Outpouring: A Theological Witness

By Jason E. Vickers and Thomas H. McCall

Outpouring is a theological exploration of religious revivals and awakenings. The authors reflect on God's pursuit of human persons in the light of Scripture and classical Christian doctrine. They also take seriously eyewitness testimonies to God's presence and power in events like the Great Awakenings and the Asbury Outpouring of 2023, allowing such events to raise fresh questions and to enliven theology. Inspired by their participation in the Asbury Outpouring, they bear witness to the ancient conviction that theology, prayer, and praise belong together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666776164

Book preview

Introduction

When the Asbury Outpouring happened in the spring of 2023, the two of us were busy doing the sorts of things that theologians do—teaching classes, grading papers, meeting with students, writing books. While we were both working at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky at the time, one of us (Tom) was also teaching an undergraduate class across the street at Asbury University, and the other (Jason) was preparing to relocate to Waco, Texas.¹ Otherwise, life was normal. Another semester was underway.

In many respects, theologians are no different than people who do any number of other things for a living. On most of our days—and certainly on our best days—we absolutely love our work. We get paid to drink coffee and talk about God (not necessarily in that order). On a few days—and certainly on our worst days—we feel the effects of routine and repetition—boredom, disinterest, thoughtlessness. Believe it or not, when you’ve taught the same classes for twenty years (which we both have done), your approaches to teaching and learning can become stale. We never intend for this to happen, and we don’t like it when it does. But it happens, so much so that, over the years, we develop strategies for reinvigoration. We try new textbooks. We invent new assignments. We apply for sabbatical leaves. Neither of us could have anticipated the renewing and invigorating effects that the Outpouring would have on our work in theology.

Throughout the Outpouring we met frequently in one another’s offices to discuss what we were observing, what we were personally experiencing, and the like. But it didn’t stop there. In the days and weeks after things began to settle down, we continued to contemplate and discuss what had transpired. We found ourselves talking about it with students in our classes, with our colleagues during lunch in the cafeteria, and with each other while hiking the Asbury trails that wind down the cliffs and past the waterfalls of central Kentucky. In the process, we realized that contemplating and discussing the Outpouring was requiring each of us to draw deeply upon our knowledge of Holy Scripture and classical Christian doctrine and theology—knowledge that we had accumulated through decades of reading, conversation, teaching, worship, and prayer. In our classrooms and on social media, we were receiving and doing our best to respond to countless questions. What did we think had happened? Was this a work of God? Was the same God who created all things present in a readily discernible way in Hughes Auditorium? Was the risen Lord present and at work in the lives of the students? Why did tens of thousands of people travel thousands of miles to stand in line in the rain for hours for a chance to go inside Hughes? Did the same Holy Spirit who was poured out on the day of Pentecost and who later inspired the biblical authors prompt them to come? If the Triune God of Christian faith was indeed present in Hughes Auditorium, why? To what end? What was God up to? And why Wilmore? Was God not present and available in every place?

As we worked together to respond to these and countless other questions, we became increasingly convinced that the resources of Scripture and classical Christian doctrine and theology are crucial for thinking about outpourings—not just the Asbury Outpouring, but any event or happening in which people perceive the presence and power of God at work in the world. What we believe about God, about Jesus Christ, and about the Holy Spirit will greatly determine our receptivity to such events. It will go a long way toward determining whether we respond to a given event or happening—an outpouring—as a genuine movement of God or as the product of human manipulation and abuse. In short, it matters significantly how we envision and understand things like God’s relationship to creation and especially to human beings. Do we believe that God relates to creation and to human beings in ways that we can perceive? Is God cognizant of us? If God does relate to creatures, why? To what end? Whether we realize it or not, how we answer questions like these will ultimately shape how we think about and approach an event like the Asbury Outpouring. Our background beliefs really do matter.

What was most invigorating about the Asbury Outpouring for us as theologians was the way in which it required us to return to the sites of Holy Scripture and classical Christian doctrine and theology with fresh questions on our minds. In other words, in all of our discussions with one another and with our students, our posture was not one of learned professors with all the answers ready to hand, pronouncing decisive judgments about what had taken place. Far from it! We were like the proverbial duck that appears calm atop the water but is paddling like crazy just below the surface. Neither of us had ever worked harder in our lives. Some days, we were completely exhausted. But it was also pure joy. Outpourings remind theology of the saving power of God!

As we experienced it, the relationship between our work in theology and the Asbury Outpouring was a two-way street. At times, we found ourselves moving in one direction, from Holy Scripture and sacred doctrine toward the Outpouring. At other times, we found ourselves moving from the Outpouring, in which we were both participants, to Scripture and doctrine. In doing so, we discovered a liveliness to our theological conversation that was refreshing and invigorating, to say the least. Suddenly, all the familiar topics that we teach about every semester were alive in new ways. It felt like our minds were on fire. To paraphrase the late historian of Christian doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan, theology was no longer in danger of being the dead faith of the living—it was now the living faith of the dead!²

We are bearing theological witness to the Asbury Outpouring and to the phenomenon of outpourings in general because we are convinced that, for better or worse, theology shapes our perception and response to such events. But we believe equally strongly that theologians should be humble enough to allow such events to send us back to the drawing board to think through the faith from top to bottom in their light. On the one hand, we simply cannot approach such things with no theological convictions, not to mention a host of other intellectual commitments that we might have about things like truth, knowledge, socialization, human psychology, and so on. On the other hand, we must always remember that God isn’t beholden to our categories when it comes to our salvation. If that were the case, the incarnation itself would have never taken place.

The book that you are now holding is the result of countless theological conversations during the Asbury Outpouring and in the weeks and months that immediately followed—conversations with people who attended the event, with our students, and above all with each other. Indeed, we would be remiss if we did not mention that these conversations significantly deepened our friendship with one another—yet another gift that we could not have anticipated. Good theological conversation does that.

We did not set out to write a definitive theological take on the phenomenon of religious events like the Asbury Outpouring. This is not an official, quasi-official, authorized, or commissioned account; we do not speak in any formal capacity for either Asbury University or Asbury Theological Seminary. Nor is this an attempt to somehow control the narrative. To the contrary, we know that there are hundreds and indeed thousands of stories and perspectives, and we want to encourage the telling of these stories. Our goal is not to tell you, our readers, exactly what or how to think. Our goal is far more modest. First and foremost, we want to share our conversation with you—to offer some of the theological reflections and interactions that we have found most interesting and helpful in the wake of the Asbury Outpouring. Second, we want to invite you into the conversation. Indeed, our hope is that this book will inspire you to reflect on what you believe about God, about God’s relationship to creation and to human beings, about God’s purposes for our lives. Above all, we hope that in doing so, you will find yourself renewed and refreshed in the grand journey that we are all on—the journey of salvation.

Before providing a brief overview of the chapters that follow, we would like to add that, during the Asbury Outpouring, we interacted with people who held a wide range of views on such events. At one end of the spectrum are the storm chasers, religious tourists, and those who would co-opt religious events for secular or political purposes (e.g., Christian nationalists). At the far other end of the spectrum are the hardened cynics and skeptics, who, more often than not, had experienced some sort of personal trauma in association with similar events or with the religious culture of revivalism. While we will rejoice if people in both of these groups find meaningful and perhaps even transformative what they read here, we did not write primarily for them. We did not set out to condemn or correct revival enthusiasts or religious thrill seekers; nor did we set out to convince critics and cynics. Rather, we write primarily as theological witnesses who find themselves somewhere in the broad middle between these two extremes, which is to say, as people who know themselves to be in need of God’s mercy and love and who are striving to seek God’s face always (1 Chr 16:11; Ps 105:3).

With all of this in mind, the time has come to provide an overview of the chapters themselves and to point out a few special features of the text. Chapter 1 contains our personal eyewitness testimonies to the Asbury Outpouring. Much of what readers will find here we actually wrote during the Outpouring. We decided to include that material because it represents our thinking about and response to what we experienced and observed as it was happening. We are calling this chapter eyewitnesses, because our goal is to describe what we perceived and how it affected us in real time. By way of anticipation, one thing we would like to encourage our readers to notice in the first chapter is the fact that the event itself unfolded in two phases. The major theme or focus of the first phase was the perception and experience of God’s distinct presence in Hughes Auditorium among the students and other people associated with Asbury University and Asbury Theological Seminary. This was the early phase of the event. The second phase did not bring an end to the early phase, but it did add something distinctive to it, namely, tens of thousands of pilgrims making their way to Wilmore from all over the world. As you will see, this, too, had a rather dramatic impact on both of us.

While chapter 1 consists of our eyewitness testimonies about what each of us witnessed and experienced at the Asbury Outpouring, the remainder of the book, beginning with chapter 2, consists of theological reflections on the phenomenon of outpouring in general. Our goal is to draw upon Holy Scripture and basic Christian doctrine and theology in ways that help us to think about, understand, and respond well to extraordinary events or happenings like the one that took place at Asbury in the spring of 2023. Our focus will not be on the Asbury Outpouring specifically, though we will make occasional references to it. Rather, when we talk about the phenomenon of outpourings in the remainder of the book, we will have in mind dramatic events or happenings—manifestations of the presence and power of God—witnessed across the centuries, beginning in Scripture and including the experiences of people as diverse as St. Symeon the New Theologian, a tenth-century Eastern Orthodox monk; St. Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century English anchoress; and John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, eighteenth-century pastors and revival leaders who witnessed and participated in the First Great Awakening in England and America, respectively. As a general rule of thumb, when the word outpouring(s) is uncapitalized and lacks the definite article, we have in mind this wider range of divine manifestations across space and time, including manifestations to individual believers and to larger groups of people. By contrast, when we have in mind the Asbury Outpouring specifically, we will use the