There is a spirit about any university.

That's me talking to parents, grandparents and new students at Biola University a few years ago. I was trying to explain what the experience of learning is in a place where we align deep faith in God with the study of journalism and media.

I don't know if I connected. But I came to that moment after having experienced God at Asbury University, particularly in Hughes Auditorium, where revival changed the lives of students, faculty, staff and people from all over Kentucky, all over the U.S.

This week, revival came again to that auditorium on that campus in a small town southwest of Lexington. By means of social media, that movement of God is spreading all over the planet.

In my dissertation research at the University of Kentucky, I read the thinking a UK administrator named Frank McVey. He wrote that any university has a spirit about it. There's something bigger, higher, more profound than what's being taught, what research is being conducted. That spirit comes from the souls of people inhabiting that campus. At Asbury, when the Holy Spirit comes, there is something profoundly powerful that attracts people into its space to fall on their knees, repent of sin, cry out to God for forgiveness and cleansing of soul. They leave forever changed.

Christian higher education is not cheap. It's expensive because it's tuition driven. And fewer and fewer parents are willing to plunk down the coin to pay for it — maybe because they've never experienced that something more, that spirit, that presence of God in a campus that is part of so many places like Asbury and Biola and Wheaton. I've been part of each. And I'm humbled that God would allow me that privilege.