There is something extraordinary happening right now among the student generation. They are waking up. They are shaking off their sleep and lifting their eyes up in search of answers. They are seeking. They are asking. And they are finding. The Spirit of God is on the move and there is a new window of evangelistic opportunity. We do not know how long it will last. But we do know that we need to make hay while the sun shines. It’s harvest time.
“See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19)
In the same way, we are living in a season that previous generations have prophesied about. We are walking in a moment that has been paved with the prayers of countless others before us. We are standing on ground softened by the tears of those who have grieved for the student generations of the past. It is true that the tide has slowly been going out on student mission. In the 1990s, a million young people left the church. Since then, for every new Christian, we lost two others. We have seen generations of students sleep walking to their graves. Then, last year, the tide changed.
Over the academic year (23/24), students became much more interested in anything spiritual. In our Fusion worldview survey, we discovered that 76% of students would go to church if a friend invited them. We also discovered that manifesting is 5th on the list of types of spirituality that students have engaged with. They are open to the spiritual world and are looking to it to find answers. Students are waking up spiritually. This means that we are living in the biggest missional opportunity since the Billy Graham rallies and the signs of the times are strikingly similar: just like in the 1950s, we find ourselves a few years after an international crisis with an uncertain political and economic future, a widespread societal questioning, war in Europe and a new Monarch on the throne. They say we are post-truth, but we are seeing a hunger for something real. They say we are post-Christian, but we are seeing students turning towards Jesus.
We are starting to see the hallmarks of this awakening. The students are hungry for truth. As the church, we are in a unique position. We have access to the Bread of Life in the person of Jesus and we know that this is the only thing that can satisfy this spiritual hunger. The onus is on us to offer them something to eat.
We are seeing that the most common method of students coming to Jesus is through reading the Bible. The word of God is speaking freely and it is speaking first. The word is discipling students long before they even think about coming to church and the role that Christian friends play comes in much later down the line as they help make sense of what is being read. We have seen students wake up next to open Bibles in their room, despite not owning a copy. We have seen students turn to the Bible in moments of desperation to find hope in the words of eternal life. Still others have been hit by the realisation that there has to be more to life and grabbed a Bible because it is the one place they haven’t looked for answers yet. There is a deep desire among students to read these ancient words, even though the closest most of them have come to scripture is the odd half of a verse on an inspirational Instagram image. In response to this hunger, as Fusion, we launched studentbible.org in order to give full copies of the Bible to spiritually interested students who are experiencing some kind of awakening. The response to this project has been extraordinary and the numbers of those signing up are beyond what we could imagine or expect.
We are also seeing an increase in salvations. We went into this year with expectation, but, in just a few months, we have been moved to tears with what we have seen. Several churches are seeing students saved daily. Since freshers week, the Lord has added to their number every day those who are being saved. Across the country, students are walking into churches of their own volition and asking “how do I become a Christian?” In Loughborough, a non-Christian young man was invited along to a worship event by his friend. By the end of the night, he found himself kneeling at the foot of the cross, praying about his broken family relationships. The next day he received a call out of the blue from his grandparents and those relationships are starting to heal. Many students have seen visions or had dreams about Jesus and gone to church to figure out what they mean, and then have given their lives to Jesus. One student in Lincoln had a waking vision of a huge door on her bedroom wall that wouldn’t go away. She googled what a ‘door vision’ meant and came across the words of Matthew 7:7: ‘Knock, and the door will be opened to you”. At that moment, she knew that it was Jesus calling her to follow Him. She gave her life to Him and has subsequently been healed of years of addiction and depression. These are the kinds of testimonies we are seeing every week. Students are articulating radical life transformation rather than life improvement. They are describing a 180 degree change in the direction of their life. The nature of testimony is changing and this is because the gospel is at work.
The way that students are responding to the gospel has also shifted. Unlike previous generations in the West, they don’t, at the point of conversion, feel the burden of their sin. The call to conviction in the Billy Graham rallies of the 1960s would have reduced impact on the student generation today. Instead, students are often responding to the shame they feel and can’t believe the restorative grace they experience in Jesus. In the place of shame, they know experience honour. They are also broadly aware of a spiritual power that they often find frightening. Another student shared with us that she had grown up doing crystals and Ouija boards with her grandmother. She said she knew it was real but didn’t think it was good and she was hungry for something good. These paradigm changes in the way students are coming to Jesus are the hallmarks of the cultural shift articulated in Jayson George’s The 3D Gospel.
There is no denying that the Spirit of God is on the move in new ways. Jesus is marching through His students and is raising an army among people who had previously been written off as bones. This is what we are seeing. This is what God is doing. So what are we doing?
Students are waking up, but Is the church awake enough to be ready for them? The generation about to walk into churches for the first time will need teaching, training, challenging, equipping and releasing. We need to disciple them to make disciples in an unstoppable Jesus movement. We need to feed them on the word. Most importantly, we need to pray. We need to pray about them, for them and over them. Because when we see a generation of students living all in for Jesus, we will see an army of groundshakers, rulebreakers and world-changers rise up. These are the leaders of tomorrow being formed in the today. They could go on to do unimaginable things in unimaginable places in unimaginable ways. If they do all of this under the authority of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus and for the glory of the Father, the world would change. Imagine. His kingdom is coming.
God is provoking unity in his church in a new way. This is always His heart for His people, but He is drawing parts of His church together who have been separate but coexistent for years. Most notably, there is a coming together of churches who are conservative/evangelical and those who are more charismatic. We have heard of this happening in many university cities and it has also been happening on a national scale. The result of this is that new paths are being formed and new avenues are opening. One church described the impact of this new unity by saying that God’s presence was “thicker” on campus this freshers season. This is the impact of God stirring His church. We march as one.
We have to surrender ourselves to this move of the Spirit. We cannot control it, shape it or tame it. But we can embrace it. We can run with it. We can get ready for it. We are invited to join this movement. Everything we are doing as Fusion this year is to serve this new move of the Spirit. We are getting scripture into the hands of students, creating new resources for students to disciple their friends, challenging churches to encourage radical invitation from their students, gathering those who are awake and on fire and sending them out to share the gospel on their campuses. We are recording each story as a signpost for what God is doing. The pages of our blog are filled with the stories that are the seeds of this awakening. Read them for yourselves. Start sowing these stories with us.
Most importantly, we are on our knees praying for the salvation of students. We are asking God for more. In January, we will be kneeling in unity with student mission organisations alongside churches, student workers and students themselves in fourteen locations up and down the country to pray for this generation. We are seeing these things happen, and we are praying for more.
The movement is coming. The ground is shaking. Are you ready to join in?
