Revive night was intended to be a call to God. Ottolini organized the event as a match to rekindle the love of God within the community of WCA, to bring the community back to the righteousness of the Lord.
Revive Night started off with a worship band, and was followed by a beautiful sermon from John Smith. He spoke about his journey, not only to find God, but also in locating his birth mother. He told the crowd how his pastors and church helped him in his search, and really stressed the idea of community, fellowship, and family.
”[I want] our community to have a place to engage and experience the Lord,” said Ottolini, the Director of Spiritual Life and the Organizer of Revive Night.
Ottolini understood the power of group testimony and worship, and he asked his friend John Smith to speak at the event, and he called on the Refresh Community Church band, led by Mark Goins, to perform worship music.
The attendance at Revive was incredible. Most of the people there were students, but there were many families and siblings at the event as well. The theater has about 600 seats, which is a little less than the number of students attending Westminster. About half the seats were filled, so overall, a fairly successful turnout.
He did not really care about how many people attended, so long as they felt the Lord and enjoyed themselves. While attending Revive Night, the feeling of fellowship and connection permeated the environment. The music was stunning, it filled its listeners with emotion and hope, and the speaker was charismatic and enraptured his audience.
“My bottom line success, what it looks like to me, is just people coming and enjoying worshiping Jesus. So if that’s fifty people, and they are genuine and loving it and the Lord is doing it — Amen,” said Ottolini.
Considering the palpable joy and jubilee during the event, I’d say that Ottolini has achieved success.
Ottolini’s inspiration came from the Asbury Awakening. Also called the Asbury Outpouring, the 2023 Asbury Revival, or the Asbury Jesus Revival, this event started February 8 of this year and continued for over two weeks. Two weeks of preaching, singing, and feeling the love of Christ. While it was happening, Christians and non-believers alike came from around the world to see what all the fuss was about. This was one of the major revivals of modern times, and was covered by news stations worldwide. Ottolini, who owns a TV, noticed the success of the event, and decided to implement a similar concept. The result: bringing Revive Night to Westminster.
”If you look at Asbury College, look at a number of other colleges that have had moments of experiencing the Lord in ways that are entirely new to students […] why not open ourselves up to trying to have something like that […] here?” said Ottolini.
Modeling Revive Night after the Asbury Revival, he strove to make the event as engaging as possible. The thought and care he put into this project is evident from the success of the event.
“I knew the people and pastor, [it was] pretty good,” said Jacob Ranheim, junior.
“[I saw] a lot more people that I knew [than I expected],” said Millie Farris, junior.
“I watched the movie […] [it was] inspiring to hear from [John Smith],” said AJ Snyder, junior.
Students who attended the event were amazed at the turnout and felt renewed after the service. Afterwards, students congregated outside the theater to chat with the performers and with Smith, demonstrating the enthusiasm of the Westminster community. However, despite the success of Revive Night, it appears that events similar to this one will not happen again until next school year.
“This will hopefully become a traditional thing for the start of every school year, where we can start together dedicating our time to the Lord,” said Ottolini. Although there are no planned Revive Nights soon, we can expect gatherings of a similar nature to take place near the start of the next school year and the following.
Revive Night was a worshipful way to kick off the school year. Ottolini’s diligence is what led to this event, and his success will be lauded as a brilliant plan with beautiful execution. We can only hope to see similar events in the future.
