Southeastern University Cancels Classes as Students Worship Round the Clock: ‘God Is Here’
Michael Foust
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By Michael Foust, Crosswalk.com
An annual worship event at a Christian university in Florida that was scheduled to end Feb. 11 was still going five days later, with students singing, repenting, and testifying to God’s goodness in what the school has dubbed an “outpouring.”
Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., held its annual “SEU Conference” Feb. 9-11 at Lakeland’s Victory Church – but students on the final day did not follow the itinerary. The schedule went off script at the conclusion of author and speaker Jennie Allen’s teaching on Wednesday morning.
“There was a moment in the midst of the conference when the atmosphere shifted,” SEU President Kent Ingle told AG News. “All of a sudden, the raw responses of students sparked an outpouring of spiritual and emotional healing.”
Allen wrote on her Instagram page that day: “Classes cancelled. Worship. Prayer. Baptisms. Repentance. But honestly – it’s just God is here, and we don’t want to leave!”
Breakout sessions on Feb. 11 were scrapped as worship stretched from 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., when university leaders moved the students from Victory Church to Bush Chapel on SEU’s campus. Classes were canceled on Thursday, Feb. 12, and resumed on Friday – but the outpouring has not stopped.
It was still taking place Monday on a schedule that allowed students to attend class: 1 to 4 p.m. local time during the day and 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. at night. The university is providing updates on its website.
“What began as a spark during Southeastern University’s annual SEU Conference has extended into a powerful, sustained Move of God in Bush Chapel,” the university website said. “This was not born of our own efforts; rather, it is the result of months of prayer and surrendering to the will of God.”
Southeastern University is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, although most of its students have non-AOG backgrounds.
“There’s an unstoppable hunger,” Ingle told AG News. “Students simply want to be in the presence of Jesus. We don’t have a label for what’s happening – and we don’t want one. We’re not trying to use certain words. We just know that God is doing something special on our campus.”
The outpouring began the first day as Allen challenged students to stand and confess their sins.
“All I can think of is that we saw what James described in James 5:15: ‘Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,’” Ingle said.
The outpouring has drawn comparisons to the Asbury University revival of 2023, when a scheduled chapel service in Kentucky unexpectedly turned into days of around-the-clock worship and prayer.
SEU’s chapel offers a livestream.
“We are not just witnessing an event on campus; we are witnessing the commissioning of a people,” the university website says. “Our goal is to sit at the feet of Jesus so that when we eventually leave this room, we leave transformed. Every sphere of influence we enter, whether the classroom or the marketplace, will witness the foundation built in these sacred moments.”
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Photo Credit: ©SEU Chapel / YouTube
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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