by Steve | Nov 5, 1997 | Archive - 1997
Farewell to a princess and a saint
By Steve Beard
Good News
November/December 1997
Even weeks after the fact, people are still talking about it. After all, within five days the world lost its two most beloved women. Mother Teresa died at age 87 of a heart ailment. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. She was 36.
The comparisons were inevitable. Of course, they could not have appeared more different in appearance or lifestyle. Princess Diana lived in a London palace and was a jet-setter among the richest of the rich. Mother Teresa’s vow of poverty took her to the poorest of the poor in a Calcutta slum. Nevertheless, the two shared a common care for the less fortunate, although they used drastically different approaches.
As perhaps the most photographed woman in the history of the world, Princess Diana successfully used her dynamic charm and beauty to campaign for righteous causes such as extending compassion to AIDS patients, banning land mines, and comforting the poor.
“The Princess was a good friend of the mission” said the Rev. David Cruise, Methodist superintendent minister of the West London Mission, whose outreach includes work with the homeless, alcoholics and other people in need. “She took a personal interest in its work…. We thank God for all that she gave of herself to others and especially to those generally shunned by society.” The princess visited the mission on four separate occasions.
Mother Teresa was equally diminutive as she was forceful when she provoked the world to think about the plight of the orphan, the leper, the blind, the disabled, and the sick on the street. Accepting the Nobel Prize in 1979 in the name of the “unwanted, unloved and uncared for,” she wore the same $1 white sari that she had adopted to identify herself with the poor when she founded her order.
In her speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, Mother Teresa turned and looked at President Clinton and Vice President Gore and said, “Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child.”
The president responded later by praising her “moving words,” but added: “We will always have our differences. We will never know the whole truth.” Of course, Mother Teresa would have disagreed. She believed that truth had been revealed, and that the truth often hurt – especially if we took it.
She was never reluctant to speak truthfully to the powerful.
“She served every human life by promoting it ever with dignity and respect,” said Pope John Paul of Mother Teresa, imploring for her, “the reward that awaits every faithful servant” of God and expressing the hope that her “luminous example of charity” would inspire humanity.
Interestingly enough, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa were very fond of one another. Diana is known to have turned to Mother Teresa for spiritual advice. She also described meeting the nun as her “dearest wish” and the princess was a patron on Teresa’s charity, the Leprosy Mission. Mother Teresa referred to Diana as “like a daughter to me.” Mother Teresa said she and Diana had talked about loving God and how God wants people to love the poor. “She helped me help the poor and that’s the most beautiful thing,” Mother Teresa said of the princess. Not a bad eulogy.
It is at times like these that the people around the globe are jarred into thinking about their individual mortality, and perhaps the prospects of heaven. While Mother Teresa died at a wonderfully fulfilling age of 87, Princess Diana’s sudden death simply caught the world off-guard. After all, she died in something as common and yet as unexpected as an automobile accident.
Death at her young age destroyed the myth that we can postpone our inquiry into the reality of eternal life until a later date. The hereafter, we were reminded, knocks every moment as we walk on the earth.
“Death is only inches away from each one of us,” said Anglican Archbishop George Carey. “Perhaps [Diana’s death] will help us all to focus on really important things in life: human life and relationships, and faith in God.”
In Princess Diana’s tragic life we also saw that beauty, wealth, and world-wide fame did not bring happiness. The young princess seemingly had it all, yet joy in life was elusive. She was riddled with insecurity, had a failed marriage, attempted suicide numerous times, and had several bouts with eating disorders. Atop of all that, every mistake, misstatement, and moral failure was broadcast across the globe.
Despite her very difficult life, Diana did what she could for those less fortunate. For that we should be grateful.
You will not find us on the bandwagon of those who bemoaned that Princess Diana did not do enough to warrant all of the tears and attention. These sentiments are usually expressed by those who rarely if ever lift a finger to help the weak, the poor, or the vulnerable. Neither will you find us needlessly attempting to compare the works of Mother Teresa to those of Princess Diana, as if there was a competition to be won when it comes to compassion.
The fact that Mother Teresa was a moral giant who was tireless in her good works does not lessen what Princess Diana attempted to do for those less fortunate. Who of us would be able to stack our deeds of mercy next to those of a Mother Teresa?
Billy Graham called Diana an example of concern for the poor, the oppressed, the hurting, and the sick. “She easily could have chosen to withdraw from public life, but she made this world a better place by her smile of encouragement and her support for dozens of worthy causes,” Graham said. “No person was too lowly or too handicapped for her attention.”
Mother Teresa’s life-long witness shamed even the most sensitive into doing more for the poorest of the poor. While the vast majority of us will not move to Calcutta to wash the sores of the dying, perhaps we will be more sensitized to the needs all around us, some certainly as pressing in their own way.
Mother Teresa made no bones about the fact that she did what she did because she saw Jesus in the eyes of the poor, and the leper, and the abandoned. Her motivation was not merely out of a humanistic altruism. It was strictly motivated from the fact that she could not overlook the words of Jesus to do to the “least of these” as you would do unto him.
“In a world of doubts and ambiguities and cynicism, she was blessed with certainties, and the certainties that guided her life and her self-sacrifice are ancient, they are noble,” said Rep. Henry Hyde of Mother Teresa. “She believed we are not lost in the stars…. On the edge of a new century and a new millennium, the world does not lack for icons of evil—Auschwitz, the gulag, the killing fields of Cambodia, Bosnia, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. What the world desperately needs are icons of goodness.”
Within five days, the world lost two women who loved goodness and kindness. That is no small loss.
The Scripture clearly teaches that our salvation comes by grace through faith and “not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:9). At the same time, the Scripture is equally clear that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). As we are ever mindful of the nearness of eternity, may this tragic loss reminds those of us who love the Bible to extend a ministry of mercy and grace to the very people that the God of the Bible loves.
Within their unique and different spheres of influence, both women provided God-given compassion and mercy for those with AIDS and leprosy and provided love and shelter for the homeless and the orphan. We are grateful for the powerful mercy ministries currently modeled by women such as Jackie Pullinger-To in Hong Kong and Maggie Goban in Cairo, Egypt—both of whom are committed to the poorest of the poor in their respective communities. We also thank God for the nameless and faceless thousands of men and women involved in homeless shelters, rescue missions, and various other ministries of mercy around the globe. May their lives prompt us to extend that same care and concern for those in our neighborhoods and communities who are less fortunate than ourselves.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 1997 issue of Good News magazine.
by Steve | May 9, 1997 | Archive - 1997
Tacos and late-night prayer with Bishop Aquiña
By Steve Beard
May/June 1997
It is not often that I have been invited to eat dinner with a bishop. It is even rarer to have a bishop prepare dinner for me. But that is what happened while I was recently in Mexico, sitting in a church courtyard after a wonderful service talking with Bishop Antonio Aquiña as he prepared the most incredible tacos.
As sensational as all of that was, nothing compares to being with an episcopal leader who actually has a spiritual hunger to see God move in a powerful revival throughout the churches under his authority. Bishop Aquiña is a man with a vision, who believes in a God who longs to do more than we could ever imagine
My friend Mark Nysewander of Threshold Ministries was invited by the bishop to hold a conference for his pastors and district superintendents on the fullness and power of the Holy Spirit. Six of us ended up heading down on the ministry team and were able to soak these beleaguered pastures in prayer and share with them about the heavenly Father’s love, the river of God, the need for a world-wide revival, intimacy with the Lord, and the work of the Holy Spirit. The Lord moved among these men and women, touching them beautifully. It was awesome.
These pastors were from the northwest section of Mexico in Sonora and Baja California. Many of them are despised and tormented in their towns because of their belief that God can deliver people from the demonic strongholds in their lives. Several of them told me about being cursed on the streets of their towns by those who were held captive by evil spirits. The occult and spiritism is very strong in parts of Mexico. Furthermore, the demonic is far more publicly prominent. Unlike many pastors in the United States, these clergypersons had no doubts about the destructive power of the devil or the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. They did not blush when they refer to the torment of demons or the ministry of angels.
Over meals, many of them asked me about the preoccupation with homosexuality within the United Methodist Church in the United States. One by one they recounted the public disgrace they faced when a flamboyant United Methodist clergyperson from Southern California appeared on the “Cristina” television show to perform several same sex marriages a year and a half ago. Cristina is the Oprah of the entire Spanish-speaking world.
The UM clergyman was decked out in a clerical collar and a colorful stole draping his robe as he smiled with Glee as the male couple and the female couple kissed on television. The Methodist pastors in Mexico received the brunt of the ramifications of this display because their parishioners were disillusioned and angry. Many left the Methodist Church for other denominations where such behavior is still viewed as unscriptural. These pastors bore an undeserved stigma for simply being Methodists.
Although the bishops of Mexico sent letters of protest and concern, there came no satisfactory response. I was ashamed. But I was able to thank the Methodist Church of Mexico for always being a faithful and biblical voice on the issue of homosexuality at General Conference.
The Methodists in northern Mexico are largely evangelical. There was a great charismatic revival in their midst in 1973 that changed the denomination. While the South was riddled with liberation theology (one pastor told me that he learned to make Molotov cocktails in class at seminary), the north was finding new life through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Six months ago Bishop Aquiña and his wife received a prophetic word from some Christian brothers who only knew that he was a Methodist pastor. The word went something like this, “You only give, give, give. It is now time for you to receive. Seek me. …”
They believed that this was a legitimate word of encouragement from the Lord. It strengthened him and has given him new fire to pursue the Lord with all that is in him. The bishop is a man who wants nothing less than all that God has for him and the Methodists in Mexico.
As the pastors left the conference, many of them shared how God had radically touched their hearts. Many actually felt sensations of the Lord’s manifest presence. God released a fresh anointing, healed painful memories from the past, and reconciled brothers who had been at odds. We even saw one family walk by the church during the pastors conference and give their hearts to Jesus.
After our very late meal late meal with the bishop, he asked us to pray for him before he boarded a bus for an 8 hour ride home. As we prayed, the bishop received a fresh realization of the love of God for him and was overcome with the power of a holy and mighty God. Needless to say, the Bishop caught a much later bus.
The Holy Spirit puts a very high priority on overwhelming the human heart with the love of the father. We all need it, even bishops.
by Steve | Aug 11, 1996 | Uncategorized
Forward to Our Methodist Heritage (By Charles Keysor)
By Bishop Earl G. Hunt
1996
AFTER DR. JAMES S. STEWART of Edinburgh had preached a few years ago to a large audience of United Methodist ministers and their wives in Charlotte, North Carolina, a young minister (suffering, I fear, from creedal poverty in his own mind and life) said with devastating honesty, “We were embarrassed by the immensity of his faith!”
This candid comment serves to remind us that the Christian community has come dangerously close to losing its gospel in recent years. The reasons are too complex for easy analysis, and are related to the secularization and the affluence of contemporary life as well as to philosophy and theology. In many instances we clothed what amounted to a fundamentally humanistic perspective in the historic vestments of the Church and its ministry. Diminishing church attendance and waning effectiveness in evangelism undeniably are traceable to this grave malady of diluted conviction. In fact, the total problem of the contemporary Church, in my opinion, is the various manifestations of Christian agnosticism that have confronted believers in the last few decades .
But, praise God, there are startling and encouraging evidences of a renaissance of faith around the world today. We seem to be engaged deliberately in the gradual recovery of those cardinal beliefs that compose our faith. The days of creedal drought are surely in twilight. This is an obvious return to our Wesleyan position, for the little Oxford don to whose insights we owe our sectarian origin was never in doubt about what he believed regarding God, Christ, sin, forgiveness, prayer, and the holy life! His theology, always firmly based in the Scriptures, was doxology, and his trumpet never gave an uncertain sound.
It has been my observation that significant and lasting social action by the Christian community always and forever rests upon deep and authentic conviction about the great doctrines of the gospel. There is a historic sequence of idea and deed, conviction and mission, faith and action. Before the imperative of the Great Commission came the indicative of God at work through Jesus Christ in his incarnation, his death on the cross, and his resurrection.
But this has been, in recent decades, the lost movement of the symphony. Now, at long last, we seem about to hear again, in all of its surging power, the whole score of the gospel’s music. If this prognosis is correct, it constitutes the best authentic hope from an earthly standpoint for the survival of the Church.
This renaissance of evangelical Christianity has many faces in our time, but the movement itself is far broader and larger than any one of them. It has already permeated the grass roots of the Church around the earth and is now invading all but the most reluctant of ecclesiastical leadership levels. The Good News movement in the United Methodist Church is one aspect of this development and has articulated effectively its emphasis to our entire denomination. As one who is himself wholly committed to the historical evangelical doctrines of our faith, with appropriate and courageous social implementation, I am pleased to write this brief foreword for Dr. Keysor’s little volume. His skill as a writer and his deep dedication as a United Methodist Christian are everywhere apparent in the pages that follow. I confidently pray that the message of Our Methodist Heritage may find lodging in many lives, and may result, through God’s Spirit, in an awakened interest in the basic truths of our holy religion.
EARL G. HUNT, JR.
Presiding Bishop Nashville (Tenn.) Episcopal Area
United Methodist Church
by Steve | Jul 10, 1996 | Archive - 1996
Troubled soul finds salvation
By Alice Crann
At first Joseph Justiss hated the revival. “I remember not being able to breathe. My head was hurting. I was nauseated. I watched [evangelist] Steve Hill preach and I hated it.”
He left vowing never to return. The next night after work the 25-year-old went home and discovered everyone was at the revival.
“The house was empty but so was I. I can’t explain the emptiness I felt. So, I drove to the revival and I sat in the back of the church.”
He was surrounded by hundreds of worshippers, many seeking the salvation offered by Jesus. Justiss was looking to be saved from what he described as a life of depression and degradation.
Steve Hill came up to me and it felt like he looked right through me. I got freezing cold. I went into a fetal position. Every time he touched me, it hurt, it burned. He began to pray for me. I thought I was flipping out.”
Justiss tried to run, but Hill grabbed him.
“I fell on the floor. All I remember was fighting Steve Hill, and us wrestling on the floor he kept praying for me. Something finally broke in me, and I began to sob from the bottom of my stomach.
The next day, Justiss met hill for counselling. They talked for hours about the things in Justiss’ life that were making him unhappy: homosexuality, the occult, drugs, alcohol. That night, July 10, his parents drove him back to the revival.
“I went to the front row. I told God, ‘If you can take all of this away – the homosexuality, the occult – I’ll serve you again.’ I went to stand and I fell hard on my face. It was like God was saying, this is how I want you to serve me.
“I started crying, but this time I did not feel emptiness, I felt peace. This is when I was saved.
His mother Guadalopi Justiss said she knows the power of God, but she still stunned by what she calls “the miracle” that saved her son. “How can I say it? the change is like night and day. There aren’t any words to describe the difference. Before he was suicidal. Now he’s at total peace with himself.”
As a teenager, he had tried to fit in when it came to sports, hanging out with the guys, and dating girls. “But nothing ever worked,” Justiss said. “This is when I decided I was born gay.” At age 19, at a Christmas party, he said he had his first experience with pot, alcohol, and sex.
“That’s when I came out of the closet. I became close to a man, and we moved in together.” After two years, Justiss got restless and depressed, and once again tried to commit suicide with pain medication. That’s what started the flow of psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and – antidepressants.
His mother began begging for him to go to the revival. “I told her I didn’t want to go – that it was all hype, all emotions like a tribe dancing around a fire until everyone is caught up in the frenzy. But my mom begged and begged.”
When Justiss first went in he was demon-possessed. He looked like a wild man,” said the Rev. John Kilpatrick, pastor of Brownsville Assembly. “But the Lord delivered him. He did an about-face. It’s miraculous! It’s very evident that he loves the Lord. Today, he’s a tranquil person, effervescent and happy. Everyone at the church looks at him like a trophy of this revival because they know what a mess he was.
Justiss said he is no longer a homosexual. “I want to have a wife. I want to have children.”
But what about those who say people are born gay, that it all has to do with genetics? “I can’t speak for anyone else. All I know is that I am no longer attracted to men. I am attracted to women.
He now works at the Christian Television Network as a master control operator and attends Pacesetters Bible School at Pine Forest United Methodist Church.
Justiss attends the revival on his nights off from the work to praise the Lord and gain inner strength from the Holy Spirit. “I don’t take what’s happened to me lightly, and it’s not all blue skies and butterflies. I go through daily battles. It’s a daily decision to serve God but my heart has changed. when I look at my eyes in the mirror I can see something different.”
Alice Crann is a staff writer with the Pensacola News Journal, from which this article is reprinted with permission.
by Steve | Jul 10, 1996 | Archive - 1996
The Pensacola Outpouring
By Steve Beard
July/August 1996
The final evening after a week of revival services is always bittersweet After all, God has been at work in the lives of the faithful. The preaching has been challenging, the praise and worship music has been inspirational, and hearts are transformed at the altar. God’s presence seems almost palpable. In response, men and women make heartfelt commitments to spend more time in daily worship, Bible study, and prayer.
After all of this, the evangelist packs up and travels to the next town. Slowly we adjust to the absence of the fiery sermons and altar calls. Not long after, we appoint a committee to plan for next year’s revival.
What would happen, however, if the evangelist never left? What would happen if revival never ceased? How would we adjust?
That has become a major question at the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida. On Father’s Day Sunday, June 18, 1995, evangelist Steve Hill shared about a life-changing experience of literally being overcome by God’s presence and overwhelmed by his love several months before at Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican Church in London. When Hill asked how many would like to receive a refreshing of the Holy Spirit, more than 1,000 people responded. As he laid hands on people, the Spirit of God swept over the congregation in an unusually powerful way.
The morning service lasted till 4 p.m. Needless to say, the Lord had more in mind on this Father’s Day than merely taking the dads out for lunch. One year later, Hill is still there preaching. From all indications, the church has happily adjusted and is praying, “More, Lord, more!”
Since that Sunday, more than 20,000 people have made public commitments to Jesus Christ at the Brownsville Assembly – many of them actually running and diving for the altar. Punk rockers and lawyers, strippers and bankers, truck drivers and crack addicts have all found new life in Christ at the church. One couple who had been divorced for a year discovered one another at the altar after each had independently given their lives to the Lord. They are now remarried.
Simultaneously, untold thousands of Christians from virtually every denomination – including United Methodism – have experienced renewal by receiving prayer. Pastors testify to having received a fresh evangelistic anointing. Some believers respond to the prayer ministry with unusual manifestations such as trembling, groaning, shaking, and falling under the power of the Holy Spirit. Men and women from all socio-economic levels flock to the church in search of salvation, deliverance, Holy Spirit empowerment, and physical healing.
The Brownsville Assembly now holds revival meetings every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening. Cumulative attendance has been more than 650,000. On weekends, people arrive in the afternoon in order to find a place in the 2,300-seat church. The parking lot is usually still filled after midnight. License plates indicate that some have driven from halfway across the United States. As word has traveled across Christendom regarding what has become known as the “Pensacola Outpouring,” international visitors from throughout the globe have made pilgrimages to the panhandle city.
The revival has caused the church to make several adjustments – all of which they were more than happy to make. The financial burden alone includes additional phone lines, child care helpers, drinking water, electricity, and parking-lot security.
“We’ve prayed for revival for two-and-a-half years, and we knew one was coming,” said Pastor John Kilpatrick of the Brownsville Assembly. “But this magnitude has shocked us.”
Preparing for revival
Dr. David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world located in South Korea, was praying in 1991 for revival in America. He believes that the Lord led him to point his finger at Pensacola on a map of the United States. “I am going to send revival to the seaside city of Pensacola,” Cho sensed the Lord saying, “and it will spread like a fire until all of America has been consumed by it.” Pastors in the area have been mindful of the prophesy ever since.
Pastor Kilpatrick sought God’s direction for their Sunday night services. The Lord reminded him of Matthew 21:13: “My house will be called a house of prayer.” He asked the women of the church to sew banners in order to focus specific prayer on issues such as spiritual warfare, family, souls, leaders of our country, healing, pastors, peace of Jerusalem, schools, and revival.
The night that the banners were paraded in, Kilpatrick didn’t know how to divide the congregation evenly between the banners, but he noticed that as each banner was carried in, different people began to weep. As the banner representing prayer for the leaders of our country came in, he lost all composure himself. At the Spirit’s leading, he encouraged the congregation to go to the banner that they had cried over. “As soon as I made that announcement, everyone got up and joined others around a particular banner,” Kilpatrick explains in his book, Feast of Fire. “No one was left in his or her pew and the people were evenly distributed. Prayers were lifted up that evening as our congregation set a precedence of intercessory commitment that continues weekly to this day.”
As the weeks went on, the congregation saw many prayers answered, but there was a special emphasis around the revival banner. More and more people joined the prayer for revival each week. “They would gather around it for long periods of time, seemingly in deep travail and especially intense intercession,” reported Kilpatrick.
Pastor Kilpatrick and evangelist Steve Hill are both very quick to point out that what is taking place is not only for Brownsville, let alone for the Assemblies of God. Instead, this revival is for all. Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and independents have all been touched.
One group that has been blessed is the United Methodists in the Pensacola area, most notably the congregation at the Pine Forest UM Church.
A family revival
Marilyn and Ted Bridges attend Pine Forest. Prior to the revival, they had been separated for more than six months. “I thought things were going along real well, but evidently they weren’t,” Ted, a retired Army colonel, told Good News. “I wasn’t a drunk, but I abused alcohol. It was really weighing on my heart.”
Marilyn told Ted that she would come back if he would hold his drinking. “I could see that he was coming to grips with it,” she reported. “We were struggling because his anger was coming back. I could see him dealing with that anger, but he still had a long way to go.”
Shortly before the revival, the two of them ended their separation. However, neither of them could have anticipated the transformation in their marriage that was about to take place.
On the first night Marilyn went to the services, she came home at two o’clock in the morning. Her husband said, “Good gracious, where have you been?”
“To the revival!” she responded. Marilyn told him he needed to join her. Although he didn’t want to go, Ted gave in under one condition: “I’ll go, but I’m not going to stay until two o’clock in the morning. I’ll take my car because when I get tired I’m coming home.”
At the conclusion of the service, the ministry team attended to those desiring prayer. “I knew that if this as really of God then there was going to be some kind of dynamic force there,” said Ted. “And there was.” Ted received prayer and “it was like my legs were knocked out from under me, and I couldn’t get enough of it after that.” They returned the next night. Ted received more prayer and knew that he was different.
“I still have a long way to go,” says Ted, “but I’m a lot better person than I was.”
“From that very first night that Ted and I were together at the revival,” Marilyn told Good News, “God healed all the hurt of 30 years of struggles that we had had. It was a miracle.”
The revival has had an effect upon the entire family. Their 19-year-old daughter Leah remembers the night well. “I was praying for Dad too,” she said. “The Spirit of God fell on me as I was praying for my father and I started crying. I had gotten to the point where I couldn’t talk to my father because I had so much anger. And he had told me many times, ‘Sorry,’ but I had not let that go, and that was sin in my life. God was pulling that out.” Reconciliation within the Bridges family has been one of the faith-filled outcomes of the Brownsville revival.
Needless to say, Ted’s life has not been the same. It was not long thereafter when he stood up in church and said, “There cannot be anything going on in your life that is important enough to keep you away from the revival service. You need to go and experience it.” He couldn’t contain himself. “I had to say it,” he says. “And now I can’t keep quiet.”
An initially skeptical pastor
The Rev. Perry Dalton, senior pastor of Pine Forest UM Church, was on vacation when the Brownsville revival broke out. Youth director Linda Smith alerted him to what was going on. After all, she had begun attending on the third night with members of her youth group.
Dalton was encouraged to attend but initially thought to himself, “I don’t really need this. I’m a very happy pastor with a growing church where a lot of things going on.” Nevertheless, he agreed to go, secretly hoping it would die before he got there. Of course, it didn’t. “After the first or second revival meeting, I realized that God was doing something here and I needed to be a part of it. And my church needed to be a part of it,” he told Good News.
The relationship between Brownsville Assembly and Pine Forest UM Church is wonderful, reports Dalton. “There is a real ecumenical spirit towards the Methodist Church. There has been no effort to steal sheep away,” he reported. “There has been no effort to ask [UM] people to give their time back to Brownsville. There has been every opportunity to include them in what they were doing.” Dalton is one of several local pastors that participate in Friday evening baptism services at Brownsville.
“I have more committed Christians now than I have ever had,” he says. “The Brownsville situation really created a holiness in the lives of the people, a real desire for righteousness.”
Because of the revival, Pine Forest UM Church has made a few adjustments- primarily by offering several different kinds of worship services. “That has worked fairly well,” reports Dalton.
Of course, the manifestations – particularly the shaking and trembling under the Holy Spirit among the youth – can create quite a stir. Recognizing that manifestations are certainly not common within contemporary United Methodism, Dalton says, “We don’t encourage the manifestations but we don’t discourage them. I don’t really see it as an obstacle or a problem. I had never seen the manifestations within the Methodist church before this, so my concern was what it was doing to my congregation and how I was going to come back and relate to it.”
The revival also caused Dalton to examine his own Methodist roots. “I have a new appreciation for the Wesleyan revival.” Some of what he sees in Pensacola is reminiscent of what John Wesley observed in his journals. “That’s part of my heritage I didn’t know,” he says.
“The aspect that is new to me is the depth and length of time that this has gone on,” Dalton says. “What God has done here is let it go on long enough that it has had some good lengthy results.”
Youth ablaze
Most of the young men and women in the Pine Forest youth group were Christians before the revival. As one girl described the situation, “We were Christians before, but now we’re on fire.”
“Before this summer, I was backslidden,” says Jennifer Coe, 17, president of the youth group. “I knew right from wrong. I knew enough to know that what I was doing was wrong, and I was miserable where I was at.” Throughout the summer, God had created a spiritual hunger in Jennifer. She has been a part of the revival since the second night. She prayed, “God, I just want more of you.” She didn’t know what to think of all of the aspects of the revival, but she knew God was there. “I could feel the presence of God so strongly,” she told Good News. “It was like soaking in his love.”
These young people have become very serious about intimate worship and repentance. “I just want to go praise God,” says Tamara Nowin, a 17-year-old who attends Aldersgate UM Church in nearby Molino. “I wasn’t really committed until I went to Brownsville. I knew there was more I had to give up. I saw how powerful God was and I didn’t understand why I was holding on to these things anymore. I just wanted to give it all up.”
“The first thing it affected was my desire to worship the Lord,” says Terrie Taylor, a youth counselor at Pine Forest. “I had a new hunger to praise Jesus. I was excited about coming to church. I don’t think I ever really worshipped until now. I had a new hunger to read the Bible. I noticed right away being able to focus on Jesus without any distraction in my quiet time.”
For the two year before the spiritual awakening came to Pensacola, youth pastor Linda Smith had encouraged the young people to pray for revival. She even helped initiate what would become the Pacesetters Bible School in order to provide in-depth theological and Biblical studies for young people. She has “never seen such fast-forward spiritual growth” in all of her years of ministry. Smith believes that this generation holds the promise of great spiritual destiny. It has been through her encouragement and discipleship that so many youth in Pensacola are seeking the deeper things of God.
The young people claim that the change in their musical tastes is probably one of the most noticeable responses to the revival. The majority of them have given up on secular radio altogether. Instead, they prefer to listen to Vineyard-style praise and worship music.
Brian Hansen, 17, got rid of a sizable musical collection. “It was tame music compared to what’s out there, but when you put it next to God’s light, it’s still moral filth,” he told Good News. “It was a big purification thing in my life and God blessed me though it.”
Others in the group spoke of their declining interest in television. “’Ricki Lake’ was the best talk show in the world,” says Janet Webb, 17. Now she only watches Christian programming and the news.
“God has changed so much in my heart,” says Missy Gandy, 14. “Before the revival, being a Christian meant not doing certain things and coming to church once a week. Now its a lot more. It’s my life. It’s everything. It’s wanting to live for God, and that’s all I really want. It’s my heart’s desire.”
Caleb Phillips, 14, is relatively new to the youth group. He has only been to Brownsville once but he says that the changes in his friends and the around the church are obvious. “Our Bible studies have been stronger, more powerful; we can sit there for hours and talk about God.”
Caleb has been involved in many youth groups because he is part of a Navy family that travels frequently. “I never would have even imagined a church group like this,” he said. “At other churches, you go on Sunday and Wednesday night, and it becomes repetitive … .I’ve gotten to the point where I like coming to church. I used to do different things so I wouldn’t have to go. I’d be sick that morning or something else. Now I even enjoy the preaching. God really opened my ears so that I could hear and understand.”
The revival has also given many of the young people a deep realization of God’s love. “Lately, God has been trying to tell me that he is going to be my Daddy,” says Erin Butler, 15. “Not ‘O Heavenly Father,’ but Daddy. I’m starting to find verses in the Bible about the Father. Whenever I pray, I picture myself running up and sitting in his lap and hugging him really tight. I tell him everything like he was my daddy.”
“Before the revival the whole concept of God was a philosophical discussion for me,” said Brian Hansen. “The theology and the ethics were interesting, but I couldn’t understand how God could be personal to me. After this revival, he became so real to me. I used to be plagued with doubts and now they are gone.
“When we pray we are not praying to a God who is an infinite number of miles away,” he continued. “Our God is closer to us than anyone else can be.”
The Pine Forest youth group is confident that it is part of a special generation that is in the midst of a historic moment. Some of them testify to having seen angels at Brownsville and other visions from the Lord. Others have shaken under the power of the Holy Spirit while in school – public and private. Yet Terrie Taylor simply summarizes the change within the members this way: “Increased hunger for the Lord and for witnessing. They had that already, but it just grew. An increase in their wanting to speak and share with others. An increased burden for others to get saved. There’s fire in their hearts.”
Spreading the fire
“A revival of this magnitude occurs once, perhaps twice in a century,” says youth pastor Linda Smith. “True revival, according to church history, is spontaneous and occurs sovereignly among church people much like spontaneous combustion where the conditions are perfect to create a fire.” With all the prayer offered for revival, Pensacola was ready for this outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
“What’s happening lines up with the inner witness of believers,” says Smith. “It lines up with church history, and it lines up the Scripture.”
Those in Pensacola are looking to spread the revival fire. Like others of her generation, college student Leah Bridges is grateful for the revival but does not intend to merely live off of the fumes of old memories. “We need to come back to this river to be cleansed and washed and renewed, but He is telling us to take it other places,” she says. “I have no idea how long God’s going to have this revival here, but if it does stop, my heart’s desire is that we’re not sitting around going, ‘Remember the days when we had revival at Brownsville.'”
She believes that her generation must take the revival fires to other cities and countries. “I feel like that’s the burden God has laid on my heart and many other youths. My generation, we are the ones that God is going to use.”
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
