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Young Adults “Revived” Through Area Gathering
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Young adults gathered together for an evening of worship that lasted just over an hour and a half. James Fewell shared that he saw and heard about breakthroughs within the crowd, and expressed that there’s definitely potential for more nights of community fellowship and worship now that Revive has kick started the idea.
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Before dinner and worship, Revive attendees got the chance to be part of a 2-on-2 volleyball tournament, with Josh Fewell emceeing the competition with both play-by-plays and abstract humor.

A cumulative 40 young adults made an appearance at the Revive worship night, hosted on Saturday evening, July 21.

The event started at 3 p.m. with around 25 visitors, with a bit of karaoke, a pool to swim in, and a volleyball competition to go head to head in. By 6 p.m., more young adults rolled in just in time for a conclusion to the emceed volleyball event, and with hamburgers being served from the grill.

James Fewell, the coordinator of the event, was a bit worried in the beginning with the lower turnout but by the end “we had just hit our goal of forty people throughout the day ... and we gained about ten to twelve people that I didn’t know were coming.”

Revive had been promoted mainly throughout social media and word-of-mouth, and it’s Fewell’s hope that this will simply be a kickoff to plenty more nights just like this, though with a later starting time and more casual “hangout” atmosphere.

“I think we set out to help the Christian community grow closer and want to meet under worship, so that was good ... and in the end, everybody just flat out loved it. Everybody just came up to me and was like ‘This is what I needed,’” Fewell reported.

As the evening progressed, and the young adults – from high school to college – began asking what time the worship would begin, event attendee Jonathan Bates expressed “Hey, this whole day has been worship.”

The time before the group sang was centered around fellowship, whether that be playing volleyball, catching up with friends, or sharing their stories.

Fewell shared that while he was going around and talking to people, he saw some hurt and struggles, and encouraged them with the hope that “what we do tonight is gonna fix that” in the spirit of community worship and surrender.

Around 8 p.m., the crowd gathered to sing together.

“That worship set was probably the best I’ve ever experienced in Oakdale. Nothing to do with musical capability; the experience that I had and just getting to look at everyone worshipping God,” he said. “There were kids I’ve known since they were twelve years old, and people I’ve grown up with to now.”

Altogether, both Fewell and event-goers agreed that the night accomplished what it set out to do – to unify the young adult Christian community, and to get them excited to do something like this again with their newfound support system.