you go to a soldier in the middle of the night, regardless if he's on an
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aircraft carrier or if he's in a plane or whatever, and you ask him,
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what are you? He says, I'm a soldier, regardless of where he's at.
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And I think that's our generation is that right now we are being woken up to
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not say I'm Baptist, I am charismatic, I am in this branch, but I am a follower of Jesus.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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Well, here we are again, One Cry Podcast, and I'm Byron Paulus, and I'm so blessed.
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I trust you feel blessed to be able to kind of peek in on the Revival Roundtable.
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It's a gathering of about 100 carefully and prayerfully invitation-only leaders
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that gather together cross-generationally.
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At Texas A&M, and to be able to hear together from the Lord what it is he is
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saying right now, what are you saying, Lord,
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right now, in light of all the stirrings and all the gatherings,
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all the praying that's taking place, worship on campuses and beyond.
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And so for this particular session, I think it's the session that everybody
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was most excited and looked forward to.
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We We actually have a panel of four Gen Zers, two ladies,
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two men, all whom are students at Baylor University, all of whom are spiritually
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mature, all of whom I think have insight and a pulse on what God is doing among their generation.
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So as we listen to this panel, listen to what might be some really golden nuggets.
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I think of one thing that they shared, which really has not escaped me.
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And that is that in the 70s, there was the Jesus movement.
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So how would you summarize what God is doing today? And they said,
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we think it's the Holy Spirit movement.
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And not in excess or sensationalism or even the vivid display of some of the
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gifts, but they said, we think it's a moment where students of their generation.
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Gen Zers, are listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
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And the Holy Spirit, through different means, is directing them to things that
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they wouldn't do if they weren't hearing so distinctly from the Holy Spirit.
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So they're calling it the Holy Spirit movement. I don't know what it is.
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I do know it's genuine, it's real, and it is highly visible among Gen Zers.
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So we have four students from Baylor University, and I've asked Drew Humphrey,
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who you heard from in a previous podcast, who is campus pastor at Highland, who's very engaged.
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I think they have over 1,000, sometimes 1,500 students coming to their Sunday
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morning worship service. That's amazing.
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And they aren't the only church in the area where that's happening. So listen for that.
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And then also listen, I pray, for how they are so committed to the local church.
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I don't know about you, but when I was in college, I really went to local church
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at a Christian University,
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but they are committed to the local church, and they see the value of the local
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church in this whole work of God in revival.
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So thank you again for joining us. Here we are. I hope I've whetted your appetite
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just a little bit. Listen in.
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With the insight that these Gen Zers have.
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All right, you're used to this, but since you're students, we want to hear kind
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of what you're studying as well.
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They're all Baylor students, okay? So you already know that part.
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They're all Baylor students.
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Your name, what you're studying, and the church slash ministries that you're
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a part of, which I think for all of you is multiple, not multiple churches,
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but multiple ministries.
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So start us, Thomas. Yeah, well, I'm Thomas.
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I'm studying management and information system. So like technology of business
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essentially at Baylor. So I'm just a regular business guy.
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And kind of the ministry, the main focus, me and Maya both are part of is called AIM.
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And it's an evangelism outreach ministry that just started this year.
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But I'm also involved at Highland and I get to lead out there.
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So yeah, those are my ministries.
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Hi, my name is Maya. I'm studying child and family studies with a religion minor.
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And like Thomas just mentioned, I'm a part of AIM, the outreach ministry.
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And I also go to Antioch and I'm very involved with our college ministry there.
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I'm Mary Esther and I am a social work major with a religion minor.
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And I also go to Antioch. Maya and I actually lead life group together,
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so we love it. And I am involved with Camp Love and Pathway, which is awesome. Yep.
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And my name is Zach. I'm a senior. I just applied to medical school,
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so studying all the sciences. And I go to Harris Creek.
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And the ministries I'm a part of is Camp Love and also One Cry.
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All right. Good job. So the, uh, yeah, as y'all got to meet pastor John yesterday,
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if you didn't, but you might remember from last year, um, Jimmy Seibert,
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Jonathan Pakluda, you heard from Jonathan,
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Pakluda last night on the, um, you know, video at one point along the way.
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And Jimmy Seibert as well has been, uh, you know, they really were the champions
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for, um, I think a lot of the, the unity over the years, really,
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we could have had all three of them here yesterday talking about,
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what God's been doing in Waco.
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And so I want to hear just from y'all. You don't have to go in order.
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So this is where it gets hard on a panel. So you just have to kind of look at
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each other and be like, I got it.
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But I do want to hear from all of you on this question.
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Hear about the ministries that you help to lead, whether that's something in
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your church, you mentioned small group leadership, or I think most of y'all
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are involved in various leadership team kind of responsibilities at your church,
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but especially some of those on-campus ministries.
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And what's unique about Waco, everybody should know this, is that these students
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don't have to turn a switch on
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of church-based ministry, turn switch off college-based campus ministry.
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Like that, you know, it very much is overlapping.
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We were in a meeting last Friday afternoon with the BSM director and myself
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and all these students, you know, and so it's just these kind of things are
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easy to do on top of each other.
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And so I want to hear kind of how, what those look like, especially the specific
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things that y'all mentioned on campus. So somebody start us.
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Again, the main ministry that
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me and Maya are both kind of helping run right now and oversee is AIM.
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And I want to let Maya speak some on that too, so I won't say too much right now.
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But that has been super duper powerful. Literally just started.
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Briefly, there was a video that talked about FM 72 last year.
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And so that was that 72-hour prayer and worship.
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And that kind of came forth from a unity of all the leadership and ministry
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roles at Baylor getting together and saying, hey, let's do something.
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72 hours, worship, worship.
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Prayer. And then this past year, we started outreach as part of that. And so we'd have a 2 p.m.
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Outreach training. And Kyle Martin helped out a lot with that as well.
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He came in and kind of helped train us up.
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But then from that was AIM.
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And AIM was birthed. And so what AIM is, is we have different students that lead AIM groups.
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And what AIM group is, is they commit to one hour a week where they go out to
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a location on campus and they lead their AIM team.
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So they get together and it's an accountability first of, hey,
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how has outreach and evangelism been this week?
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Like, how has it been, you know, just in your classes, intentional conversations,
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have you been praying for the lost?
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So there's accountability there, but then you pray together and you go out to your location.
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So say like my location is 2 p.m.
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Every Thursday at the main Fountain Mall area at Baylor, and we just go out.
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And then we come back, you know, 40 minutes later and we just share testimonies.
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And so it's this really powerful thing because also AIM is connected to all
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of the local, like we're connected to Highland and we have Antioch leaders,
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we have Harris Creek leaders, we're partnered with Vertical,
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which is kind of the breakaway at Baylor.
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And so there's all this just partnership with outreach there.
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But then also Pathway is a ministry I was really involved in last year.
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I love to talk about that real quick. That is a freshman discipleship program.
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And so this year there's gonna be 150, around 150 Pathway leaders.
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Which are upperclassmen that have devoted to discipling freshmen on campus.
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So when freshmen get there, they can choose to sign up for a pathway group,
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and then they will be placed with an upperclassman, about a group of four.
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So about 600 total students will be involved in that ministry.
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Then when they get discipled by an upperclassman and then get plugged into the
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church, plugged into evangelism, they learn, hey, what does it look like to
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pray? What does it look like to get in the word?
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And it's just the discipleship that's happening at Baylor. So,
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and if I could say that pathway, uh, 600 number is about 20% of the freshman class.
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So one out of every five freshmen will be discipled for four to six weeks officially.
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Uh, and then of course, hopefully that relationship continues on,
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you know, and, and they bring them to church, they bring them to ministries
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on campus and they kind of show them the way for those first four or six weeks.
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So yeah, Maya, I'm going to keep going on aim.
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Yeah. Um, aim has been such a joy to be a part of, uh, we have students every
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day, different hours of the day, different buildings on campus going to share the gospel.
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And so I'm a child and family studies major. I do not spend time in science
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building, but every Mondays at 11, me and a group of five girls are out sharing the gospel.
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Whether that is you've had a hard day, so maybe you're going to prayer walk
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and not talk to people, but you're still praying through the buildings and praying
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Psalm 23 or praying that the Lord would open the eyes of the people there.
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Our science building is our international hub of students. A lot of students
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there came for academics and maybe nothing else.
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And so with being there now,
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You're getting to see the nations. You're getting to engage every tribe,
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every nation, every tongue, just like what we're called to do.
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And so it's been such a joy. But then we also get to go into the business building
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or the library or Fountain Mall, the social area.
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And so even just some cool stories of practically what's happening.
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We've seen hips fully healed.
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A girl wasn't able to work out. And on a Monday afternoon, we shared the gospel.
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We prayed with her. And she is working out. She texts us still to this day.
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She's like, I'm still pain free.
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And so God is moving even in a small hour that a student might devote to go
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pray for someone to get out of their comfort zone.
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A lot of students, even at a Christian school, have never shared the gospel before.
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So part of aim even is to train people up, to train and equip people on how to do that.
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How do we radically live out our faith, but not even in an over-spiritual way,
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but just we're called to do that as believers.
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So how do we make a friend next to us and tell them the God that we follow?
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And with that has led to healings, but also just discipleship.
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People are meeting with the people that they met at the business school,
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that they met in the library and now they're getting lunch with them weekly
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and doing life on life with them because that's what the Lord calls us to do.
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And so it's been such a sweet ministry to be a part of and just see and rally
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other students to get a part of that, but also get excited for that.
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I think it's really easy to go in times and not feel like you have energy,
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like, oh, I have nothing to give.
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How can I go share someone the gospel? But then the second you talk to someone
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and you leave, you feel so fired up. You're so excited.
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And that's what the Lord does. It's the Holy Spirit. His power goes in us and
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through us. And it's always his words and not ours.
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And so it's been such a gift to see so many students walk out.
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One quick story from even last week.
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The team I lead, it's a group of girls, like I said earlier.
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And one girl had never shared the gospel before.
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She was really nervous, had never done it, didn't really know what to think,
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was even scared of fear of man. that's a really real thing when we're going
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to share the gospel especially as 18 to 22 year olds and
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She had just finished her hour. She prayed with people. She talked to people.
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And then we're doing our testimony time, like Thomas says we do.
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And some stranger, some girl came up to her and said, hey, God told me to tell
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you that he's really proud of you.
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And we were there to be the people doing that to people.
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Yet some random girl paused her homework and felt the Lord say to go talk to this girl.
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Our teammate starts crying and is like, man, this was the first time I did this.
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And God saw me and God's proud of me. and so
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just so neat there's such a unity in the spirit at
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Baylor and it's so cool and so humbling to be a part
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of so that was amazing um
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really fast pathway like literally changed the trajectory of my life at Baylor
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I'm like best friends with my pathway leader when I was a freshman and then
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I got to be a leader last year and I'm still best friends with all of my like
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my four girls and um Those relationships have just stood on.
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And it's so cool that Baylor just has that, like, a place for freshmen to get involved so quickly.
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Anyways, with Camp Love, I got to be at Asbury all 16 days and nights.
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It has changed my life forever because that's my dad, David.
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Anyways, there was, behind the scenes, there was this room.
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Well, I could say a lot, but basically there was this room behind the scenes
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called the consecration room that just got birthed from,
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I'm pretty sure my dad talked about this last year or something,
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but it got birthed from people seeing value in the consecration and the holiness
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of the people that were getting on stage and leading the room.
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And so before anyone could get on stage for worship or speaking,
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they would go into the consecration room for at least 45 minutes.
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A lot of times people would be in there for multiple hours, and they would confess
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their sin and get encouraged and prophesied over, and it was so encouraging.
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And so Zach knew about it, and when I was a freshman, he came to me and was
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like, would you want to do a consecration room at Camp Love?
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And I was like, yeah. So I had really no idea what I was doing,
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but we just invited the presence of God in, and it was amazing.
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And some like a really
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cool story is whenever we were
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praying and people were getting ready for like the main
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session of camp that night you
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would like look over to the consecration room and there was like a cloud hovering
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over it like a literal physical white cloud and then you would look over to
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like where the fire is and where people were about to start worshiping and there
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was a cloud there and the presence of God literally fell that night and we saw
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so many amazing things happen And yeah,
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it's just so encouraging to be a part of something with such deep prayer life.
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Yeah, I want to touch more on kind of how camp got started. So it got started
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at Grand Canyon University out in Phoenix, Arizona, by now near and dear friend
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who's 26 and now running this thing nationwide. But it started there.
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And then some friends at Point Loma Nazarene had this nudge of let's do it.
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So I knew about it, was actually in Kentucky with my friend from Point Loma,
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praying for camp love, having zero idea that it would come to Baylor and that
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I would be the person to do it.
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And so then a summer happened. I was at Asbury at Awakening Project.
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And then went back to Waco and was doing research, living with a blind roommate,
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long story, and just was burnt out and asked God to completely scrape my plate and fill it fresh.
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Within that month span, I got 10 phone calls from different people saying,
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you got to meet this guy named Austin. And I'm like, take it like a book recommendation.
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Thank you. I'll save it for another day. And then ended up getting put on a
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group FaceTime call with a friend from Nashville, crazy old guy who works across the country.
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And he had this idea and he shared it with me. And I said, I'm not doing this
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if it's for you. I'm only doing this if God's in the midst.
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And so, sought counsel, started at camp, Baylor that fall.
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I'm not a camping guy. I never did the Pine Cove and Sky Ranch.
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And here you know it, now I'm doing the camping thing.
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But it was that fall when I saw the vision, we were the third school to plant.
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Fast forward now, it's at 15 schools this semester, talks of being in over 20
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in the fall. The Lord is moving across the country through His camping ministry,
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and I don't believe it's about the camping as much as it is a vehicle for—it's
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also fully student-run.
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It is a vehicle for students to train students in discipleship and evangelism
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and teaching and prayer, partner with local churches.
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There has been a word that's been given for the next five years to be in 100
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universities across the country, partner with 100 churches in five nations.
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Um we were number three and this
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past fall we had 350 students um led
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by 120 other peers that were each individually trained up
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um specifically in the gift of prophetic
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encouragement and so this whole idea of in first corinthians really 14 or it
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talks about that there's this gift gift of prophecy which is simply an encouragement
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that is met with the anointing of god and the worst thing that can happen when
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you encourage somebody is that it's not met with that and somebody gets really
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encouraged and has a great day.
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At most, it is met with the power of the Holy Spirit. And we have seen that
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come forth and we've seen it spread across the country.
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It is now code for Camp Loves across the nation to have a consecration room.
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No questions asked. It is now in the culture and it's beautiful how God strings that together.
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And a lot of testimonies and GCU Camp Loves had 1500 college students in tents
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in the woods for 24 hours and there was.
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There are people there that were delivered from spirits. And that next night,
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there's a testimony of a girl who burned piles and piles of witchcraft books.
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And I can't explain the magnitude of deep consecration, but it has absolutely
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transformed Baylor's campus. Yeah.
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Zach mentioned it, but all of these are student-led ministries.
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And not just student-led, but student started, which as a 10-plus-year college
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pastor, if you had told me that three years ago, I'd be like,
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there's no way that that's going to happen.
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And it was amazing to see how the Lord used all of these things started really small.
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But I think just because of the humility, they grew really quickly.
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And I think the Lord just loves to bless peer-to-peer ministry.
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And it's also teaching them, they're not going to be this age forever.
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They're going to become 35-year-olds, 45-year-olds, 55-year-olds.
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How do you minister to your peers, people who are older than you?
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How do you lead people that are kind of in the same age bracket?
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And so that's one of the best parts about this is I love that Gen Z is willing
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to learn those lessons, but then God's really blessing it with growth.
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So we're sort of like people like me and Will Bowden and some of these other
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people who are in Waco, all of Austin and the college ministers in town.
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We just sort of try to stay out of the way, but just support them,
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hold up their arms to see what God's doing.
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And it's so great because here's what's the best news. As a college minister
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in Waco that has plenty of volunteers and vision and the church would do anything we ask them to do.
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They'll give me the money I need, but you just can't do everything.
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It's not possible to do a 600 person freshman ministry and a,
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how many aim groups do we have right now?
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Like 18 evangelism groups going on every single week.
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You know, the Camp Love, I mean, doing a retreat, I tried to do retreats for
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a long time, was terrible at it. Okay, God said, stop doing those. You're not good at that.
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And then Camp Love came and I said, thank you, Lord, because these people are good at it.
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And so, you know, these are the kind of things where you get to expand college
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ministry using the gifts of these students and we get to stack on each other.
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One question I didn't give you all, but here we go, is, you know,
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all of them, you hear, they are in the deep end with the Holy Spirit.
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They understand, they're walking with the Spirit in ways that I didn't learn
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until I was 30, not when I was 20.
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But what's interesting is our university, and I have a Baylor degree,
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it hangs on my wall, I love my university, but there is not a single class taught
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on the Holy Spirit at Baylor.
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There's not a single class taught on the Holy Spirit in our seminary.
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And so my question, and you guys can figure out, is how do you live in that tension?
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Not necessarily with the university, but it's not like it's being kind of cultivated
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from a university perspective.
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And yet the Holy Spirit is moving in a really powerful, special way.
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So much, the word I use is curiosity about the Holy Spirit for students when
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they come to Waco right now.
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So what are you experiencing as it relates to the curiosity of the Holy Spirit
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yourself or in your friend groups?
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And how has that, you know, been balanced with academic learning,
21:02
you know, at a Christian university, all those kinds of things. So somebody jump in.
21:06
Yeah. So I'm in the sciences. And so I work, my research partner is from Sri
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Lanka and is one of one faith.
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And so I've actually never heard a professor pray in a classroom until senior year.
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I'm second semester senior year and finally somebody prayed, which blows my mind.
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Coming from San Diego, going to a high school, 4,000 students,
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and I could name 10 believers to now being at Baylor where it's normal and you
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actually gain status from being a believer. I never thought that Baylor would do that.
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And I don't know if it's taboo in the sciences or what, but that does not negate
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the fact that I have not seen God move in the classroom. I've seen people linger.
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This past week in my Spanish class, my professor didn't share the gospel,
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but she teed me up to do so. We're talking about mental health and stuff.
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And she said, how do you find this? And she said, do you go to church?
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And then I ended up sharing the gospel. and my partner to my right is Muslim.
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And so there's been opportunities. And I think to your point is to the,
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it says in Titus, to the pure, all things are pure.
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And so to the purity of the people that are, the believers that are fully invested
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in discerning and hearing from the spirit, opportunities are everywhere in the
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classroom. And I think the harvest is ripe.
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And right now it is just building up the laborers to listen to the spirit and
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teaching how to hear the voice. And James Poole has been pivotal in that, of training.
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Right now, we're about 15 students a week in how to hear the voice of God and
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what it looks like to effectively pray. That's been transformational.
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For me, like, I really encountered the Holy Spirit my senior year of high school,
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just when I was, like, alone begging for God.
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And I cry when things went a lot to me. It's all good.
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But, and it just radically changed my life. And I think just about the most
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fun, amazing part of my life is just letting the Holy Spirit lead me every day.
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And, like, I don't even have to, like, try to make people think that I know
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God because it's, like, literally the Holy Spirit exists inside of me.
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Like, the person of the Holy Spirit is inside of me, and people will know.
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And so, like, a testimony I have is I'm in the social work school,
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which is, like, so not, like, Baptist Baylor.
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Like, kind of like you said, people don't pray.
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It's, like, one of the most diverse places I'm in in all of Waco.
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We have every kind of like gender identity sexual
23:32
like every kind like religious identity that you
23:35
could imagine and we did this like intersectional identity inside out box project
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where you just like made a box and on the outside it's like one of your identities
23:46
um like a bunch of different ones um and then on the and how it's like been
23:50
projected onto you by other people and then.
23:53
On the inside you put how like what it really means to you and so I did like
23:58
my religious identity on the outside I had like shame and doubt and like how
24:02
to be a perfect Christian all this stuff and on the inside I just had a big
24:04
heart and I got to share the gospel and just like,
24:08
share what Jesus has done to me and how he's literally just transformed me brought
24:13
me from death to life like literally brought the light back into my eyes and
24:17
this girl Bridget came up to me after class and was like, I walked away from
24:23
the faith my freshman year of high school,
24:25
or my freshman year of college, he's a senior, and I'm like.
24:29
I like don't ever think about God, but when you're speaking,
24:33
like I genuinely felt the love of Jesus, like just exuding off of you.
24:36
And we like got to walk home that day or like walk from class that day.
24:40
And we had like an hour long conversation just about Jesus and how she really
24:44
struggles with mental health.
24:46
And I just like got to pray freedom over her.
24:48
And anyways, there's it's just like the day to day, like letting the Holy Spirit lead.
24:53
It's so much fun. And it's like not a heavy burden, you know, because I just trust.
24:59
That the Holy Spirit will free, like he wants to be with his kids,
25:03
it's all about proximity.
25:04
Anyways, that's that. Yeah, that's good. I can take a, I will say this,
25:08
that if you're hearing it, whether it be the ministries that are rising up or the university.
25:14
It really is a bottom-up kind of thing, which is very Baptist of us, okay?
25:20
So from the bottom up, the Lord is doing the work, whether it's the innovative
25:26
ways of doing ministry or the Holy Spirit being talked about and activated in classrooms.
25:33
And there are some extremely godly departments. You know, if I could have all
25:37
of like some business school students up here, the health science,
25:41
I mean, the Collegiate Day of Prayer on Baylor's campus was in the atrium of
25:45
the business school yesterday, you know?
25:46
And so there are some campus areas that are really, really godly led by some,
25:51
you know, Holy Spirit leadership, strong Holy Spirit leadership,
25:54
but it's a diverse place for sure.
25:57
So these, speaking of diverse places, kind of my last official question and
26:00
then we're going to have a Q&A time, is that, as I mentioned,
26:03
they go to three different churches.
26:05
And you've got like, I mean, they're all so strong in various ways,
26:09
you know, so like the two in the middle go to Antioch, who has,
26:12
you know, an incredible emphasis on prayer, worship, the Holy Spirit, missions, movement.
26:18
I mean, there's over 100 church plants in this 25-year-old church of Antioch
26:22
across the world with, you know, and so that's an amazing thing.
26:26
Thomas and I go to just kind of like a modern traditional Baptist church.
26:30
We've still got Sunday school.
26:31
We've got old people and young people. You know, we do all those kind of Baptist-y
26:35
things, and we're trying to step into this century with that.
26:38
And then you've got Zach down there who goes to Harris Creek with,
26:43
like, the modern-day Billy Graham, you know, leading that church in Jonathan Pecluda.
26:46
And just the way that he's teaching and leading not just Waco,
26:49
but literally the nation and the world.
26:51
And so really unique, you know, just churches that are truly friendly.
26:55
And so tell me what y'all are experiencing, what Gen Z, your peers,
27:01
what they're looking for in a church.
27:03
I just described three different churches, so they're probably gonna have different kinds of answers.
27:06
But what do they look for when they're looking for a church as an 18-year-old,
27:10
a 20-year-old, something like that?
27:14
Yeah, like you said, go to Antioch. And even coming from the last question,
27:19
taking it into this too, so many people are so hungry for the Holy Spirit.
27:23
And so I think when you're a student who's on their own for the first time,
27:27
whether you grew up with your parents' faith or you're making it your own for
27:31
the first time ever, you're still taking that step and activating it.
27:34
And so I think as an 18-year-old, you're hungry to learn, and you just have so many questions.
27:39
You just see older people, and you want them to just pour into you.
27:43
I think I walked in, and I just wanted to be a sponge to everyone I was around.
27:47
And so with even the Holy Spirit I was like man who can grew up in ministry
27:53
who can teach me more like I think,
27:56
Towards the end of high school, I'd gotten really comfortable in my faith and
27:59
thought in a really prideful way, I had covered it all.
28:02
And the Lord convicted me really, really fast my freshman year and opened my
28:07
eyes to, man, I have a lot more to learn and to grow and to go deeper with the
28:11
Lord and learn how to hear His voice.
28:14
And so I think when looking for a church as an 18 to 22-year-old,
28:18
you're looking for a family who wants to teach you and raise you up.
28:21
You're looking for people who will surround you and love you as you are.
28:26
And all of us are in different ministries. We're all gifted in different ways.
28:29
Yet the church has rallied around each and every one of us. And so I think Baylor
28:34
and in Waco, it's so unique because the churches are so unified.
28:37
And we can sit here on a stage and know that every single one of our college
28:41
pastors is friends and they're best friends.
28:44
And so that's really cool because you know there's not a weird competitive spirit
28:48
even between the churches. And so you have confidence going to whatever church
28:51
because you know the whole body of Christ is supporting one another.
28:54
And so, I mean, I think I was just looking to be pushed in my faith to not become
28:59
in a comfortable place, but to be convicted daily and to be rallied around by
29:05
not only a community of my own age, but also multi-generational.
29:09
We're not meant to live with the people just in our own age,
29:12
but to learn from the people older than us to then pour into the people younger than us.
29:15
And even Antioch's really mission-minded. That's a huge heart of mine.
29:19
I was looking for that too.
29:20
And so along all the lines or worship, I think the whole body of Christ is so
29:25
beautiful and we get to tap into all of those things.
29:27
But when a body of Christ is ready to pour into the younger generation and spur
29:31
them on and trust the calling that the Lord's put on their life and help walk
29:35
them through that and spur them on, that's the most impactful.
29:39
Yeah, that was really good. Yeah, I think, man, I think our generation just wants to belong.
29:47
Uh you know they just want to have community and i think they want to be uh truly known,
29:53
and i think that's the beauty of our faith right is that
29:56
there's no mask uh and so i think
29:59
yeah as far as you know looking for a church and a place to to go and um i think
30:05
there is this spark right now in our generation of a cultural shift from men
30:12
you know no longer do we just want to be attenders of a church.
30:16
We want to be involved. We want to be fully known at our church.
30:21
And so, I mean, for me, I go to Highland. I think the beauty of Highland is
30:24
that a lot of the structure of the college ministry is kind of decentralized.
30:28
And it's almost like this house church model of life groups and CGs.
30:31
And I know Harris Creek is life groups, Antioch is life groups.
30:34
We call them CGs, community groups, connection groups. I'm not sure what they're
30:37
called still. Yeah. Who knows really?
30:40
But that's the beauty of it. There's probably about 200 CG leaders and they
30:44
just meet at their houses.
30:46
And then they do community together. They confess, they get in the word together.
30:50
They hold each other accountable.
30:52
And I think that's what people are longing for. You know, they don't want to
30:54
just go to a place where they can just show up on Sunday, sit in the back row and go out.
30:58
They want to belong somewhere. They want to be fully known.
31:01
And so I think as, you know, we're ministering to the college students,
31:05
like actually belonging and not having ministry, just be like,
31:10
okay, like here, I'll try to read the Bible. Here's how to pray.
31:13
And here's how to evangelize. but it's like, no, like I actually want to do life with you.
31:16
I actually want to be your friend, your best friend. I want to walk with you.
31:21
And I think that's the beauty of all of these churches is that the focus is
31:26
not just on the stage, but it's on these little moments, these little groups
31:31
that are meeting together and doing life together.
31:34
Yeah. And it's not just about the ministry itself, but it's actually,
31:38
how do we be friends and just do life together and walk with Jesus together?
31:41
Or something that's the beauty of it.
31:43
The thing that I would say, and this is true for all of our churches,
31:45
is our generation has sniffed out what's not real.
31:49
We notice the clock in the back that turns red when time's up.
31:52
We notice if there's a little fog machine that's coming up.
31:55
This past Sunday at Harris Creek, it might've been two Sundays ago.
31:59
The lights were fully on. The worship lights,
32:03
All tech stuff, the click track was off and it was like the worst production nightmare.
32:08
And people were like, the enemy is attacking. And I kind of had this thought of maybe this is God.
32:14
Like this might be a movement away. And so with, yeah, with that.
32:19
And then this week I was, as I was reflecting and processing with actually the
32:23
first professor I ever heard pray at Baylor, he gave this analogy.
32:26
If there's a man sleeping and you go up and you wake him up in the middle of
32:30
the night and you startle him and you say, and you ask him, what are you?
32:33
He'll say, I'm a lawyer. I'm a doctor.
32:35
I'm a, put it X, Y, Z.
32:38
If you go to a soldier in the middle of the night, regardless if he's on an
32:41
aircraft carrier or if he's in a plane or whatever, and you ask him,
32:44
what are you? He says, I'm a soldier, regardless of where he's at.
32:47
And I think that's our generation is that right now we are being woken up to
32:51
not say I'm Baptist. I am charismatic.
32:54
I am in this branch, but I am a follower of Jesus.
32:57
And so, as we're all different churches, my first Sunday in college,
33:01
I actually went to Antioch Highland and Harris Creek in the same Sunday, and it was awesome.
33:06
Yeah. And I was like, I could go to any of these, but just plants at Harris
33:10
Creek and been there for four years.
33:11
But yeah, I would say we are erasing the lines across denominations right now.
33:16
Quickly, the one thing that comes
33:17
to mind is the need for the intergenerational lines to just be erased.
33:23
As we've talked about all these student-run ministries, it's students leading
33:26
students. There's a beauty to that.
33:28
Though it's students, it does not mean that the older generation is not present.
33:33
James Poole, I refer to him to my parents as my Waco grandpa.
33:37
He has served as that role in my life. And my actual grandpa is coming this
33:42
weekend, and he's another spiritual role model.
33:44
But the intergenerational aspects of the church, which I think is one that we're
33:49
going to see in heaven through thousands of years of generations and that we
33:54
get to experience just a glimpse of here with the 100-year generation span that we get.
33:59
Yeah, I think, I think for me, um, it's just so easy to be comfortable in our faith.
34:06
Uh, I think especially, you know, as believers, we get to, they're like,
34:10
we, we know the good news. Uh, we get to have a relationship with Jesus.
34:14
We get to have eternal life with him. And then it's so easy to just kind of
34:17
rest in that and be comfortable.
34:20
Uh, and I, I don't like know when this kind of first came into my heart,
34:24
but just like this reality of the fact that, I mean, you'd think at Baylor,
34:30
you would think that everyone has heard the gospel.
34:32
You'd just kind of assume that. There's a lot of people that have not.
34:35
And so the reality that there are people that are on campus with us as we're
34:41
just kind of being comfortable,
34:43
hanging out, that there are people on campus, maybe a building over,
34:46
that are currently walking toward eternity without God.
34:51
And that is where they're going. But then we're just like, you know,
34:54
sitting here, being comfortable, doing whatever, you know, having fun,
34:58
good things, right? Nothing sinful about that.
35:00
But then a building over, someone has never heard the gospel, never even heard it.
35:07
And so I think my prayer has just been, man, by the end of 2025,
35:11
I do not want it to be possible to be at Baylor and have never heard the gospel.
35:15
That should not be a reality.
35:17
If you are at this university, you need to know what the gospel is,
35:20
and we need to be the ones sharing it as believers. So that's been my passion.
35:26
Um, yeah, I feel like I just hear the Lord say,
35:30
we're just called to walk day to day and let go of all expectations of what
35:35
we think revival looks like and taking God out of the box of what a prayer meeting
35:41
might look like, what evangelism might look like.
35:44
But what we're called to do is just walk day to day in full faith and full surrender
35:48
and then see the Lord unfold.
35:50
Um, and we just get to walk into the miracle that he puts in front of us.
35:54
And so whether that looks like leading an awesome prayer rally or awesome evangelism
35:59
hour of a week, what we're called to do is just love God and love people every
36:03
single day and watch Him unfold.
36:05
And so what happened at Asbury, we're not copying and pasting at the next university.
36:10
What happened at Baylor, we're not trying to replicate at A&M last night.
36:13
But what we get to do is step into the present moment and say,
36:16
God, what are you going to do and how can we be a part of it?
36:18
And we're fully surrendered and releasing all expectations of what we have just
36:23
to walk into the fullness of who you are and what you have laid out for us.
36:26
And so, and I think with that, then we get to experience the bigness of God
36:29
because we haven't put human expectations on what an event might look to,
36:34
or what a week or a month of this might look like, but we just get to walk in
36:38
and rejoice because man, we're like, God did that and nothing of man,
36:42
but he used us as vessels and as broken instruments to do that for his kingdom
36:46
and to do it for his glory.
36:48
I was kind of like sensing the same thing. Like the most important thing about
36:53
our lives is what happens in the secret place.
36:57
And waking up every day, getting before God and saying like the most important
37:02
thing about my day is that I'm doing it with you and that you are leading me.
37:07
And also just like kind of like I was saying, like keeping his eye contact.
37:12
Like if we're like doing all these amazing ministry things and speaking and
37:16
praying over these people and seeing miracles and everything,
37:18
but we've lost his eye contact, there's like really no meaning in it because
37:23
the most important part of life is, is oneness with God. So.
37:28
Yeah. I think just to encourage all of you. Yeah. We, um.
37:33
A text message of encouragement goes a long way for these students,
37:36
for those people who are in your ministries and your churches where it's appropriate.
37:40
It's important sometimes to join them in what they're doing,
37:43
not to lead them, but to be led by them.
37:45
I mentioned Mike Nelson yesterday who comes to our 7 a.m. prayer meeting every
37:49
single Thursday morning.
37:50
I was in an AIM group last semester to be led by college students into evangelism.
37:55
So some things you need to lead as the grownup and the big sister,
37:59
big brother, some things you need to be led in and some things you need to stay
38:02
away from because you'll be weird if you're there.
38:04
And so ask God which of those three things it is.
38:09
I love the passion.
38:11
I love the authenticity. I love what I think is biblically rooted comments and
38:18
perceptions and discernment that they have.
38:21
And I love the fact that in that generation, they are all about sharing the gospel.
38:28
You know, I may have shared this on a podcast previously, but we have here at
38:33
our office the prayer requests that were sent in to Fulton Street in the 1857
38:39
prayer awakening that took place here in the United States from all over the country.
38:44
People were sending letters asking Fulton Street because they just knew God
38:48
was hearing their prayers and answering them, and they were sharing with them their prayer requests.
38:52
And the reason I wanted to mention that in this context is the overriding,
38:57
I think, topic or theme in those letters is what we just heard from in the Gen Z.
39:02
They were passionate, burdened, grieving, deeply, deeply, deeply grieving over
39:10
lost loved ones and neighbors and friends. And that's what I see in the Gen Z.
39:14
This, I believe in what God is doing right now is not limited to revival in
39:20
the church among believers,
39:21
but it is spreading because God has put in the heart of Gen Zers a burden for
39:28
the lost, for those that don't know Christ.
39:30
So I trust as you listened or watched this series on the Revival Roundtable,
39:37
whether it was Aubrey, the Gen Zer that we started with,
39:42
whether it was Drew Humphrey and his pastor, John Durham,
39:47
or whether it was this panel of Gen Zers,
39:52
or whichever podcast episode gripped your heart, would you share it with somebody else?
39:58
This is the central insight and truth, I believe, that would honestly spread
40:05
the fires of revival that have begun.
40:08
So go to the show notes here, hit that link.
40:13
It'll take you to more resources to enable you to be a voice and to be a catalyst for revival.
40:19
Thank you for joining us. Thank you for being a part of the One Cry podcast family. God bless you.
40:27
Music.