Biography
Dennis Kinlaw was born in 1922 in the farm country of eastern North Carolina. He grew up poor and worked hard as a boy, and he came to faith in Christ in his youth in the Wesleyan holiness tradition. That tradition taught him that God not only forgives sin but also delivers the believer from its power and fills the heart with love. It shaped his whole life.
He went to Asbury College in Kentucky, and then to Asbury Theological Seminary. He was a bright student, and he went on to study the Hebrew language and the Old Testament at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he earned a doctorate. He studied with Jewish and Christian scholars alike, and his mind was trained at the highest level. Yet he never lost his love of the preaching of the gospel. He felt called to teach the Scriptures and also to preach them.
He taught at Asbury Theological Seminary and then in 1968 he became president of Asbury College. His time there is remembered for one extraordinary event. On February 3, 1970, a regular chapel service in Hughes Auditorium on the Asbury campus did not end when it was supposed to. A student gave a simple testimony of what God had done in his life, and others began to stand and confess sin and to seek God. The service continued for days and nights. Students came to the altar in tears. They put right wrongs, repaired broken relationships and made new vows to the Lord. News spread, and people from many colleges and churches came to the campus. Teams of students went out from Asbury to other schools and churches, where the same awakening followed.
Kinlaw was in the middle of it, and he did not try to control it. He had no scheme and no program for revival. He kept the people turned to God and kept the focus on Christ, and he asked the Lord to do what only He could do. It was a holy and sobering season. Kinlaw later said that real revival is the presence of God breaking in on a people who have been humbled, and that the church could not manufacture it.
After the revival he continued as president until 1981. It was a heavy load, and he carried it while the school grew and faced great strains. Later he went back to teaching Old Testament at the seminary, where he was a beloved professor. He taught generations of students, and he had a way of opening the Old Testament so that its stories pointed to Christ. He often said that the God of Scripture is the God who desires to dwell among His people, and he built his teaching on that theme.
In 1995 he helped start the Francis Asbury Society, which was formed to call the church to a life of holiness and to the study of Scripture. He wrote books that came from his preaching, among them Preaching in the Spirit, Let's Start with Jesus and This Is Our God. They are marked by plain and searching speech. He warned the church against self-sufficiency and urged leaders to cultivate a life of prayer. He believed that a Christian movement starts to die when it is more interested in its heritage than in the living God.
He was a strong personality, and he was not without conflict. Years of leadership brought hard decisions and some opposition. He did not please everyone and did not try to. He also faced the loss of loved ones and the ordinary pains of age. Through it he kept a steady focus. He spoke often about the need for a pure heart and the call to know God as He is.
He died in 2017 at the age of ninety-five. Many who had been students of his remembered him as a man who prayed with them, laughed with them and challenged them. The revival of 1970 remains his best-known mark on history, yet he would have said that it was God's doing and not his own.