Asbury Revival! Daily Updates

We're still trying to figure out when the last of the worshipers from the Asbury Outpouring left Hughes Auditorium (post a comment if you know), but we connected with two people who left at midnight after the Collegiate Day of Prayer service ended, so that seems to have been the official close. That means -- if you count the Collegiate Day of Prayer, which flowed out of the Asbury Outpouring -- February 8th's chapel at Asbury University went at least 374 hours. 

Friday the last of our contributions ran on Intercessors for America's Asbury Revival! Daily Updates. You can visit that page to see them all, but here are highlights from ours:

Friday, February 24

Rich: While driving home to New York City from Asbury University we passed through the Washington D.C. area for a family event. We prayed into the commissioning we sensed we have all been given from Asbury. On the drive down we prayed for IFA state prayer leaders as we drove through their states [see below], so we also picked up Virginia and Delaware on the drive home:

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Thursday, February 23

Rich: On Thursday, Feb. 16, a speaker at Asbury University (they are intentionally not introduced to keep the focus on the Lord) read from John 15, focusing on verse 4 (ESV): Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

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I have to point out that those empty seats were about to be filled! There were hundreds in the line waiting to get in. 

Also, I found out later, the anonymous speaker was Zach Meerkreebs, who preached in the service on February 8. After he was done with that one he texted his wife: "“Latest stinker. I’ll be home soon.” Three hundred and seventy four hours later the University felt they had to close that service to get back to being a university.

Tuesday, Feburary 21

Joyce: My first day, Tuesday, February 14, at the Asbury Outpouring, I spent less than a minute in Hughes Auditorium, the main venue for the worship services. Even so, the presence of the Lord was so tangible, I burst into tears.

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Saturday, February 18

Rich: My favorite moment at Asbury University — and actually a favorite moment of my life — was early Tuesday morning, Valentine’s Day. I woke up and saw that it was 2:44 a.m. I remembered that Jeannine Brabon said she first experienced the Shekinah Glory fall at 3 a.m. on October 3, 1969, four months before the 185-hour revival. I wanted to be fresh for Tuesday’s Headline Prayer Live, so I asked the Lord if I should go. I just burst into tears remembering how I sensed Him say: ‘You need my permission?’

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Friday, February 17

Joyce: Yesterday Rich Swingle, IFA contributing writer and prayer leader, spoke with a man who had been a classmate of Jeannine Brabon, who was instrumental in the 1970 Asbury revival. The man made an interesting comment about the differences between the two outpourings: The 1970 revival was marked by testimony, usually focused on repentance, and then with worship: this current outpouring seems to be marked by worship, followed by testimony of repentance, healing, and deliverance.

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Thursday, February 16

Joyce: “Viral is not revival.” Joyce Swingle reports from on-site at Asbury University: We spoke to two professors. One mentioned that he realized he had assigned a group project for a Friday deadline and he thought it would be difficult for the students to get together to do the work. He queried his class and realized they were keeping up with the schoolwork. He also mentioned he and several of the professors were finding that the outpouring was not keeping students from their classes. Fewer were cutting than the professors expected. Seems this outpouring is not making the students indolent but industrious!

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Tuesday, February 14

Rich (My original article): Chapel on February 8 at Asbury University went long…and as I write it’s still going! In 1970, a chapel service in the same Hughes Auditorium went 185 hours. Ever since I heard about it circa 1987, I’ve been praying — as many of you have — for another revival to break out! I believe revival is breaking out.

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Praying Our Way to Asbury

Rich (this was a separate article): On our way to Asbury University for Tuesday’s Headline Prayer Live, we decided to pray over each state we drove through on the 11-hour drive from New York City. We also prayed for each of the state prayer leaders. It ends with us walking into Hughes Auditorium, where the revival went for 185 hours in 1970. This outpouring has been going over 150 hours as I write, and there’s a line stretching down the road to get in!

[Read full update]

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I released “Pentecost: Beyond the Imagination,” a scene from my one-man play, The Acts, at www.RichDrama.com/Pentecost.

The High School Final

Joyce and I with Cindy on a recent

visit she took to NYC.

Since about 1994 I've been performing in public schools through the invitation of Cindy Sebring.

That year I drove (back when I tried to keep a car in NYC) down to the DC area for a Christians in Theatre Arts conference. I remember the rain was also driving, and my windshield wipers weren't staying up with the volume. I ended up getting there in the middle of a performance by Frank Runyon, the third one-man play I'd seen, after Curt Cloninger and Roger Nelson. A gentleman in the back of the auditorium welcomed me, and after the performance we struck up a conversation. He knew some folks at the Lamb's Church of the Nazarene where I was an intern at the time. He asked me where I was staying, and I told him I hadn't figured that out yet. I didn't tell him, but I was hoping someone would give me a place to stay so I wouldn't have to spend a significant percentage of my savings on a hotel! He invited me to stay with his family, and to join them on Sunday at their church. 

That Sunday I met Cindy. Soon I was invited to perform at a retreat that church was hosting. Cindy offered to drive me to the retreat from DC. 

Soon after the retreat started Friday evening I told the pastor who would be preaching Sunday morning that I'd be happy to write a fresh piece to go with his sermon, but he didn't know what passage he'd be using. At about 10pm Saturday night he said he'd be preaching on John:15:1-17, about the Vine and the Branches. I stayed up until about 3am writing (and rehearsing) The Legend of Billy Branch, which came with some musical interludes. I discovered the next morning that Cindy's room was next to mine and she heard me singing as I rehearsed the piece! 

I'm pretty sure it was on that trip, despite her loss of sleep, that Cindy invited me to perform and teach workshops at her public high school for the first time. In those 23 years she only invited me if her classes were well-behaved, but there weren't many years I missed. 

I just returned from my final performance for her students. She is retiring in a couple of months. It was a very special trip, because these opportunities have been priceless.

This time around I performed The Fall, my one-act piece based on the novel Les Misérables. I shared it with three classes, and after each I followed up with a sociodrama. The first one was short, so I just based it on Les Miz. I engaged them in an exercise which allowed them to express the most valuable thing to them. The winning vote was, interestingly enough, food. My one-act revolves around the bishop forgiving Jean Valjean for stealing his silver, after which the bishop gives him his silver candlesticks. In our scenario the bishop character was a homeless man. Jean Valjean stole his pizza. A police officer brought him back, but Jean Valjean said, "If he stole from a homeless man he must really need the pizza more than I do," at which point he gave him a $5. All of this came from the students. 

The other two classes had just read Fahrenheit 451, a novel about censorship. The title is the temperature at which paper burns. The main character is a fireman, meaning he sets fire to books. I told them some of the discoveries we've made visiting Cuba, China, Russia, and two borders of North Korea. 

The first of those two classes did a sociodrama based on a student who was told by his parents that if he didn't cut his hair he would not be allowed to cut his hair until after he graduated from high school in a couple of years. Afterward I drew from another story they'd read: Death of a Salesman. I pointed out that Willy Loman drew his identity in part from his son, Biff. Tim Keller uses this as an illustration in a sermon on the Breastplate of Righteousness. Then I pointed out that parents who, regardless of motives, have the right to raise their children in the ways they think best, but dictators controlling what their people are able to read and say is a very different thing. 

The last class also brought up a parental scenario, but I brought up the difference between parents and dictators right up front. The students ended up exploring a world in which it was no longer legal for us to speak to people outside of our nation. The main character was on the phone with a friend in Russia. The police knocked on her door and told her they discovered that she was on an international call. She hid her phone, but the police did a sweep of her home and discovered a computer, which the enactors decided in the moment was also illegal. She complained that she had purchased the computer when it was legal to have one. One of the officers told her she should have thrown it out the window when the law was passed. (I pointed out that this was an SAT word posted in the halls of their school: "defenestrate.") In the end the young woman was able to escape with her hidden phone. I asked them if Fahrenheit 451 felt more real after living through a similar scenario. There was an overwhelming agreement that the sociodrama had helped make it more real. 

I hope there will be other opportunities to share my plays and workshops in public schools, so if you know of a teacher who might be open send him or her to www.RichDrama.com. 

A Clear Leading, one of the plays I've shared at Cindy's school, tells the story of Quaker abolitionist John Woolman, who spoke against slavery a century before our Civil War.