From the Asbury Revival to growing young adult ministries across the country, it’s clear that God is moving in a big way on college campuses. That’s what SEU Worship sees on their own campus in Lakeland, Florida. The worship collective works closely with college students and young adults to foster the next generation of worship leaders.
Ahead of their latest album release, Move of God, we sat down with SEU Worship leader Chelsea Plank to hear more about her work with college students and how she’s witnessed God’s presence on campus and in young adults’ lives.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What is your favorite part about working with college students?
One of the most cutting-edge aspects of our ministry is the constant presence of young adult voices. We always get a taste of the next generation, even as we get older. I love that our ministry consistently hears their concerns, their passions and where they want to invest their labor and love. This unique aspect keeps us in touch with what young people are feeling and needing.
In our ministry, we prioritize writing for our community, hoping that our work will ignite passion everywhere. We ask, “What do our students need? What are they sensing from their friends and peers?” When writing with students, we often have an 18-year-old and a 25-year-old in the room. This dynamic is one of my favorite parts of student ministry.
I love our students and enjoy developing and discipling them. It is refreshing for us and our community to always have a young adult perspective.
What’s something you’ve noticed is on the hearts or minds of college students these days?
We have noticed that with songs like “Monday Morning Faith” or “Slower I Go,” which are on the album, college students are very open to new ways of talking about the Lord. This gives us the opportunity to experiment with bringing fresh perspectives to familiar church teachings. They are craving these new insights.
A common misconception is that they don’t want the truth or that they only want superficial messages. In reality, college students are deeply drawn to the truth. They can easily identify insincerity and find it unrelatable. The pursuit of truth, expressed through new revelations and language, but grounded in solid theology, is something college students seek far more than we often acknowledge.
Young people are craving this truth more than we realize.
What is something these college students have taught you in return?
That’s a great question. I love it. I grew up in this ministry, meaning I came to college here and then joined their team and became staff in the past couple of years. But one of the coolest things about college students, and now we’re seeing another generation coming into our college campuses and ministries, which is incredible. It’s like another wave.
I’m at the tail end of college students. I’m clinging onto it. But then we have some younger students, and I love one thing about college students and the younger generation is their heart for justice. They have a huge justice-oriented heart, and they know more than we might think about how to pursue that with love. So something I’ve learned is just fighting the good fight, even though they’re younger and might not have the same life experience as someone who could offer wisdom on the matter. They’re ready and eager to fight for justice for people, to see truth prevail in various areas.
I’m always inspired by that with this generation. It inspires me to stand for truth, to fight for justice. Justice is a Godly concept, so envisioning it on Earth is vital. I love the hearts of college students and younger generations. It’s becoming more prevalent and I find it really cool.
How does that relationship with college students impact SEU Worship’s music?
I think it gives us perspective on sound for college students, for a younger generation. It gives us a pulse on that sound because it’s what we’re listening to, but also what our student body is listening to. So when we engage in these writing sessions, we’re gaining all these different soundscapes and references for fresh ways of worshiping the Lord and bringing that into songwriting, and ministering to our campus through the songs we’re writing, ministering to whoever’s listening.
It’s awesome to have a youth group to do that with because, firstly, you’re gaining perspective on what the next generation needs, the generation that’s going to be leading us and leading the church. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What are they needing? What’s the language we can use for that? And also, the sound of it.
At SEU Worship, we love the worship aspect that feels new and fresh, and experimenting with new sounds and new ways of expressing worship to the Lord is something we love to do. So that young audience is crucial for that kind of ministry and sound.
You’re new album, Move of God, is dropping. Where did the inspiration for this music come from?
So the album is called Move of God, but the track “Move of God” was actually the last song that we wrote for the album. And it just encompassed everything we were singing about in all of the songs.
So much of the songs that we were writing were coming out of a place on our campus where we had seen such a powerful, massive move of God and such a powerful revival where — not that this always has to indicate God moving, He can move in so many different ways — but we were seeing altar calls at the end of our Monday night chapels going until 1 a.m. We were seeing people praying over others on our campus. We were seeing people with radical faith who set an expectation and an atmosphere that the Lord can do anything.
When we have that expectation, He really does do it. Our leadership was focused on positioning ourselves to holiness because it says that the pure in heart see God. We know that purity is more than a destination but a pursuit. It is a real pursuit and we just wanted to see God.
So many of these songs, whether they’re songs of repentance or songs of exaltation to the Lord, ultimately express the move of God that we feel happening across our nation and the globe. In times of darkness, it’s good to be reminded that there is a move of God taking place. If we have the faith to believe it, if we’re hungry, if we’re desperate for it, God is going to show those things to us.
God has a heart for the church. We know that God is aligning all of that through this album and through what He’s doing in the world right now.
