Jeff Finley
By Jeff Finley
Wilmore Free Methodist Church member Mark R. Elliott, Ph.D., knows history. He taught it for years at Wheaton College and Samford, Southern Wesleyan, and Asbury universities. As the founder and editor emeritus of the East-West Church and Ministry Report, he also knows how to report current events in the church.
On the day modern church history arrived in his small Kentucky community, however, Elliott left at 5 a.m. Feb. 8 to drive to Florida with his wife to spend a few days at a Christian camp and then visit extended family. They were driving on Interstate 75 near the Tennessee-Georgia border when a seemingly typical chapel service began at their undergraduate alma mater, Wilmore’s Asbury University. They didn’t learn until the next day what was happening when the camp president asked for prayer for the Holy Spirit to work in a mighty way during a spontaneous revival that had broken out among Asbury students.
“My wife and I struggled over being out of state when the revival broke out, and we were following it daily as much as we could: sometimes several hours each night, looking at articles and some of the live streaming — even the pirated live streaming,” Elliott said in an interview with Light + Life. (Pirated refers to the decision of university leaders not to live stream most of the services in Hughes Auditorium and to discourage other people from doing so.) “We felt that we needed to stay with our family for some family reasons.”
The couple didn’t leave Florida for Kentucky until Feb. 20, and Elliott said he “grieved in a way over not being there the whole time.”
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“He started writing as the experienced historian that he is.”
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Still they were able to serve as volunteer ushers in Hughes Auditorium for the last three nights of services. The historian then went to work documenting the period of intense spiritual awakening and worship commonly known as the Asbury Outpouring or the Asbury Revival. He interviewed Asbury University and Asbury Theological Seminary (a separate institution across the street from the university) administrators, professors and other staff members along with other revival participants. He read countless news articles, blogs and social media posts along with accounts of previous revivals on the campus, and he started writing as the experienced historian that he is.
The result is Elliott’s new 238-page book “Taken by Surprise: The Asbury Revival of 2023,” which is published by Seedbed. The book details the unexpected “spiritual spontaneous combustion” that began Feb. 8 among the university’s students along with the long hours and heroic efforts of Asbury staff members and volunteers to handle the massive crowds that flooded the community of 6,000 residents.
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“I’ve never written as much as quickly.” – Mark R. Elliott
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“I was just so compelled to write,” Elliott said. “I’ve never written as much as quickly — morning, noon and night for close to three months because I just felt an urgent sense of responsibility to share as much as I could of good to as large an audience as I could.”
Elliott said he “interviewed a number of students” and “chose not to use the individual names of students unless they published something in The Collegian [student newspaper] or elsewhere, because I just felt like I wanted to respect their confidentiality.”
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“[They] were trying to comprehend what in the world has hit Wilmore.” – Mark R. Elliott
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He said many of these students didn’t come “from revivalist tradition — even if they came from strong Christians homes — and so this was new for them, and they were sorting it through in a safe context, and some of the professors were quite helpful with students who were trying to comprehend what in the world has hit Wilmore, because they weren’t familiar with a spontaneous revival. How many people are? Some of those students that I talked with, over the course of the 16 days, came to appreciate and were mightily blessed by it.”
He added that “obviously, there were a range of reactions among the students and certainly, as the book documents, one of the administration’s great challenges was to balance what the president calls the fiduciary responsibility of the administration to provide a Christian education and, over against that, there were the literally thousands and tens of thousands of people who poured into Wilmore.
He said the university administration recognized “that this is a kairos moment, and it’s important to be as good a host and hospitable as possible.”
Insider and Outsider
Some skeptics may ask: Can an Asbury University alumnus and former professor provide a balanced and objective account of what happened on the campus?
Elliott wrestled with that question himself and addressed it in the book’s preface and in the Light + Life interview.
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“I believe those life experiences have given me the possibility to be both an observer from outside as well as inside.” – Mark R. Elliott
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“I’m interested in two words that are used in anthropology: emic and etic. Emic means studying something from inside, and etic means studying something from outside,” he told Light + Life. “I think I have something of both the insider and the outsider perspective, which I hope helps give me perhaps a bit more objectivity than someone who’s just 100% immersed in Wilmore and nothing else. I taught more years at other schools than at Asbury. I’ve spent many decades in ministry projects in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that’s given me exposure to Eastern Orthodoxy, for example. So I believe those life experiences have given me the possibility to be both an observer from outside as well as inside.”
While he’s lived and worked for many years in other places, Elliott is extremely knowledgeable about the community of Wilmore and the university unlike many other writers who reported on the revival.
“We have a lot of family members who attended Asbury. Our roots actually go back to the 1920s. My grandmother moved the family to Wilmore from southeastern Kentucky so my mother and aunt could attend Asbury,” Elliott said.
With insights as a community member and through extensive interviews, Elliott included many facts and details that out-of-town reporters missed.
Some Wilmore residents grumbled about the crowds, but Elliott told Light + Life that “the majority of the residents of Wilmore were very supportive. Leonard Fitch, who owns the IGA in town, was asked by the mayor, Harold Rainwater, if he wanted help in clearing parking of people coming into the revival who were preventing others from shopping in his grocery store. He said, ‘Oh, no, I’ve been praying for this.’”
Elliott added that Seminary President Timothy Tennent told him a woman entered the seminary’s administration building and approached Tennent. “She’s never had any connection with the university or the seminary, and she showed up with her vacuum cleaner, and she asked Dr. Tennent, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ And he was so floored, and he ushered her over to Estes Chapel — one of the many overflow venues — and she swept the carpet. That just touched my heart.”
Responding to Critics
While a lot of information about the revival can be found online, some reports are inaccurate portrayals by outsiders who showed up at Asbury and tried to increase their fame or improve their reputations by claiming a role in what was happening. Online commentary includes inflammatory criticism from people who are opposed to evangelical Christianity and also from other evangelicals who disagree with the Wesleyan-Arminian theological perspective of the university and seminary.
“To begin with, I wasn’t even thinking about the critics,” Elliott said. “As I saw more and more — especially on YouTube — that was critical, I did develop an additional motivation to answer the critics.”
While responding to “critics, left and right,” isn’t a main point, the book includes “Appendix A: A Critique of the Critics.” The appendix begins by noting, “Historically spiritual awakenings typically have attracted fringe elements that have given these movements a bad name. Even biblically sound preaching, if delivered in an unaccustomed manner, can raise objections from traditionalists. Many eighteenth-century Anglicans, for example, were scandalized by John Wesley’s field preaching and the emotion that often accompanied the conversion of England’s poor and heavy laden. It was so much the case that early Methodists came to be pejoratively typecast as ‘enthusiasts.’ The same is true for Asbury spiritual awakenings.”
Elliott’s familiarity with other streams of Christianity helped him understand and respond to Asbury’s critics.
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“Another hallmark of a genuine outpouring of God’s Spirit are testimonies of confession, repentance, and forgiveness.” – Mark R. Elliott
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“I’ve been exposed to a variety of theological perspectives in my many years teaching in other locations and even in other countries,” he said.
In the book, Elliott noted that “another hallmark of a genuine outpouring of God’s Spirit are testimonies of confession, repentance, and forgiveness,” and these things “are not the natural pastime of typically proud, self-absorbed humankind.” Yet “the student-run Asbury Collegian was full of accounts of contrition and a new or deeper life in Christ throughout February 2023.”
FM Involvement
In the book and his conversation with Light + Life, Elliott referenced the efforts of multiple Free Methodist individuals and his home church during the revival. The book documents “Free Methodist Church vans called in to service to shuttle visitors to campus. … From Wilmore Free Methodist Church alone came remote parking van drivers, at least half a dozen altar counselors, and Keith Madill, a retired school administrator cleaning bathrooms in Hughes. When asked what the highlight of the revival was for him, the response was: ‘I am just thrilled to be here to help.’ Free Methodist Senior Pastor Daryl Diddle and his wife, Annette, could be found doing bag checks near the steps of Hughes, and Associate Pastor Dwight Winter volunteered as a shuttle bus driver.”
Elliott added, “One Wilmore Free Methodist regular attendee is Dr. Jonathan Raymond, retired president of British Columbia’s Trinity Western University. At the start of the spiritual awakening, he focused on intercessory prayer in his home, but ‘I could not stay away.’ He spent some time in Hughes, but more often he walked the long line of visitors offering encouragement to those waiting to enter Hughes Auditorium.” The book shares several of Raymond’s encounters with people including him praying with a family “dealing with serious father-son frictions, a family that experienced a degree of healing and restitution through this retired president’s prayer.”
Elliott told Light + Life that Sam and Rachel Powdrill, a couple mentioned in the book, are also Free Methodists. The book notes that they were among Wilmore residents who took in houseguests on short notice, and they hosted 25 overnight, “none of whom spoke English.”
Free Methodist Elder Jerry Coleman, the director of Francis Asbury Society International, is mentioned in multiple chapters. Elliott noted that Coleman “served as an altar counselor every day for two weeks” and reported “people accepting Jesus for the first time, others surrendering their wills and inviting the Holy Spirit to fill them” with the people “experiencing deep, deep peace with God.”
The Free Methodist with the most mentions in the book appears to be Asbury University Vice President of Student Life & Dean of Students Sarah Baldwin, who is also an ordained elder in the denomination. The book reports that, after “receiving a text at lunch in the cafeteria that Wednesday stating that some students were still praying in Hughes,” she soon “found herself engulfed in supporting a student-generated worship that seemed to know no end.” When Asbury leaders decided to allow Hughes Auditorium to remain open for overnight worship Feb. 8–9, “Dr. Baldwin proceeded to recruit staff to piece together two-hour shifts through the wee hours.”
In Elliott’s conversation with Light + Life, he emphasized the importance of Baldwin’s efforts.
“Sarah Baldwin was one of the key figures in the Outpouring, and I’ll incidentally mention that my wife and I just two nights ago listened and watched a video of her presentation in Orlando,” said Elliott, referring to her message as the featured morning speaker on the second day of General Conference 2023. (Click here to watch Baldwin’s message.)
The appreciation is mutual. In an endorsement of Elliott’s book, Baldwin wrote, “As a seasoned researcher and author, he covers the facts of the Asbury Outpouring both on the platform and behind the scenes. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to Dr. Elliott for documenting the story of how God moved!”
Click here to order “Taken by Surprise” from Seedbed.
Click here to read an excerpt from “Taken by Surprise.”
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