God is on the Move
In the summer of 1999, I walked into a broken down old motel room in Branson, Missouri, my home for the next six weeks. The room was barely large enough to turn around in, and I was sharing it with another guy, Tim. We came to spend the summer teaching college students how to share their faith, to equip them to go back to their campuses in the fall and do the same. Tim and I didn’t know it yet, but at the same time our future wives were also meeting one another at their summer mission training in Colorado. So much of our life-direction was influenced that summer. Who knew then that we’d still be serving in ministry 26 years later? Tim is still working with college students and heads up the ministry at the University of Arkansas. He sent me a letter this week sharing about the spiritual renewal happening on college campuses around the country. Here are a few quotes from his letter:
- The Wall Street Journal reported a 22% increase in Bible sales in 2024, largely due to young first-time buyers.
- Fox News: “Campus religious groups report greater interest from students trying to find meaning in a ‘crumbling’ culture.”
- The Economist reports that the 50 year decline in Christianity in America has ended because of Gen Z’s search for meaning in their lives.
This week Christian writer Jim Denison shared how “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion.” Many prominent atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris), over the last twenty years, have claimed Christianity was dead and gone, “outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous to society.” Yet people are “unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness.” And “those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.”
From Death to Life
Here’s the point: Christianity is not dead and gone. As we celebrated Sunday, Christ was once dead, but He is now alive! People can try to find other ways to find meaning and purpose in life, but they will all fail apart from Christ. It might work to try other things for a season, but they won’t satisfy in the long run and will leave people feeling even more empty inside.
The exciting part for Valley View is that your friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, especially those who came to church with you Sunday (we had our highest Sunday morning attendance since before Covid), are more likely to be open to Jesus than they’ve been in years. Keep praying for them and maybe invite them back for our Church Picnic this Sunday. God is stirring and who knows if we might not be on the cusp of a revival sweeping throughout the South End of Louisville!
Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash