The Pensacola Outpouring
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.
