U.S. News

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Ivy League Campuses Experience Spiritual Awakening

Rumblings of Revival in NYC

By Paul Strand
Washington Sr. Correspondent

CBN.com – NEW YORK, New York -- Before 9/11, New York City was known as a tough place to evangelize. Some considered its skyscrapers towers to materialism and greed; it shared the crown with Las Vegas as America's “Sin City.”

There were those who expected the terror attacks of 9/11 to crush whatever spirit the Big Apple had. But instead, it may have helped spur the rumbles of revival some have already detected in New York City.

Paul DeVries of the New York Divinity School aims to train leaders for revival and awakening. "There's ripeness in the air,” DeVries said. “We had the wake-up call with 9/11, but no awakening yet. But I think the seeds are still there."

DeVries said 9/11 opened up hearts. He said, "There was a great interest in understanding more about, ‘what is eternal life?’ and ‘who is God?’"

Ready to answer those questions are thousands of churches that minister to New Yorkers from literally every tribe and tongue.

Dale Irvin, a professor of World Christianity at New York Theological Seminary, said there are about 8, 000 churches in New York City.

He also said there's a sort of slow-motion revival that has been going on for the last few decades, much of it fueled by the flood of Third World citizens emigrating to the metropolis -- many of them deliberate "reverse missionaries."

American missionaries brought the gospel to their native lands, and now they have come here to return the favor.

South Korean Jimmy Lim has the overview from his position with the New York City Council of Churches. He said, "There are approximately 500 Korean churches alone."

"We now count some 150 African churches in New York City," Irvin said.

Pastor Abraham Oyedeji started Christ Apostolic Church 20 years ago in a small home. He said many Africans have seen miracles and now his congregation fills a handsome Brooklyn church. They celebrate that God is still almighty and, “still has the power to perform miracles and wonders now."

And that power's on display across the city.

"There isn't a Sunday goes by that there aren't testimonies of miracles taking place," Irvin said.

DeVries agrees. “People want something that works,” he said. “They don't want to just sit around and hear some nice chit-chat."

He believes New Yorkers are wooed by the passion for Christ many Third World Christians feel.

"A lot of the African immigrants and South American immigrants are passionate Christians," he said.

But Korean and Chinese churches are also booming in the big city, and Lim thinks he knows why: "Because they are holding very steadily to the Word of God."

Irvin said immigrants are the number one source of revival in the city, but the number two source is businessmen.

New York has already seen revival in the past, but it did not come from the churches. It started with a group of businessmen praying near Wall Street.

Bruce Berliner helps lead a Wednesday noon prayer-time held literally underground near today's Wall Street. He’s also the author of Wall Street Revival in Progress, and he said in 1857 -- about a hundred yards from where today's pray-ers meet -- "a lay preacher by the name of Jeremiah Lamphier fell on his knees and said 'Lord, what would you have me do?'"

Berliner led us along a Wall Street alley and down a dark stairway through narrow underground hallways to the underground prayer-place. He recounted how in 1857 the Lord told Lamphier to hold a noontime prayer meeting at Wall Street; just like Berliner says God told him and a couple of other lay pastors to do.

At the time, they did not even know about Lamphier, and the fact that his meeting was so close to where theirs is now, nor did they know that Lamphier's meeting kicked off a massive prayer revival that eventually brought two million people to the Lord across America and Europe.

Some call it the country's last Great Awakening.

Berliner and the others who meet in this underground church were very excited when they learned all this about Lamphier, and they're praying their mostly unseen efforts of today will help kick off the next great awakening.

They think it's no accident their meeting is underground.

"[It’s] below the surface, and at 12 noon, as it was in 1858, we are on our knees, crying out to God that he will be the root...because we are only the branches," Berliner said.

Another important branch working for revival is the Christian Cultural Center. Here some 25,000 believers are out to revive New York by transforming its culture.

Pastor A.R. Barnard believes the way to lift a city higher is to expose its citizens to higher things.

He said, I’ve learned that people think only to the level of what they're exposed to. So you've got to expose them to where you want to take them."

So his church offers safe, rigorously-disciplined schools that set high goals. And the congregation built their beautiful new mega-church right in the middle of a run-down section of Brooklyn, where they could really have an impact.

Bernard said, "When you have someone who lives in the projects, who is receiving social assistance, and they come into a building like this, then all of a sudden they're inspired to become more."

Bernard said he sees that kind of transformation in people going on everyday, and even the neighborhood is transforming.

"The prostitution is no longer in this area. The drug-trafficking has moved on." Bernard said.

But Bernard said his church wants to help transform the whole city, by targeting each of the major institutions that shape a society: "family, the church, education, politics and economics. And I've added one more: arts and entertainment."

That transformation in the Arts can be seen in what Mako Fujimura and fellow Christian artists are doing.

They are trying to live for Christ through their art and reach out to other artists with a simple but profound message:

"Your creativity...my creativity came from a Creator. And we can learn to rejoice in this, even though you may disagree or may not believe what I believe," he said.

Many Christian artists in New York meet together for study and prayer, asking God how they can better communicate Him through art.

One stunning way Mako does this is by only using paint carefully ground from precious minerals in Japan so that it captures and reflects light off his canvases.

If you think how God is light, it makes Mako's paintings communicate in a special spiritual way.

Mako said New Yorkers seemed much more open to seeing such symbolism after the shock of 9/11. And Irvin looks at the way citizens, chaplains and churches came together in and after 9/11 as crucial to revival.

"It's always a sign of any revival that there's collaboration across denominational lines," he said.

Lim concurs: "We are coming together as one."

And Berliner thinks it's no accident literally dozens of denominations are represented every Wednesday when the Wall Street workers gather to pray for revival.

And he knows it's no accident God has them praying just five short blocks from Ground Zero.

Berliner says, "It's laying the spiritual foundation before the physical foundation is poured here at Ground Zero. And that's what the Lord wants to do: he wants to bring us back to Ground Zero.”

"Every place in this world is having a revival except...seemingly...the United States,” he said.

Berliner would love to see it start right here in the country's biggest city.

DeVries agrees: "We really do claim New York as a city for God."

DeVries is sure revival here would have an impact on the entire nation.

"This is one-twelfth of the United States' population," he said.

So just as New York was the place where America's last great awakening began, there are now many area Christians hoping...and praying...the next one will start here, too.”

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