From Hollywood to the halls of college campuses around the country, actor Jen Lilley is moving forward with what she is calling a “vision” from the Holy Spirit.
“I had this spiritual vision of a bright pink wave popping up all over college campuses, accompanied by a fire and revival of the Holy Spirit,” she said on CBN’s “Faith in Culture.” “And I was like, ‘Lord, what is this?’ And He gave me the name, ‘Wake Up Your Campus.'”
Lilley, a “Days of Our Lives” alumna and frequent Hallmark movie staple, revealed to CBN News she is formally launching a four-week college tour, beginning March 29.
While 33 college campus ministries have expressed interest in hosting the campaign, Lilley is still raising funds to extend the tour.
All this comes as colleges across the U.S. are seeing spiritual awakenings break out. For example, this month, a spiritual phenomenon is underway at the University of Central Florida, where some 1,600 students have responded to the Gospel.
Lilley’s upcoming campus events center on her recently released book, a 365-day devotional, “Wake Up Your Faith.” The celebrity said she is sending kits to the campus ministry coordinators ahead of time. Each kit includes dozens of copies of her book as well as 40 pink tickets to be hidden around the campuses, inscribed with messages asking finders if they want to be entered to win $1,000.
As the scavenger hunt unfolds — and the ticket finders bring others into their challenges — each step directly connects students to on-campus ministry leaders. The “whole goal” of these challenges, Lilley said, is “follow-up discipleship.”
“It really is like a treasure hunt that leads straight to Jesus,” she said.
Lilley’s vision, she explained, was born out of a generational fervor for spiritual meaning.
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She compared members of Generation Z to the teenagers and 20-somethings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of whom were captivated by the hippie and free-love culture that dominated the age.
Disenchanted with the social norms of the 1950s and 60s, the youth of that era turned to illicit drug use and sexual exploration that countered biblical sexuality. While there was no singular reason for the rise of the hippie generation, it was catalyzed — at least in part — by a hunger for something more meaningful, more substantive, something the preceding generation, at least in perception, lacked.
Those misguided decisions ultimately paved the way for what came to be known as the “Jesus Movement,” a spiritual awakening that swept largely across Southern California, providing the Gospel as an answer to the lost and questioning youth of that generation.
“I find that there’s a lot in common with the ‘Jesus People’ and the hippies in the 70s with the modern-day Gen Zs, kids who are in college right now,” said Lilley. “What the similarity is is they’re seeking truth in a lot of the wrong places, but they’re done with gimmicks, they’re done with sales pitches. They just — they don’t like division — they really just want truth.”
Lilley, it seems, is on to something. The data certainly bears out the belief that younger Americans are searching for answers to significant spiritual questions.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Christian activist Charlie Kirk in September of last year, there was an apparent surge in spiritual conversations and a noticeable swell in church attendance as well as Bible sales, marked by a 22% spike from the year before.
The most recent State of the Church study by Barna Group found Scripture reading is on the rise among Gen Zers and Millennials, with just shy of half saying they engage with the Bible weekly. And for Americans adults across the board, there was a 12-point uptick in the percentage who read Scripture every week, from 30% in 2024 to 42% in 2025.
However, there is a disparity between the number of Americans reading Scripture and the percentage who affirm its veracity. David Kinnaman, CEO of Barna Group, said of the findings: “Engagement is outpacing conviction,” noting the gap “is worth paying attention to.”
That is why, for Lilley, discipleship is a critical component of what she is hoping unfolds on college campuses across the country. She referenced the parable of the farmer scattering seed in Matthew 13:19, when Jesus said, “The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches away the seed that was planted in their hearts” (NLT).
“The enemy will come and he will try to take that seed right out of their hearts,” she said, referring to sharing the Gospel with unbelievers. “So getting them plugged in [to a local church] is definitely a strategic key and that’s definitely how God’s Kingdom works.”
To learn more about Lilley’s “Wake Up Your Campus” campaign or to contribute to the ministry, click here. You can watch our full conversation with Lilley in the “Faith in Culture” episode embedded above.
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