Holiness Emphasis Week 2017

MATT LeROY is the Teaching Pastor at Love Chapel Hill, an eclectic church plant in downtown Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He is the author of The Way Forward, Awakening Grace, and Paradox: Embracing the Tensions of Christianity. Matt is married to Sarah and is dad to twin sons, Luke and Samuel.

PRESS RELEASE:

“Holiness Emphasis Week Calls Asbury to Revival”

January 20, 2017

WILMORE, Ky. — An annual Asbury University tradition, Holiness Emphasis Week will explore repentance and revival with Rev. Matt LeRoy next week (Jan. 23–27). Services will be in Hughes Auditorium at 10 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and at 7 p.m. Monday – Thursday.

At Asbury, holiness is a comprehensive way of looking at faith and life. During Holiness Emphasis Week, Asbury’s campus comes together to celebrate the school’s roots in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition and to explore the continuing message of holiness — that God’s grace can radically transform hearts and lives.

“Holiness Emphasis week is made fresh for me each year when students say ‘yes’ to the love of Christ in areas of their life where they’ve never given Jesus lordship,” said Rev. Greg Haseloff, campus chaplain and associate dean of Campus Ministries. The freshness is to be expected in the same manner we find that the ‘word of God never returns void.’”

Leading this year’s Holiness Emphasis Week, LeRoy is co-pastor of Love Chapel Hill, an eclectic church plant in Chapel Hill, N.C. LeRoy will explore the connection between repentance and revival, challenging common perceptions of what revival looks like.

“A lot of times, we think of revival in terms of an emotional, spiritual experience, but I want to talk about how revival is often intimately connected to our own repentance,” LeRoy said. “We often talk about the idea of ‘going deeper’ when we’re talking about spiritual things, and it’s a simple thought, but it kind of turns things upside down. The direction of deeper is not up. It’s not a mountaintop experience. The direction of deeper is down — and often, the spiritual renewal in our lives happens when we come to a place of surrender and mission and when we’re broken by God.”

LeRoy spent four years in Wilmore as an M.Div. student at Asbury Theological Seminary, so he’s well aware of Asbury’s rich history of revivals. Revival has been a core experience for Asbury since its beginning, and revivals in 1958 and 1970 had especially far-reaching effects. For LeRoy, Asbury’s heritage of revival is a launching point for a new work of God.

“It’s something I think about every time I step foot into Hughes Auditorium,” LeRoy said. “I’m at an interesting point in my life where I feel like God keeps stirring up this passion for the history of what He’s done before, but it’s combined with this hope of what He wants to do next. It’s not a repeating of history — He wants to take another leap forward. I’m fascinated by what He’s done, and I’m really hungry to see what He wants to do next.”