Thousands of Liberty Students Open Semester Worshipping Jesus: 'This Is the Next Gen'

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For thousands of students at one Virginia university, the first day of school this fall wasn’t marked by a night on the town or the pursuit of worldly pleasures – but instead, worship.

Liberty University in Lynchburg held its annual opening-night “CC on the Lawn” on Monday, an outdoor worship gathering that brings thousands of students together on the first night of the fall semester.

With a backdrop of a beautiful August sky, new and returning students filled the lawn and held their hands to the sky in worship, marking the end of the first day of fall classes. Liberty Worship Collective led the music.

“This is the next gen,” declared the Instagram page of Liberty University’s Office of Spiritual Development.

Joshua Rutledge, Liberty’s vice president of spiritual development, encouraged students to remember God’s faithfulness during both the highs and lows of the coming school year, according to a story from Liberty’s Office of Communications & Public Engagement.

“There are going to be victories. There are going to be highs,” he told students, referencing the upcoming school year. “There are going to be some days it feels like you are coasting, and other days it will feel like you are just in the dark, moving slowly. I want you in those moments to remember this night and then remember where we’re going to be eight months from now, because it’s a snapshot of the faithfulness of God in each of our lives.”

“The battle has been won,” Rutledge added. “We can celebrate now because of the victory that has been won and the victory that is still yet to be that will be won. We are going to spend eternity doing this. In anticipation of what we will be doing for eternity, this is just a foretaste.”

Chancellor Jonathan Falwell urged students to look to the life of Christ as a model for how they should live.

“We look at the life of Jesus and recognize that He could have come to this earth, died on the cross, been buried, rose again, and gone back to Heaven to provide us the gift of salvation we enjoy – without saying a word and without healing anyone. He could have done that without any of the parables or the miracles we read about. … But He chose not to. He lived His life in a way to teach us how to live and what to do when we are betrayed, when we are hurting, when we are broken, and when we are tempted. This fall, that is exactly what we are going to talk about.”

Liberty University is a private evangelical Christian university.

Photo Credit: ©LibertyUniversity

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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