Revivals, Mass Baptism Point to a Gen Z That is Hungry for God

“…They are hungry for God and, and they want God in a very real way, this is not manufactured."

Today’s young people are growing up in a world that is chaotic and depraved. It can be easy to lament that they will all be led astray and run far from God.

However, over the last several months there has been a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit over members of Generation Z, who have been showing up in droves to mass revivals and worship events as well as evangelistic outreach campaigns, often prompting spontaneous mass baptisms and hundreds of lives given to Christ.

CBN News reports that a worship event at Auburn University resulted in nearly 200 students being baptized in a nearby lake, sharing their stories with evangelists and expressing a real, authentic hunger for God.

"It was such a move of God," author, speaker, and founder of the ministry IF:Gathering Jennie Allen told CBN News.

Allen recounted that as her event at the school came to a close, a local pastor received a text from a student in attendance asking if he would baptize her.

"I go up on the stage, it was that fast, and I said, 'Hey, there's somebody that wants to get baptized tonight. Would anybody else want to trust Christ and be baptized tonight?' And dozens of hands were raised all over the arena, and it was wild," she said.

Allen said that a large group moved to lake, where students began streaming into the water, accepting Christ and sharing their hearts with ministers.

"We didn't just baptize them, we got to hear their stories and they got to tell us why they wanted to do this tonight, and so many of them were just tired of the darkness that they were living in," she said. "They wanted Jesus and they wanted a different way to live and it was so sincere, it was so sincere, you can see it in their eyes." 

Allen has seen a profound yearning for the Lord among members of Generation Z, who are often known for an attitude of cynicism, defiance, and despondency.

"This generation, yes, they may be on paper seemingly not attending church and seemingly not walking with God, but that is prime for revival," Allen told CBN.

"I think it's affecting the world," continued Allen. "Most of them, you know,  have lived a pretty non-God existence prior to these moments, and so when you see this happen I think it just it moves all of us."

She described her first outreach effort to Gen Z at Texas A&M in 2018.

"There's just probably 2,000 people there and they began to stand up and yell out their sin in front of their roommates, in front of their friends. They were yelling out things like suicidal thoughts and sex addiction and alcohol abuse and all of these things that they were just screaming out in front of their friends," she said. "And I thought something is different, they wanted God more than they wanted approval from their friends. They wanted God more than they wanted to be accepted and respected." 

Young people are clearly hungry for hope and meaning amid the darkness of the modern world, and we can only praise the Lord for how He is working in these dark times to shine His light where we may least expect it.