WILMORE, Ky. — When spontaneous worship broke out in Hughes Auditorium at Asbury University in February 2023, few anticipated what would follow. What began as an ordinary chapel service grew into weeks of nonstop prayer, confession, and praise, drawing tens of thousands of students, pastors, and visitors from around the world.
But for one high school student, the revival didn’t just create headlines. It gave her a reason to keep going.
Evelyn Riesing, a high school junior at the time, wasn’t raised in a home where faith was discussed, much less embraced. Growing up in a small Ohio town, her early years were marked by trauma: exposure to drugs, emotional distance from family, and sexual abuse. “My starting line felt rigged,” she says now. “Everything I thought was safe turned out not to be.”
Her first glimpse of something different came when a private Christian high school opened nearby. She enrolled, unsure of what she believed, and began hearing her classmates speak openly about Jesus. Evelyn’s curiosity piqued—silently—for something different.
Then came the outpouring.
Her Bible teacher told the class about what was unfolding at Asbury—worship without agenda, led by students, around the clock. Evelyn made a decision. She got in the van.
“When we arrived, it was huge,” she recalls. “There was so much traffic—we couldn’t even get into Hughes Chapel. But we were in the seminary chapel. I didn’t know the songs. I was just watching everyone around me.”
She watched, listened, and cried. One song made the sea of people sing, “Love like a hurricane . . . ”—her defenses broke and her heart opened to Jesus. Though she’d never sung it before, she found herself singing every word. And believing them.
“I knew in that moment there was a God. That Jesus had died and risen again. I just said yes.”
But the emotional high of revival didn’t erase the obstacles ahead.
Evelyn set her sights on attending Asbury for college, despite having little financial support from her family.
“It was devastating,” Evelyn said. “I thought, ‘God, I’m following You. Why does it feel like this door is slamming shut?’”
The cost seemed insurmountable—until she heard about Summit Camp, a one-week intensive worldview experience for high schoolers hosted on Asbury’s campus. The camp not only opened doors financially with a college scholarship but also deepened her faith intellectually and emotionally.
“Summit was foundational. I had never heard any of this teaching before. It gave me the tools to understand why I believed in God—not just feel it,” she says.
In one session, speakers tackled the question, “If God is good, why does evil exist?”—a question Evelyn had lived but never verbalized. It reframed her entire understanding of suffering.
“It helped me stop seeing my past as something to hide. I started seeing it as part of my testimony.”
Alycia Wood, a Summit Camp speaker, helped her face the hardest metaphor she’d carried: the idea of God as Father and the best image of a loving parent we have.
“I thought, ‘If God is anything like family, I want nothing to do with Him.’ But Summit helped me start untangling that.”
She returned home from Summit changed. She launched a prayer board at school, opened chapel services in prayer, and even prayed at her graduation—something she says she couldn’t have imagined just a year earlier.
Despite her spiritual momentum, the road to college remained a steep one. When Evelyn arrived at Asbury as a freshman, her family cut off contact entirely. During family weekend, she found herself asking others if she could tag along with their parents.
“It was lonely,” she admits. “But for the first time, I had a Christian community around me—people who supported me, challenged me, and helped me grow.”
Even now, as she serves as a Summit Camp counselor for new high schoolers walking their own winding paths, Evelyn carries a hard-won confidence: not because her life is easy, but because her foundation is secure.
“At Summit, you’re treated like an adult. They expect you to have real conversations. And that’s what young people need. Don’t just tell us what to believe—show us why. Walk with us.”
Evelyn’s story mirrors what many see as a rising trend among Gen Z: a generation deeply disillusioned by cultural confusion but increasingly drawn to clarity, purpose, and truth. Summit Ministries, the Colorado-based organization that runs Summit Camp, has seen thousands of students like Evelyn hunger not just for faith, but for understanding.
“A revival moment might ignite something,” Evelyn says, “but it’s what comes after—the community, the mentorship, the truth—that sustains it.”
For more on Summit Camp at Asbury University, visit:
https://www.asbury.edu/conferences-and-camps/summit-camp/