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Since February, CBN News has brought you stories of revival spreading across the country since the spontaneous outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.
Now, one organization reports God is also moving powerfully among the country’s historically black colleges and universities, also known as HBCUs.
The Black Voices Movement, a ministry of Circuit Riders, is on a mission to reach the next generation with the good news of Jesus Christ by empowering young black men and women across America to be evangelists and preachers of the gospel.
It is an important work in many ways, but especially because statistics show only 1% of American missionaries are black.
Black Voices describes itself as “a missional community of Circuit Riders empowering young Black leaders into their Christ-centered purpose,” according to the group’s website.
“We are all about the gospel. We’re evangelists. We love Jesus. We’re so grateful for the cross,” explains Yasmin Pierce, the director of the Black Voices Movement.
Pierce appeared on the Friday edition of CBN News’ Newswatch to talk about what sparked this mission’s movement.
“Young people need to hear and know that their voice is needed,” she said. “And when we talk about Black Gen Z and we talk about Gen Z in general, we’ve seen in the past few years that all of these other spheres of society are vying for young people’s voice, vying for young people’s attention. And really for us, really early on, God really burdened our hearts with this phrase, ‘The King is calling.'”
“And it’s really inspired by Matthew 9, where you see Jesus looking at the harvest. Looking at people who want to be saved. And he turns to his followers, and he says: ‘The harvest is plentiful. But the laborers are few,'” Pierce explained. “So what really inspired us is this thing of saying man, Black Gen Z’s voice is needed in the harvest. And the king, King Jesus, is calling this demographic forward as evangelists, as preachers, and as witnesses of who Jesus is.”
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When asked how they connect with young Black men and women, she replied, “Black Voices as a movement, we tour. And we do worship gatherings. We do evangelism training, practical leadership trainings. And what we find on these university campuses is a resounding response of ‘I didn’t know that my life could be used to proclaim the gospel in this way. I didn’t know that I could be an evangelist. I didn’t know that my voice could be used in this way.'”
“We had a student at Clark, who was saying, ‘Man, I feel like now that I’m doing this evangelism training, I’m seeing people get saved from me communicating the gospel for the first time.’ And she’s saying, ‘It’s like these gifts are being awakened that I didn’t know were there,'” Pierce recalled.
“So that’s a lot of what we do is to train, helping to empower young people for them to realize, ‘Wow, I’m a part of the solution of what God wants to do on the earth when it comes to reaching the lost.”
The Black Voices organization saw the need to tour HBCUs and now they have gone to between 20-30 HBCUs with these teams of young preachers.
A Harvest of Salvation
In a recent appearance on CBN’s The 700 Club Interactive, Pierce shared one of her favorite stories about a remarkable incident that happened to one of the Black Voices teams during a visit to an HBCU in North Carolina.
“Now, the student union on this campus is a three-story building, but they just say, ‘We’re just going to share the gospel in just open air.’ So they just start preaching the gospel and people stop in their tracks all across this student union,” she recalled.
“And he boldly says, ‘OK, if you know you need to give your life to Jesus today, I want you to come down here right now, and we’re going to pray for you.’ And all the way up from the third floor, people start streaming down to commit their lives to Jesus Christ,” Pierce told CBN.
“We had another young man just a few weeks ago just talking to three other men at an HBCU. He’s sharing about the gospel, and they’re so gripped that they say, ‘Hey, we want to call others of our friends over.’ Before he knows it, he’s talking to nine men altogether. And all of them in conversation give their lives to Jesus right there,” she said.
Black Voices Festival
The organization’s next Black Voices Festival to reach young people to be leaders to carry the gospel message will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, April 21-22 in Newark, New Jersey. It is an outdoor gospel festival that will conclude with a worship event on Saturday night.
There’s also a one-week campaign planned by the organization that will run from April 17-21 as a City Outreach Week.
For more information on the festival, CLICK HERE.
Watch the Black Voices 2023 Tour Campaign video below:
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