Student-led ‘revival’ at liberal Texas university going strong after 5 years

Originally published in Charisma News

A little-known liberal university in southwest Texas has been celebrating a campus revival since 2018, and its momentum for Jesus continues to this day with weekly salvations, baptisms, healings and repentance among its students.

Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, a school of a little less than 11 000 students, is a seeing an unprecedented move of God at the collegiate level. It has become a model university for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, says Mike Fehlauer, the lead pastor of nearby New Life Church, where it all began five years ago.

And, Fehlauer says, one of the amazing facets of the revival is that is all student led. Last week at an outreach to welcome the students back to campus, nearly 1 100 students came to hear a “strong, uncompromising Gospel message of salvation and repentance.” It resulted in 124 students giving their life to Christ and all being baptized in a horse trough that was brought to campus.

After the service, an “afterglow” was held in which new converts and others totaling 500 signed up for weekly life groups.

“Even though we are in Texas, this is certainly not a Christian university, it’s pretty liberal,” says Fehlauer, whose church sports a huge young adults ministry that has contributed to the outpouring at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. “Like most secular universities, this school definitely leans toward the left.”

The power of prayer, Fehlauer says, and the protection of the Holy Spirit, is what has allowed the outreach at TAMUCC to explode.

“We have prayed for years for this to happen. We probably started with it about 10 years ago,” Fehlauer says. “What happened was that our young adult college group at church began to grow and it took on a larger presence, and we began to do whatever we could to reach out. Once we reached a tipping point in about 2019, the thrusters really kicked in with the students at the university and it became a bold movement.

“The baptisms of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit are what’s really leading this whole thing. And I believe one of the biggest strengths of this movement is young people are preaching to young people. I myself, at 64, really don’t have much to do with it. These young people, some of who are on our staff and others who are volunteers, feel empowered and they are releasing that empowerment to other young people to create their own pulpit, no matter where it might be. It’s college students preaching to college students, and God is really honoring these Gen Zers who are hungry for the gospel.”

The Sunday prior to the campus outreach, three baseball players from TAMUCC visited New Life Church and gave their life to Christ. They returned to church later that evening and gave their testimony, and it resulted in 43 people coming to the altar for salvation—young and old alike.

The next week, TAMUCC held a special event for its athletes, and one of the players that recently got saved led another teammate to the Lord. Fehlauer says 100 athletes marched over to the fountain to watch the newborn believer get baptised.

“We’ve seen a lot of kids baptised in that fountain, praise God,” Fehlauer says. “You see these kids weeping, and you can see the conviction that comes over them. It’s inspiring.”

On the campus of a “liberal” university, one might expect pushback from the administration and from fellow students who are non-believers. Fehlauer says that has not happened, and the Holy Spirit continues to do its thing without restraint.

“It’s powerful. The Holy Spirit is protecting our young adults as they are ministering,” Fehlauer says. “They preach about the sin of homosexuality and other cultural issues, and there has been no condemnation because they are preaching these things in love.

“There has been so many marks of this movement, including miracles, healings and repentance. There is conviction among these young adults.”

Although many aren’t even aware of the existence of TAMUCC, Fehlauer says it has become a model for other schools across the country to follow if we’re to complete the Great Commission.

“Jesus said the harvest is ripe, but the workers are few,” Fehlauer says. “We have discovered that it is easy to underestimate the spiritual hunger that is out there. The more evil and twisted and bizarre our world becomes, the greater the hunger for what is real and true becomes. People may not see it, but it’s there. These Gen Zers are hungry for true, authentic real-life change. The fields are ripe. It’s like a miniature Jesus movement. I’m not likening the scope of this to that great movement, but this has been and will be sustainable. It’s a sign of things to come.” 

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