TIMOTHY MURRAY ’28
Updated 11:50 a.m. EDT, 10 March 2025
WARNING: SPOILERS
The Revival Generation: Gen Z Turning to Jesus is a documentary that tells a powerful story about how God is working, even on secular college campuses, in the lives of Generation Z students.
It begins with four college-age young girls telling stories of their lives before they found Jesus. One memorable story was from Mary Prewett. After Prewett spent a night in jail, her parents accepted her back and said, “We have never loved you more than we do right now.” This incident moved her mother, Tanya Prewett, to get more involved with college-age young women. As a result, she began leading a small group for college women, allowing her to witness the hurt they were going through. Tanya wanted to do something to change the narrative.
In October 2022, Tanya stood up during her small group and said, “Something big is coming,” and by 2023, Tanya and some of her friends started praying for revival at Auburn University. She asked Jennie Allen and Jonathan Pokuda to speak at an event that took place in September of that year. The event took place in the basketball arena, where 6,000 students came to attend the service. By the end of the night, spontaneous baptisms led to 350 students being saved. It was a surreal moment for everyone involved, even going as far as to make national news.
After the event, God told Tanya to form a team because the revival was going to spread quickly. She and three other people formed the UniteUS non-profit organization for the purpose of sharing the gospel at US colleges. After the revival at Auburn University, 12 more Universities reached out to Tanya asking her to do the same thing that she did at Auburn. However, at this time in her life, Tanya was battling depression and struggled with feeling equipped to help others. After seeking out a therapist, she was able to start her mission again. This battle of depression helped her to empathize more with the college students that she was going to be ministering to.
After getting her feet back under her, the first official UniteUS event was able to take place at Florida State University, a large party school. Hundreds of students were saved and then baptized in a fountain that was known as the fountain where people got drunk when they turned 21. Knowing that they were going to be working with a large party school, UniteUS invited people to come to the event by physically going to different sororities and fraternities.
One overall theme of this documentary that is encouraging to me is all the testimonies of the students who were about to get baptized. The students described feeling lost in the world before they had found their way to Christ. Another thing I found interesting about the UniteUS ministry is that they help the students who connect with them to find local churches. Overall, I really enjoyed watching this documentary since it’s easy to be negative about the broken people in Generation Z. However, this documentary highlighted the idea that there has got to be something more, because many people in Generation Z are desperate for more than the empty, broken lives that they are living. That is the power of the UniteUS movement. They give students the best gift they could ever receive which is the gospel.★
