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It’s Here: Gen-Z Revival Hits Campuses This Fall
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This fall, Campus Outreach Chicago expansion director Tony Dentman gave a pep talk to his four new staff members.
“It’s going to be hard,” he told them. “We’re just throwing out a lot of seeds. For many of them, we’re never going to see fruit.”
He was speaking from experience. Dentman has spent the last eight years working at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He’s never been able to get kids to come to a large weekly gathering. He was feeling good that about 100—out of UIC’s 33,000 students—were coming to small Bible studies.
So nobody was more surprised than Dentman when 90 kids showed up to his first attempt at a larger gathering this fall—and 80 kept coming back each week. Before his staff even leaned fully into evangelism, young people began coming to Christ. With intentional evangelism efforts, momentum took off. Now more than 200 students are plugged into small group Bible studies, learning God’s Word and growing in their faith together.
This level of spiritual engagement “is unheard of in our world,” he said. “Our staff is saying, ‘It feels like we’re cheating,’ because we’re doing the same thing, but there’s double or triple the amount of people showing up to everything.”
Campus Outreach staff Andrew Martinez at the weekly meeting on his birthday / Courtesy of Tony Dentman
Over the last couple of years, perhaps you’ve heard the stories of revival here and there—Asbury, the Salt Company, and various college ministries across the country. Statistics also sounded promising—from England to the United States, more young people report making a personal commitment to Jesus and attending church. The number of people with no religious affiliation, which had been increasing for decades, seemed to stall.
To me, it felt like watching a pot of water heat up—there were isolated bubbles but not enough to really call it a boil.
“Even this summer, I was at a church planting network event, and they gave the numbers from Barna about the men starting to turn to Jesus,” Dentman said. “And I’m like, ‘Man, I have no clue what y’all talking about. I guess it hasn’t made it north to Chicago.’”
A few months later, so many students showed up to a Q&A session, and asked so many questions, that Dentman had to move them into the hallway so the next class could get into the room. While he was having a Bible study in the cafeteria last week, people walking by sat down. Conversions are common enough that his staff don’t always think to tell him about them.
“I think the revival made it to Chicago,” Dentman says, laughing. “The spiritual hunger, the spiritual desire, is higher than we have ever seen it before.”
There are still some quiet pockets. But at Dordt University in Iowa, the optional chapel services are packed out. In Durham, North Carolina, at the first Summit Church college event this fall, 70 students came to Christ. (“This is not normal,” college pastor Wes Smith said.) And at every one of Salt Company’s 40 ministries around the country, attendance is up an average 40 percent over last year. For context, their year-over-year growth since 1987 has been between 3 and 5 percent a year.
So can we say the water is boiling?
“A revival is an awakening of the Spirit of God through the ordinary means of grace that brings conversion to the unconverted, both in the church and in broader society,” said Mark Vance, lead pastor of Cornerstone Church, which founded the Salt Network. “I think the answer is yes.”
Back to Basics
“First day on campus: We ran out of our 500 flyers,” wrote Reformed University Fellowship campus pastor Derek Rishmawy in September. He’s at the University of California, Irvine. “Had clusters of students walking up already interested in exploring. Talked to the ex-Muslim TPUSA kid (not making this up) and gave him a copy of Reason for God.”
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was killed on September 10, about two weeks before classes started at UC Irvine. In the weeks afterward, church attendance swelled all over the country. Bible sales, which had been rising since the pandemic, shot up even further.
So I wondered, Could Kirk’s death have been the last bit of heat needed to push revival into a full boil? Was it, as my colleague Brett McCracken put it, a turning point for this generation?
Maybe, campus pastors told me.
“Most of the younger people I talk to didn’t know who [Kirk] was before he died,” said Cru campus minister Shelby Abbott. “After he died, there were narratives attached to him, and which one you believed depended on which algorithm rabbit hole you went down. But no matter what you thought about him, his death was a spark that created openings for us to talk about Jesus.”
The ability to have those conversations is another sign of the changing cultural zeitgeist, Abbott said. From apologist Wesley Huff’s conversations with Joe Rogan and Andrew Schulz to atheist Richard Dawkins declaring himself a “cultural Christian” to political scientist Charles Murray’s new book Taking Religion Seriously, “it’s much more normal to have a conversation about Jesus now,” Abbott said.
Those conversations aren’t usually complicated.
“I’ve been teaching the most foundational stuff in our sermons series the last few years,” Vance said. “We taught the Nicene Creed and the Sermon on the Mount. We’re teaching a very traditional view of marriage and sexuality. And we have incredible intellectual resources on this, because this is where the church has stood for thousands of years. People are rediscovering something that was already there.”
In Chicago, students “aren’t asking the hard, controversial questions,” Dentman said. “They’re asking Sunday school questions: ‘How do I know the Bible is real? How is Christianity different? Was Jesus God? What happens to people who haven’t heard the gospel?’ They aren’t asking it from a heady space, but a heart space—they really want to understand the answer.”
Vance calls it the opposite of the seeker movement, which sought to make the gospel message more interesting and creative to draw people in.
“At Cornerstone, our sermon length is going up,” said Vance, whose church’s weekly Sunday attendance includes more than 1,000 college students. “We read creeds at baptism services. This fall we are teaching through the Ten Commandments. . . . We are doing things less creatively than we ever have.”
Attendance and enthusiasm are up, both in the campus ministry and in the church.
“I am wildly, wildly encouraged,” he said.
Class of 2025
After Rishmawy tweeted about running out of flyers, RUF campus pastor Kevin Twit replied, “I’ve found a noticeable increase in seriousness of the freshmen this year and sounds like you are seeing this too.”
So I wondered, Is it this year’s freshmen? Are they the ones driving this spike in spiritual interest?
Maybe, campus pastors told me.
We are doing things less creatively than we ever have.
“There are definitely more freshmen involved across the board—in Bible studies, in larger gatherings, and in our leadership cohort,” said Smith, whose Summit College ministry has a presence on seven campuses in the area. But he began to see increased interest in Jesus already last year.
“We had the most decisions for Christ we’ve ever seen last Easter,” he said. “This year that accelerated. We’ve seen a lot of decisions already in the first two months.”
While the number of freshmen and sophomores is high, “it’s the juniors and seniors who are going on campus, making the relationships, and leading the Bible studies,” he said. “They’re definitely just as all-in. They’re the ones multiplying disciples.”
The same thing is happening in Chicago, where a group of freshmen and sophomores, after a recent retreat, opened their Bibles on their own and practiced preaching to each other.
Salt freshman kickoff in the Iowa State University Memorial Union in August / Courtesy of Salt
“Dude, that’s the most ‘Christian’ thing we’ve ever experienced since we’ve been doing this ministry,” Dentman’s staff told him. But he can could the same thing about them, most of whom are recent college grads.
“We have four new staff this fall, and they are hungrier than any staff I’ve seen before,” Dentman said. “They bring a deep love for Jesus and a contagious spiritual energy that’s shaping the ministry’s culture.”
He gives them an hour each day for personal Bible reading and prayer, and they asked for more. For larger events, where students invite their non-Christian friends, he’s normally happy to play popular songs as long as they don’t contain swearing. Now his staff is playing loud worship music. In the last two weeks, they’ve led 10 students to Christ.
The new staff are still young in their faith and growing in their knowledge of scripture, Dentman said. “But they want to make an impact in the world, and they’re understanding how they can do it. They’re learning God’s Word and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Our young staff has me fired up more than anything.”
Notably, three of the four are men, he said. “We have more males on staff than we’ve ever had before.”
Men
Dentman is also seeing more men among his students.
“For the first time this fall, we had more men at our large group meeting than women,” he said.
That aligns with what the larger studies are reporting. Historically, women have always been more religious than men. Now, in the United Kingdom, men are slightly more likely to attend church than women. In the United States, Gen-Z men and women are about equally likely to say religion is important to them, that they pray daily, and that they believe in God with absolute certainty. And young men are more likely than young women to affiliate with a religion and attend church.
Salt upperclassmen advertising their Bible studies to freshmen at Iowa State in August / Courtesy of Salt
In many of those studies, the narrowing of the gender gap isn’t because men are coming in greater numbers but because women are leaving religion.
So I wondered, Is that happening here?
No, campus pastors told me.
“It’s less that women are not showing up, and more that men are showing up a lot more than in the past,” Smith said. “Our ministry is still mostly women—as is the college campus—but we are seeing a much higher spiritual interest in guys than previously.”
At Iowa State, where 55 percent of undergraduates are male, Salt’s gender breakdown has historically been about 47 percent guys, 53 percent girls, Vance said. From the numbers he sees now, he thinks it’s “at least 50/50.”
“The girls have continued to come at the same rates,” he said. “It’s the guys who are driving the number growth. For us, that’s happening nationally.”
Secular Culture Overreach
If you ask the kids themselves why a revival seems to be bubbling up, they don’t point to Kirk, enthusiastic freshmen, or eager males.
“I asked a group of freshman guys why they thought we were seeing a bigger response to the gospel,” Smith said. “Some of them grew up in the church, and some had become Christians in the last couple of weeks.”
But they all had the same answer.
Summit College students praying at Church at the Dome service in September, where 160 students were baptized / Courtesy of Summit College
“What their generation is being offered by the culture is not really fulfilling,” he said. “Christianity seems to them a legitimate opportunity that they have not tried—one that’s speaking with a lot more certainty about truth. In the culture with a lot of confusion and chaos, Christianity is pretty clear on ‘This is who you are. This is what sin is. This is how you have relationship with God.’”
Gen Z—the generation of transgenderism and AI deepfakes—wants to know what’s real, he said.
“Five years ago, we felt like we had to be really careful about what we said,” he said. “Everyone was afraid of getting canceled. But it doesn’t feel like there are as many land mines now. The students want you to be honest. They want you to speak the truth about what you think Scripture says about different things.”
Secular culture has finally pushed past common sense for most people, Vance said.
“When you tell people the sky is purple, and everybody knows it’s blue, at some point people cannot keep acting like it’s purple,” he said. “There is an inherent insanity to unbelief. It’s rebelling against the created order. I’ve listened to the strong left-wing arguments about gender and sexuality and family. The people are highly articulate and smart, but the ideas literally don’t work. You can swim against the created order for a little while, in isolated cases. But it cannot and does not work in mass.”
If you’re old enough, this might remind you of another season when college kids in the United States, disillusioned by a sexual revolution and the collapse of truth, started coming to Jesus in record numbers.
‘It’s Crazy’
In the late 1960s, on the tail of political polarization, destructive riots, and a pandemic, young people began asking questions: What is true? How do you find meaning in life? Is this life all there is?
“The Jesus Movement was the clearest experience I’ve ever had of a mass miracle,” said Renewal Ministries president Ray Ortlund. “It was the sudden and improbable conversion of thousands of non-churchy, politically and culturally radicalized, sexually adventurous, crazy California kids suddenly running toward Jesus—not because people told them to, but because they were too happy about Jesus not to.”
Back then, “young people were aching for forgiveness, for community, for a clean feeling––after a while, being degraded gets tiring,” he said.
It’s impossible to estimate how many people were changed by the Jesus Movement—likely tens or hundreds of thousands.
Small group Bible study at the UIC Chicago chapter of Campus Outreach / Courtesy of Tony Dentman
Gen Z isn’t anywhere close to that yet. But the Salt Network churches are on track to baptize more than 2,700 new believers this year, double the number from 2023.
“We printed nearly 4,000 Bible reading plans—the full New Testament in four months plus extra reading and Bible memory verses,” Vance said. “All of those handouts are gone. We sold 1,700 Bible memory wristband packets. We have been starting Salt Company meetings by quoting the verses, and the whole room just yells the memory verse from the week out. It’s crazy.”
At a new Summit church plant near the University of North Carolina Wilmington, 300 people showed up on the first day. In their college ministry, “non-Christians are coming around and getting involved,” Smith said.
One girl, who called herself a pagan, came to Christ, he said. “She said she’d been so lonely. Another guy, who was a Mormon, became a Christian and is now thinking about doing the summer ministry project. It’s crazy stuff.”
Dentman used the same word to describe it: “It’s crazy,” he said, laughing. “We’re losing track. Some of the staff don’t even say anything about a conversion now, because it’s becoming normal. I’m like, ‘No, I’ve been slaving here for seven years. I need to know when people come to Christ—that’s what I’m living for!’”
In Eugene, Oregon, the University of Oregon Salt Company had nearly 600 students at the kickoff event a few weeks ago.
“We packed out the largest auditorium on campus,” said Generations church pastor Solomon Rexius. “People were sitting in the aisles. I’ve lived in Eugene most of my life, and to my recollection the largest campus gathering I ever remembered was around 300. So it’s pretty amazing. People are very open to the gospel and the ways of Jesus. The harvest is plentiful!”
At University Reformed Church, six minutes from Michigan State University, pastor Jason Helopoulos is experiencing something similar: “For this generation, I can’t give them enough of the Word.”
One of his favorite parts of Sunday is after the second service, when a group of college students will approach him. “They’ll form a half circle, and they’re just firing questions,” he said. “What does the Bible say about this? What about that?”
It’s happening at the University of Iowa too. “We’re definitely seeing it,” Veritas pastor Mark Arant said. “Numbers are up in our weekly gatherings, retreats, and student leadership applications. We’re even seeing it in older community people as well—especially those in their 30s and 40s.”
How to Steward a Revival
We know from history that revivals don’t last forever. So how can we steward the spiritual awakening around us?
“Young people should be given a long leash to try dangerous things when it comes to revival,” Abbott said. “I’ve seen people adopt the ‘dude with sign’ model, writing ‘Jesus is better than sex’ or ‘A relationship with God is better than a high-paying career’ on cardboard and holding it up in a busy place. Or prove-me-wrong tables. Is it going to be effective? I don’t know. But students should feel the liberty to try that kind of stuff.” (When Bucknell University students gathered to protest the Vietnam War in 1970, Tim Keller and friends sat near the edge of the crowd with signs that read, “The resurrection of Jesus is intellectually credible and existentially satisfying.”)
Sometimes, older people are quick to advise against ineffective-sounding ideas—this is especially a temptation for a generation of helicopter parents, Abbott said.
Summit College 2025 Winter Conference / Courtesy of Summit College
“When I was at James Madison University, one of the students came up with a door-holding ministry,” he said. “They stood at the entrances to academic buildings and opened doors for people and said, ‘Have a good day.’ I was like, ‘This is the dumbest thing ever. This is not sharing the gospel.’ But then we’d hear of conversations people would get into. Someone would ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and they’d say, ‘I’m part of Cru and we care about the community here at JMU.’ And they’d get to share the gospel. What I thought was a waste of time ended up being pretty awesome.”
Campus pastors and youth leaders are also going to need support.
“We were only planning to take 50 students to the annual Campus Outreach conference, because we can’t afford a bus and half my staff aren’t old enough to drive vans,” Dentman said. “That was the plan in August. But we have so much spiritual momentum now that when we sat down to identify the students we wanted to take, we ended up with 150 or maybe even 200. So we’re praying for money for a bus.”
He is also ordering more Bible studies and paying out more staff reimbursements than he’d planned on.
“It’s a little overwhelming but it’s super exciting,” he said. “Man, normally I’m chasing students—I text them 100 times and call them, and then they run away from me when I’m on campus. Today we had a Bible study in the middle of the cafeteria, and people are just coming up and sitting down. They’re just interested. And they’re showing up to churches for the first time. At a partner-church retreat last weekend, the college students were so engaged the pastor had to say, ‘Does anyone who is not a college student have a question?’”
Many of the campus ministries that are seeing a lot of activity—from Campus Outreach to Salt to Summit—are closely connected to, and operate under the authority of, the local church. For those churches, this is a great time to lean into partnerships with your campus ministry, Dentman said.
It’s also the perfect time for a church located near a campus to start a college ministry, even if it’s just holding a Bible study on campus or offering rides to church on Sunday.
“We’re literally running into staffing issues trying to get students to church,” Dentman said. “We’re making trips back and forth, picking people up. We can’t get as many students to church as want to go.”
This has changed the way he reads Luke 10:2, when Jesus tells the disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
“I always interpreted that as, ‘Man, look at all these broken people. There are so many of them out there. We need workers to get in here to help these people,’” he said. “I was always thinking of ministry as planting and cultivating. But this year completely switches that for me. God is doing so much work. He already saved a lot of people through the cross. We just need people go out there and harvest all the crops!”
“We have to give credit where credit is due,” said Vance. “The Holy Spirit of God is at work.”
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