DAVID WENTZ

Pastoring Revival
What to Do After the Holy Spirit Moves
 First published by Doing Christianity 2023

Copyright © 2023 by David Wentz

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Dedicated to all who pray and work for revival,
and to pastors everywhere.
Won’t you revive us again, so your people
can rejoice in you?
— Psalm 85:6 NLT
 Contents

Foreword iii
Preface vii
Acknowledgement ix
Introduction x

I Part 1: Revival! What It Is and What It Does

1 What Exactly Are We Talking About? Terms and Definitions 3

2 Revivals in History: Learning from the Experi-
ence of Others 13
3 Unusual Behaviors: Validation, Distraction, or Deception? 24

II Part 2: Three Case Studies

4 Case Study 1: Rock City Church of Baltimore 43

5 Case Study 2: The Crossing 69
6 Case Study 3: The Author’s Experience 86

III Part 3. Pastoring Revival: Shepherding the

Flock Without Getting in God’s Way

7 Pastoring a Move of God — Isn’t That Presumptuous? 115

8 Acquiring the Fire: Pastoring to Prepare for Revival 121
9 Guarding the Flame: Pastoring During Revival 130
10 Don’t Water the Spark: Avoiding Revival Killers 157
11 Putting It All Together 166

Appendix: Foundational Principles 174

About the Author 177
Also by David Wentz 179
 Foreword

I am a professor of church renewal at a mainline Protestant seminary in

Ohio. One of my jobs and specialties is renewal or revival in the life of
the church. I study and teach on the history and theology of revival in
Christianity. My students are mostly pastors, though not exclusively. In
the class, we attempt to define and distinguish key words, like “revival,”
“renewal,” “awakening,” “outpouring,” and “revitalization.” We read
about the Jesus movement of the first-century church, which was in one
sense a Jewish renewal movement. We study early Christian renewal
movements, in the first few centuries, like Montanism and various
orders of Monasticism. We learn in revival how God reemphasizes
for the church key themes like the Holy Spirit, discipleship, and life
together. We learn about the various Reformation(s) in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, and how God is always reviving and reforming
the church, shaping it according to his perfect will.
We also engage early modern revival movements. We learn about
Pietism, Moravianism, Methodism, the First and Second Great Awak-
enings, and the Holiness and Healing revivals of the nineteenth century
and God’s restored emphasis on themes, such as repentance, the
new birth, small groups, mission, scriptural holiness, and divine
healing. We learn about the seismic moves of the Spirit of God in
the twentieth century with the awakening in Wales, the Azusa St.
revival, the Korean Pentecostal (Pyongyang Revival), the Mukti Revival
in India, independent and indigenous outbreaking of the Spirit in
Africa, the Methodist Pentecostal revival in Chile, the post-WWII
iii
healing revivals, the Latter-Rain movement of the gifts of the Spirit,
the Charismatic renewal movement among Catholics and Protestants,
the Jesus movement among the flower power generation of the late
1960s and early 1970s, and the ensuing so-called third wave of the
Spirit among evangelicals.
All of these movements though different in many ways, put a needed
primacy on the person and work of the Holy Spirit including the gifts
of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church and in mission. The Lord
restores the church’s understanding of the person and power of the
Spirit in our private lives, in ministry, worship, and mission, which
often gets lost on us. The Spirit restores lives, his church, mission, and
even society.
Finally, we examine the more recent outpouring of the Holy Spirit
in the Global South and even in the West, including the revival fire
that spread across many churches in the mid-1990s, including God’s
work in Toronto, Brownsville, Smithton (MO.), and other places. Even
today, we are experiencing a fresh outpouring of the Spirit that began
at Asbury University and has spread to other Christian and secular
schools, churches, and other surprising places.
We spend considerable time in the classroom learning from these
great moves of God. We learn what the church did right, and what it
did wrong. We learn the various causes, effects, and impact of revival
on the church and the world. We study the theological significance of
these waves of the Spirit. We also learn to discern which phenomena in
revival are essential and non-essential and also which are of God and
not of God. We analyze revival from A to Z. Many Christian colleges,
universities, and seminaries do not study the history and theology of
revival. Revival may not be a part of their heritage or current practice,
and/or they do not find it a subject worthy of their study. Thus, such
an academic undertaking is rare and yet needed.
However, even though such research is warranted and invaluable, it is
iv
not enough. Revival by its very nature needs to be tasted and experienced.
Otherwise, we truly do not understand what revival is. We can know
every item on the menu of our favorite restaurant. We can know all
of the prices of each item, and how each item is made. Perhaps, if
skilled enough, we can even cook each item. We can be experts and
connoisseurs of this restaurant’s cuisine, and yet, unless we sit down
and partake of each dish, then we really do not know the food. We
do not know what it tastes like. We just analyze and speak from afar.
We need to taste and see in order to know. It is the same with revival
and the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We can study these topics
thoroughly and exhaustively, but until we experience the life-changing
power of the Holy Spirit in revival, then we do not know revival.
Many want revival. Many claim they know and understand revival
enough to critique it. But very few have experienced it. As a professor, I
have been blessed to not only understand revival academically but also
to have experienced it spiritually in my own life, as a pastor and as a
revivalist. The church I pastored in the 1990s and 2000s experienced
the same wave of revival that hit Toronto, Brownsville, and other sites
in America. The outpouring that showered upon our church in that
time was beyond explanation. People were coming from all over the tri-
state area to this little inner-city church that was landlocked in a small
dying neighborhood and had no parking lot. People were transformed,
healed, delivered, saved, sanctified, baptized in the Spirit, speaking in
tongues, slain in the Spirit, ministering in the Spirit, witnessing angelic
visitations, baptized in holy laughter, called into ministry, and you name
it. I had never witnessed anything like it before or since.
Thus, it was often more of an art than a science to navigate through
this tsunami of the Spirit’s blessing. We saw it all, the good, the bad
and the ugly. We saw the Spirit, the flesh, and the devil. Revival brings
everyone’s messy life together under the torrents of the Spirit’s cleansing
flood. It brings out things you want to see and things you do not want
v
to see. Revival, beautiful as it is, can be messy, and at times even not so
beautiful. Pastoring through such a once-in-a-lifetime journey can be
challenging.
David Wentz has written a timely and accessible book for the season
that the church is experiencing. Revival is breaking out in individual
lives, churches, Christian schools and universities, secular universities,
movie theaters, and other public spaces. What do you do when revival
comes to you, your church, your school, or your town? In a lay version
of his doctoral dissertation, the author shares wisdom from past and
present on the nature of revival and how to pastor a reviving work of
God. His aim is to help ministers lead effectively and safely through
times of revival. Revival does not come often. We are not trained for it in
seminary or in the pew, but when it does come, it takes you by surprise.
God does an unprecedented new thing in a new way. And likewise,
other unintended, unexpected surprises emerge. Often many of these
unanticipated consequences arise from the human side of revival and
even from the demonic side. A fire or a tornado does not happen
frequently, but when it does it turns things upside down. So, we prepare
thoroughly for this rare occasion, knowing that when it hits, there is
little time to prepare. Pastoring Revival helps prepare us. This book
offers clergy and lay leadership practical wisdom and guidance on how
to steer the ship of the church effectively and safely through times of
revival. On the wake of the Asbury Revival, I cannot think of a better
time than now for the release of this book.

Rev. Peter J. Bellini Ph.D.

Professor of Church Renewal and Evangelization in the Heisel Chair
United Theological Seminary
Dayton, Ohio

vi
 Preface

[Elisha] said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Make this valley full of trenches.’ For thus
says the Lord, ‘You shall not see wind nor shall you see rain; yet that valley
shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, both you and your cattle
and your beasts.’”
— 2 Kings 3:16–17 NAS

The kings of Judah, Israel, and Edom had been marching their armies
through the desert for seven days with no water. They finally came to a
stream bed. It was dry.
In desperation, they consulted the prophet Elisha, who gave them the
above direction and promise from God. That night God must have sent
rain in the nearby mountains, because the next morning they found
that a flash flood had rolled through and filled the trenches with water.
If the leaders had not, by faith, put in the hard work of digging in the
dry ground, the life-giving water would have passed right on by. Their
faithful and persistent obedience is what allowed them to receive and
benefit from the blessing God sent.
May this book be your blueprint for the spiritual irrigation trenches
your church needs, so when God sends a flood of living water, you can
receive and use it to his glory.
Happy digging!

Note: Your Bible may render this verse differently. The Hebrew verb is an
infinitive absolute, which means God may be instructing the kings to dig or he
vii
may be promising to do the digging himself. The best translations are divided
on this.
Both understandings can relate to revival. Sometimes God sends a flood of
living waters unexpectedly, when the pastor and church haven’t made any
special preparations. More often, though, I believe God sends it where he
knows the church has dug spiritual trenches, so they’re ready to receive an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit and conserve the fruit.

viii
 Acknowledgement

This book would not have been possible without the help, encourage-
ment, and contributions of a number of people. In no particular order
they include:

• Dr. Steven Seamands, my advisor over two decades ago for the
Doctor of Ministry dissertation which is at the core of this book
• Dr. Peter J. Bellini, who honored me by writing the Foreword
• Bishop Bart Pierce, senior pastor of Rock City Church of Baltimore,
who allowed me to interview him, his staff, and his laypeople
• Evangelist Tommy Tenney, who graciously answered many ques-
tions
• Dr. Scott McDermott, senior pastor of Washington Crossing
United Methodist Church (“The Crossing”), who granted me access
to himself, his staff, and his laypeople, and invited me behind the
scenes
• Staff members and laypeople at Rock City Church and The Cross-
ing, who answered my questions and shared their testimonies
• Madison Pierce, who permitted me to include his insightful first-
person observations of the 2023 Asbury outpouring
• Duane Steward, whose astute observations led to an almost com-
plete rewrite, making this a much better book than it otherwise
would have been
• Most of all, my wonderful wife, Paula, without whose love, support,
and suggestions none of this would have come about
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 Introduction

Revival is a fire.

• It’s a hearth that warms hearts and churches

• It’s a stove that nourishes souls and spirits
• It’s a furnace that consumes fluff and debris
• It’s a smelter that refines and tempers character
• It’s a boiler that powers growth and ministry

Revival can be a lightning bolt from God, a sudden strike of immense

power, or it can be a carefully tended flame shared from one village
to another. Revival can revitalize and energize a congregation and a
community. That’s why so many pastors seek it.
And revival can disrupt everything. Comfortable practices and long-
held assumptions about how God does things can be turned upside
down. That’s why so many pastors are wary of it.
Revival almost always comes in response to earnest prayer. Many
pastors pray for revival fervently and even publicly. When God answers
those prayers, pastors celebrate. But sometimes those prayers are
coming from laypeople, at home or in small groups, and the pastor
doesn’t know anything about them. When God answers those prayers,
pastors can be blindsided.

x
Asbury
On February 8, 2023, something happened at Asbury University in the
small town of Wilmore, Kentucky. As chapel ended and students began
filing out, some stayed behind to pray. Others went to their classes
but got permission to return to the chapel. Word got out that God was
moving in a special way, and more students began to gather.
Two weeks later, round-the-clock prayer and worship had not
stopped. Wilmore was jammed to the bursting point with people
traveling from across America to experience it for themselves. Busloads
of students from other Christian colleges attended for a few days,
returned to their campuses, and saw similar outbreaks there.
Many saw it as the beginning of revival.
Revival is a sovereign move of God that only he can ignite. But as with
most things God does, whether a revival will reach it’s full potential
largely depends on how God’s people respond.
Consider: a body is the means by which the will of the head is made
physical reality. We the church are the body of Christ, and Jesus is the
head (Colossians 1:18). So the church is the means by which the will of
Jesus is made physical reality.
And you, pastor, are in charge of how the local body of Christ in your
care will do that. If God’s will is to bring revival to your church, you
are the one who has to pastor it.
What do I mean, “pastor it?”
Someone at Asbury had to decide whether to allow the students to
stay in the chapel after the normal service was over. Then someone had
to decide whether to allow them to remain there overnight. Someone
had to decide whether to cancel classes. Someone had to decide who
could use the microphones.
As word got out beyond the campus, someone had to decide how
to handle visitors and what to do with inquiries from the media.
xi
Someone had to decide when and how to transition from round-the-
clock worship services to something more normal. Above all, someone
had to take responsibility for continual discernment of whether what
was happening moment by moment was truly of God, and have a plan
for what to do if something happened that was not.
At Asbury, “someone” was Dr. Kevin Brown, the president of the
university. When it happens at your church, “someone” is you, the
pastor. Making those decisions in a way that nurtures the move of God
rather than quenching it is what I call pastoring revival.
Many believe revival is the only hope for our culture and our world.
Many hope the events at Asbury were the beginning of it. As I write
several months later, the institutional upheaval there is over, but what
happened in people’s hearts is just beginning to be seen.
Matt Brown wrote in The Washington Times, June 7, 2023,

The spiritual clamor spread from Asbury to 37 other college cam-

puses across the country that allowed young people to experience
spiritual freedom, renewal and calling. There have been more
than 200 teams of students testifying about the revival in churches
since then, with hundreds more going out this summer. . . And
what happened at Asbury is only one example of the revival that is
sweeping the nation.
Pastor Robby Gallaty in Hendersonville, Tennessee, grew restless
from the pressures of ministry in 2020 and he dedicated time on his
porch to silent prayer for almost a year. Then he sensed God leading
him to call for a spontaneous baptism at his church. That was a
highly unusual concept with the way he normally did ministry, but
he sensed it was God. So he did it.
Over the next year, revival swept the church with more than
1,500 people expressing their faith through public baptism.
And on May 28, 2023, on what is known as “Pentecost Sunday,”
xii
 Pastor Mark Francey felt led to hold a public baptism at Pirates
Cove, California, one of the sites of the Jesus Movement. He
invited other churches to participate, and 280 churches from across
Southern California came together.
In total, 4,166 people were baptized at one time. This was the
largest baptism in California history, and some people are calling
it the largest baptism in American history.
We are living through that moment right now. And there’s more
to come.

One example came in mid-September, 2023, at Auburn University in

Alabama, as more than two hundred students were baptized in a campus
lake in an impromptu service following a worship concert.
And it continues to happen.
It’s not unusual for revivals to begin with scattered outbreaks. History
implies a pattern of revivals coming in waves. It behooves us to be ready,
because the next one seems to be rolling in.

What Do You Do When God Shows Up?

One definition of revival is when human initiative is replaced by divine
initiative. In other words, as some put it, “God shows up.” When people
experience a sudden strong sense of God’s presence in a church service,
they can respond in a wide variety of ways. In fact, almost the only
thing you can count on as pastor is that the service will be different
than you had planned.
Maybe you’re leading the congregation in prayer and suddenly
everyone starts weeping. Or maybe some of your people just came
back from visiting a revival, and in the middle of your sermon, they
stand up and start loudly praising God. Perhaps you’re quietly praying
with someone and they suddenly slump to the floor under the power of
xiii
the Holy Spirit. Or maybe you give your normal weekly altar call and
half the church rushes forward, and after you’ve finished praying for
them all, nobody wants to go home.
As pastor, what are you going to do?
Just as you should have a contingency plan for a fire or a medical
emergency, you should have a contingency plan for revival. That’s the
purpose of this book.
Our subject is not how to bring revival to your church. This book is
about what to do when it comes. As one pastor put it, “When God is
moving, I want to know how to stay out of his way.”
A big part of a pastor’s job is to shepherd your flock through whatever
God is doing, whether it’s a financial crisis, a building program, the
death of a beloved leader, or any of a thousand other things that happen
to churches. This book is about how to shepherd them when the thing
God is doing is revival.
I hope it will not only prepare you if God sends revival to your church,
but make you pray that he will.

Been There, Done That, and Have the T-Shirt

Most of the major events of my Christian life and ministry have
happened in the context of revival or its aftermath.

• I committed myself as a Christian in 1972 as part of the Jesus

Revolution.
• Seven years later I attended seminary in Southern California where
that “revolution” started.
• In the ‘90s I experienced and studied the River Movement that
included the Toronto Awakening and the Brownsville Revival.
• I pastored a church experiencing many revival dynamics.
• I wrote my Doctor of Ministry dissertation on the subject of
xiv
 pastoring revival.

I served as a pastor for 38 years, and I’ve helped train thousands of

pastors through my books and lectures. I’ve been there, done that, and
I literally have the T-shirts. I’m still hungry for more of God, and I’m
still praying for revival.
Let me say right here that by using the terms “revival” or “the Spirit
moves,” I am not implying a better kind of ministry than the normal
operation of a healthy church. I believe the local church, doing what God
calls it to do, is the hope of the world, and I train pastors internationally
to do that. In this book, I’m focusing on unusual revival experiences
because history shows they happen periodically and recent events imply
another is on the horizon, and there is very little written about how
pastors should lead their churches through and after them.
The last big wave of revival in North America started in 1994, though
there were precursors, as I believe what happened at Asbury and other
colleges may be precursors of the next wave. Those involved in the ‘90s
often referred to themselves as being “in the River,” from Ezekiel 47
and Revelation 22. I had the privilege of being involved in that from
three perspectives:

• As a visiting worshiper hoping to bring revival home

• As a pastor leading small but fervent groups of revived worshipers
within several largely indifferent denominational congregations
• As a student doing case study research for my Doctor of Ministry
dissertation, with the goal of learning how pastors of congregations
in revival can sustain it while supporting other ongoing ministries.
(You can find the original dissertation online at https://place.asbur
yseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/506/. )

This book draws from all three of those perspectives.

xv
They Didn’t Teach Me This in Seminary!
When pastors get together, one of their favorite games is, “They didn’t
teach me this in seminary!” Pastoring revival would be at the top of
most lists.
The truth is, few pastors confronted with revival in their churches
have ever experienced anything like it before. Even in denominations
built on revival, most pastors have studied it as an event of the past and
prayed for it as a hope for the future without ever having personally
experienced it.
Some pastors shun anything that seems like “emotionalism” or
“supernaturalism.” They’ve been taught that these things don’t happen
anymore, if they ever did. If you are one who has been taught these
things, thank you for being open-minded enough to read a book like this.
After all, to talk about God is by definition to talk about the supernatural.
And it’s easy to confuse spiritual and emotional experiences because
our language doesn’t have good words to distinguish between the two.
There are four very natural human reactions to the unusual: deny it,
avoid it, attack it, or try to control it. A decidedly un-natural reaction is
a desire to pastor it. But when God brings revival to your church, that
is exactly what you are called to do.
For many, all they know of “revival” is sensationalized reports of
people jerking and shouting, barking like dogs, and falling to the floor.
It’s true that unusual behaviors have accompanied most historical
revivals, and we’ll look at that in a later chapter. It may reassure you to
know that they have not been a focus of the Asbury outpouring, at least
in its initial stages.

xvi
What Does It Look Like This Time Around?
What might you expect if what started at Asbury spreads to your church?
I share with permission some observations by an informed participant.
On day ten of the outpouring, Madison Pierce, a student of Asbury
Seminary, wrote:

I’m hesitant to post my thoughts on what’s happening in Wilmore.

A few of you may have heard about the “Revival” at Asbury
University. I attended the gatherings from the first day til now. A
chapel service that didn’t stop but continued spontaneously for 9
days now. It was an intimate space for students but it is now the
focus of global intrigue, mass pilgrimage, and digital evaluation.
I am aware that not everyone has a paradigm for this form of
spirituality but I want to be honest to my own understanding.
I come from a spiritual background that has left me weary of
hype in a culture of spectacle. I’ve grown tired of disintegrous
representations of divine work but it is clear God is moving in a
surprising and transformative way. However, when you think of
“revival”, what comes to mind might not be what’s happening.
To quote Professor McCall, a theology professor at Asbury
Seminary, “what we are experiencing now—this inexpressibly deep
sense of peace, wholeness, holiness, belonging, and love—is only the
smallest of windows into the life for which we are made.”
The movements of the Spirit in western evangelicalism always
exist in the middle of a cultural moment. A generous interpretation
of these movements reveals unique traits for each one. For example,
fervor for the great commission at the Mt. Hermon Conference,
overwhelming joy in Toronto Outpouring, zeal for the lost in
Brownsville Revival, acts of healing at the Kansas City awakening,
and manifestation of tongues at the Azusa Street revival. In each
xvii
 move of the Spirit, God clearly manifests in a specific way for that
generation. I find it interesting that God would mark this [Asbury]
outpouring with:

• A tangible sense of peace for a generation with unprecedented anxiety

• A restorative sense of belonging for a generation amidst an epidemic of
loneliness
• An authentic hope for a generation marked by depression
• A leadership emphasizing protective humility in relationship with power
for a generation deeply hurt by the abuse of religious power
• A focus on participatory adoration for an age of digital distraction

It feels as if God is personally meeting young adults in ways

meaningful to them. My generation was formed differently than
previous generations and so the traits of this revival are different
than revivals of old. The new outpouring is not the signs and
wonders nor zealous intercession nor spontaneous tongues nor
charismatic physicalities nor the visceral travail. It is marked by a
tangible feeling of holistic peace, a restorative sense of belonging,
a non-anxious presence through felt safety, repentance driven by
experienced kindness, humble stewardship of power, and holiness
through treasuring adoration.
It is important to reflect on the words of Jesus ”no one pours new
wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the
skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No,
new wine must be poured into new wineskins.” [Mark 2:22]
I don’t want to make the mistake of trying to fit this new work
into old paradigms. The new wine cannot be understood with the
old expectations of revival.
As the revival has grown, people attempt to evaluate and partic-
ipate from their old expectations. You cannot keep new wine in
xviii
 the old wineskin; or it may cause disappointment, disillusionment
and divisiveness. In humility, we must receive the new wine with
an open hand without trying to force this spiritual movement into
our well-intended but old expectations of renewal. We must strive
to humbly participate, appreciatively celebrate, and intentionally
respond to this surprising work of the Spirit with openness and
hunger.

I so appreciate Madison’s sensitive and astute observations. In this book,

I don’t want to be guilty of trying to force a new move of God into old
wineskins. However, there are some timeless principles, because basic
truths about God and human nature don’t change. Our focus here is
not on what revival should look like, but on how to nurture it, whatever
form it takes.

Four Stages of Revival

Revival has four basic stages: an initial outpouring, tending the fire,
spreading the spark, and preserving the fruit. This book is about the
first two stages. It’s designed for pastors who suddenly find their church
hosting the Holy Spirit in a new and perhaps unsettling way, and those
who want to.
Revival could strike your church out of the blue, hitting everyone in a
worship service. That’s what happened in the two churches I studied for
my doctoral dissertation. You could seek personal revival for yourself
and then try to introduce it to your church. That’s what happened to
me as a pastor. Or some of your people could catch revival fire, often
through visiting a place where it has already broken out, and bring it
back to your congregation. That may be the most common way revival
has spread in the past. And often the pastors were caught off guard.
You may have picked up this book because such a thing has already
xix
happened in your church. Or perhaps someone gave it to you because
they hope it will. If some of your people are claiming revival and you
are not really sure about it, allow me to share a bit of advice given to
pastors during the Jesus Revolution: a revival experience, in itself, does
not make people better Christians than anyone else, but it may make
them better Christians than they were before.
And if you let it, it may make you a better pastor than you were before.
After the fact, scholars and critics often look back and debate whether
or not a given occurrence rose to the level of a “true revival.” Most of
that, of course, is a matter of definition, and everyone seems to have
their own. As valuable as those discussions may be in academic circles,
we won’t be going there. This book is not for historians looking back.
I was a pastor for thirty-eight years, and an engineer before that. My
mindset is toward the practical and usable, and my heart is for the work
of God.
As you have opportunity, I encourage you to read more on the subject
of revival. A good place to start might be with those who pastored
churches in the last wave such as John Arnott of the Toronto revival
and John Kilpatrick of the Brownsville/Pensacola revival, and those
from the “Jesus Revolution” of the 1960s and ‘70s such as Chuck Smith
and John Wimber.
But when revival hits, you don’t have time to wade through a lot of
theological and historical analysis, as valuable as that may be. Therefore,
the goal of this book is to provide you with quick access to experience-
based advice. It’s for pastors in the middle of things, trying to shepherd
their flocks in real-time. I pray it helps you.

xx
 I

Part 1: Revival! What It Is and What It

Does
Revive us so we can call on your name once more.
— Psalm 80:18 NLT
 1

What Exactly Are We Talking About? Terms

and Definitions

No standard set of words is consistently used to discuss the work and

movement of God in churches and communities. Our focus in this
book is those moves of God among Christians where some or all the
people in a service sense an unusual and powerful presence of God
that continues beyond the one service. Often this is accompanied by
unusual emotional, mental, and even physical reactions. The most
common terms used to refer to such happenings are “revival” and
“outpouring,”often used interchangeably.
Ephesians 5:18 commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Jonathan Edwards viewed revival as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
So revival is God’s way of helping us obey that commandment.
Revival moves us from where we may have allowed ourselves to be,
relying on our own human efforts, to where we ought to be. Given our
human tendency to keep trying to do things by ourselves, most of us
have a recurring need for revival.
In his book The Day of Thy Power, Arthur Wallis wrote,

There is a wealth of difference between missions or campaigns

3
 PASTORING REVIVAL

at their best and genuine revival. In the former man takes the
initiative, it may be with the prompting of the Spirit; in the latter
the initiative is God’s. With the one the organization is human;
with the other it is divine. . . . Revival is divine intervention
in the normal course of spiritual things. It is God revealing
Himself to man in awful holiness and irresistible power. It is
such a manifest working of God that human personalities are
overshadowed, and human programmes abandoned. It is man
retiring into the background because God has taken the field. It is
the Lord making bare His holy arm, and working in extraordinary
power on saint and sinner. . . Revival must of necessity make
an impact upon the community, and this is one means by which
we may distinguish it from the more usual operations of the Holy
Spirit.

What We’re Not Talking About

Before we try to define things more exactly, perhaps I can calm some
trepidations by stating what I am not talking about when I use the term
“revival.”
First, I’m not talking about pre-planned special services intended
to motivate members and attract new converts. Tent revivals, camp
meetings, and special services with guest speakers are all time-honored
ways to do those things and I encourage you to use them as God leads,
but these planned events are not our subject here.
Second, I’m not talking about emotionalism. When the Holy Spirit
comes on a person, an emotional response of tears or joy or both is
often one immediate result. But those emotions are human responses
largely related to personality. Their presence or absence does not prove
or disprove the presence and working of God.
Third, I’m not talking about unusual behaviors. People falling to the
4
 WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

ground and other strange responses have been reported so often in

revival history that I have devoted a full chapter to what they are and
how to deal with them. As with emotion, however, these are largely
human responses. They neither prove nor disprove revival.

So What Are We Talking About?

Amy Elizabeth Ward, a teenager at Brownsville Assembly of God in
Pensacola, Florida, became widely known within the River movement
of the 1990s through her testimony of a life-changing experience with
Christ. Her youth pastor, Richard Crisco, asked her what revival meant
to her. He recorded her answer in It’s Time: Passing Revival to the Next
Generation.

She said that it means being able to go into God’s presence. It means
going into her room, shutting off all the lights, sitting quietly in the
darkness, and feeling God there with her. Revival means to know
God and to listen to God from her heart.

This is a far cry from the popular perception of revival. This is the inner
transformation the church and the world need. Without such inner
transformation, no revival is worthy of the name.
As of this writing, the main effect of what has been happening at
Asbury and other colleges seems to be very similar to Amy Ward’s
testimony. The defining characteristic has been praise and worship,
rather than sermons or evangelistic messages. One reason may be that
it broke out in a Christian college with a heritage of revival. Most of the
students, and most of those who traveled to be a part, recognized what
was happening and welcomed it. As it has spread to secular campuses,
an additional characteristic has been large numbers of students seeking
baptism.
5
 PASTORING REVIVAL

When visitors to revival sites seek to bring it back to their churches

and enthusiastic revived students return home for the summer, not
everyone will understand what they are talking about. Pastors must be
ready to encourage the new and revived Christians, as well as help less
fervent members of their congregations understand what is happening
and encourage them to respond.
You may have had moving worship services where people felt a special
presence of God. You may have had times when many came to the altar
for prayer. You may have had a special series of meetings or services that
breathed new life into your congregation. You may even have pastored
services where “God showed up,” and spiritual gifts and healings and
miracles occurred. If your congregation has never experienced these
things before, their sudden appearance could well be the start of revival.
For many churches, however, this is more or less worship as usual. It’s
God and it’s wonderful but it’s not revival.
Revival, by definition, is unusual. It’s disruptive. It can seem out
of control, maybe even fanatical. That’s why I say few pastors have
experienced it before. Genuine, God-initiated, Christ-honoring, Holy
Spirit-directed revival doesn’t happen very often. When it does, it’s
transformative.
That’s probably why there are so many poor imitations. My experi-
ence is similar to that of David Watson of United Theological Seminary,
who posted this:

I have spent considerable time in revivalistic gatherings. Sometimes

the Spirit’s presence is undeniably manifest. Sometimes things feel
contrived or manufactured. Sometimes God so fills the gathered
faithful that they respond with tears, laughter, or cries of praise
and thanksgiving. Sometimes affected emotionalism becomes a
distraction. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. The bad and
the ugly are disappointing, at times painful, but the good is the
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 WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

life-changing presence of the one who is goodness itself.

Terms and Labels

Revival, renewal, awakening, outpouring, movement, and even “Jesus
Revolution” are all terms that have been used to label our subject, along
with phrases like “an anointed service,” “a touch of God,” or “God showed
up.”
Unfortunately, there is no agreed-upon set of definitions for these
things. Pneumatology, the study of the Holy Spirit, is not settled
theological ground like Christology, the study of Christ. Neither is
it a well-rehearsed debate field like eschatology, the study of the end
times. Both of those have settled terms and definitions. Revival, and
pneumatology in general, doesn’t.
Part of the reason may be that theologians just haven’t gotten there yet.
But I think a bigger factor is that words are symbols pointing to shared
experiences, and in terms of how languages develop, not enough people
have shared these experiences to have created a common vocabulary.
For the purposes of this book, then, here are the definitions I have in
mind.
Church: a group of people who hold regularly scheduled religious ser-
vices, usually led by a pastor and happening in a church building (though
neither the pastor nor the building are necessary to the definition). I
include chapels, retreat centers, and similar faith communities here.
The level and quality of spiritual life and activity will vary widely, but
this is the starting point, what you might call the pre-revival baseline.
Anointing: when the Holy Spirit operates through a sermon, song, or
testimony to give it an unusually powerful effect on people. They may
describe it as feeling a touch from God.
Manifest presence of God: when people have a spiritual sense of expe-
riencing God’s presence with them that goes beyond their intellectual
7
 PASTORING REVIVAL

belief in God’s omnipresence.

Outpouring: when the Holy Spirit acts in such a way that there are
widespread spiritual, emotional, and even physical responses beyond
the norm for that church, and there is general agreement that God
did something special. This is the word I would use to describe what
happened at Asbury.
Revival: when an outpouring continues for an extended time and
has a lasting effect on a church or region. This is probably the most
common informal definition of revival. In the context of religion, the
word has left behind its medical meaning of bringing new life into a
comatose individual. Religious revival does bring new life, but it does
not necessarily imply that the church was comatose before. Revival in
this sense can come to and through churches whose spiritual vital signs
are already excellent.
Movement: when God sends revivals with similar characteristics to a
number of places in a relatively short time, such that their effects overlap
and reinforce each other. If a movement is effectively organized so as
to conserve its spiritual fruit, it can become a lasting feature of the
religious landscape.
Awakening: a revival movement that overflows the church into the
general population. Large numbers of people are awakened to spiritual
realities, and the general society is positively affected.
Here are three examples.

1. The day of Pentecost began as an outpouring in the upper room

that spread, with less dramatic manifestations, to the crowd in the
streets of Jerusalem. It continued as a revival involving more and
more citizens of Jerusalem. It became a movement spreading to
other cities, and resulted in the awakening of Christian faith in
much of the population.
2. In the 1700s, the open-air preaching of John Wesley was often
8
 WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

accompanied by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, complete with

emotional and physical responses. Over time the results of this
came to be known as the Methodist Revival, which gave birth to
the Holiness Movement. Historians group this with similar events
accompanying the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George
Whitefield in what they call The First Great Awakening. Both
Methodism and the Holiness Movement continue to be major
forces in Protestant Christianity.
3. In 1906 an outpouring in a church service in Los Angeles became
the Azusa Street Revival. As the revival spread it spawned
the Pentecostal Movement, which has resulted in a worldwide
awakening of faith, particularly in Africa and South America.

Before we move on, I’d like to mention three other “R” words sometimes
used in this context.

• Reformation is a theological or ecclesiological correction, having to

do with what we believe and how we do church. While certainly
inspired by God through the Holy Spirit, reformation is primarily
a divinely guided activity of the mind rather than a sovereignly
granted experience of the spirit, though one can certainly lead to
and reinforce the other.
• Renewal is a reversal of decay, a restoration of youthful energy
and purity. Revival should result in spiritual renewal among those
involved, demonstrated by increased holiness of lifestyle. If, after
a reasonable period of time, it has not, there is cause to question
whether the so-called revival was a true move of God. You will know
them by their fruits (Matthew 7:16 NAS).
• Revolution is rebellion against an old system to replace it with a new
one, usually with the connotation of violence. While religion has
been used as an excuse for violent change in the past, Jesus preferred
9
 PASTORING REVIVAL

to use metaphors such as yeast working quietly in a batch of dough,

or a seed gradually growing into a large plant (see Matthew 13:31-
33). The term “Jesus Revolution” was not coined by theologians
or church historians seeking to describe a work of God, but by
journalists hoping to sell magazines.

I praise God for every one of these ways he works (with the nuanced
exception of violent revolutions). All are deserving of study. Of them all,
however, an outpouring of God’s Spirit and its possible extension into
revival are the two that can have the biggest impact on a local church.
Unfortunately, they are the ones most pastors are least prepared for. In
earning two Master of Divinity degrees and a Doctor of Ministry from
charismatic, mainline, and Wesleyan-evangelical seminaries, I never
came across a course on how to pastor a church during an outpouring
or revival. In fact, I don’t recall even hearing it mentioned.
So that will be the focus of the rest of this book.

Working Definitions
It’s time to be more specific. Here are expanded definitions of our two
main topics.

Outpouring

An outpouring is a sovereign act of God in which, during an

identifiable period of time, an identifiable group of people gives
evidence of experiencing an unusual sense of God’s presence and
attributes such as God’s love, power, conviction, mercy, joy, or
forgiveness; often accompanied by supernatural manifestations
such as healing and other 1 Corinthians 12 gifts of the Holy Spirit;
and sometimes accompanied by physical reactions such as falling
10
 WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

to the ground or unusual movements or vocalizations.

A sovereign act of God: We can pray for revival, and we can prepare for
it, but we cannot cause it to happen. That is always up to God.
An identifiable period of time: Individual experiences of God are
wonderful, and most pastors know how to guide parishioners who
may report them. But when many people have such experiences at one
time or in one church service, something different is going on, and few
pastors are prepared for it.
An identifiable group of people: Again, not scattered reports of individ-
ual blessings, but something affecting many people at once; in particular,
the congregation you, as pastor, are responsible for.
Unusual: Something beyond what you would normally expect for that
group or setting.
Sense of God’s presence and attributes: Not just intellectual understand-
ing or mental assent to a doctrine, but a noticeable spiritual experience
or sensation.
God’s love, power, conviction, mercy, joy, or forgiveness: People may
testify to God revealing himself to them in these ways and others.
Supernatural manifestations: People may report visions, revelations,
healings, and other miracles.
Unusual movements or vocalizations: People may cry out, jerk, fall, or
show other bodily responses. Chapter 3 will deal with these in detail.

Revival
Revival is when the effects of one or more outpourings expand
beyond the initial setting to other churches, resulting in heightened
spiritual awareness and activity for an extended period of time.

Effects: The immediate effects of an outpouring are the responses of the

11
 PASTORING REVIVAL

people. Often these responses are emotional. That’s not a bad thing;
emotions are part of the soul. The Bible attributes a variety of emotions
to Jesus, God the Father, and even the Holy Spirit. These responses
often result in enthusiastic sharing with family and friends in other
churches.
One or more outpourings: Revival can start with one outpouring, a
series of outpourings in one church, or a series of outpourings in various
places.
Expanding to other churches: God may choose to give an outpouring, or
even a series of outpourings, to one congregation. When this happens,
I believe it should best be taken as an early sign of a wave of revival to
come, rather than revival itself. Outpouring becomes revival when it
spreads.
Heightened spiritual awareness and activity: If what is experienced
during an outpouring is truly from God and is truly received, it
will make a difference. Part of pastoring revival is teaching and
encouraging people to let the experience motivate them to become
more devoted to prayer, worship, Bible reading, Christian fellowship,
service, discipleship, and holiness of life.
Extended period of time: This is a purposely vague term, because every
revival is different. What I mean is that if you visit the scene of a revival
several years later, you should still be able to tell something happened
there.
Now that we’ve narrowed down our subject matter, let’s see how it
has looked in the past, from the Bible through today.

12
 2

Revivals in History: Learning from the

Experience of Others

God almost never does the same thing the same way twice. God loves
to do a new thing (Isaiah 43:19), and it is often said that the biggest
obstacle to the next wave of God comes from people trying to make it
look like the last one.
This can certainly be true. However, one of the most often repeated
commands in the Bible is, “remember.” Now these things happened to
them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom
the ends of the ages have come (1 Corinthians 10:11 NAS). The lessons of
past revivals should instruct us as we prepare for the next one.
As we read the signs of the times and prepare ourselves for what God
may be doing, it’s important to learn what we can from what God has
done before.

Revivals in the Bible

Revival is not a new phenomenon. It goes back to the early days of Bible
history.

13
 PASTORING REVIVAL

• Moses’ demonstrations of God’s power revived the spirits of the

Israelites
• Judges narrates a repeating cycle of complacency, apostasy, trouble,
revival, and complacency again
• King David led a revival in worship and faith, climaxing when he
brought the ark to Jerusalem
• The good kings of Judah are identified as those who revived worship
of the true God
• The religious fervor that caused Hebrew men to follow Ezra’s call
to put away foreign wives could certainly be called revival
• The great multitudes who thronged to hear John the Baptist and
Jesus indicate revival
• The day of Pentecost, with three thousand souls added to God’s
kingdom in one day, is what many pastors imagine as they pray for
revival
• Mass conversions under the preaching of Peter in Jerusalem after
the healing of the lame man (Acts 3) and under Philip in Samaria
(Acts 8) were obviously revivals
• At least three of Jesus’ messages to the seven churches in Revelation
are calls to revival: the warnings to Ephesus to return to their first
love (Revelation 2:5), to Sardis to strengthen their faith (Revelation
3:2-3), and to Laodicea to recognize their true condition and take
steps (Revelation 3:17-18)

In addition, the Bible records prayers such as, Revive us so we can call on
your name once more (Psalm 80:18 NLT), and Won’t you revive us again,
so your people can rejoice in you? (Psalm 85:6 NLT).
Hosea 10:12 NLT reads, Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now
is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon
you.
This verse describes a common pattern of revivals in Bible times and
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 REVIVALS IN HISTORY: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS

through history:

• Plow up the hard ground of your hearts: people become unsatisfied

with the spiritual status quo
• For now is the time to seek the Lord: people seek revival through
fervent prayer
• That he may come and shower righteousness upon you: God answers
with a powerful outpouring of his Spirit

Revivals in Church History

From Bible times to the Reformation, many of those named saints of
the church, such as St. Francis and St. Ignatius, were given that title
because of their fervor for leading people beyond ritual to follow God
in deeper ways. The monastic movements that bear their names are
lasting testimony to the effects of their fervor. And while there were
certainly doctrinal, ecclesiastical, and even political elements to the
Reformation, probably the main factor in its lasting success was the
revival of spirituality sparked by leaders such as Luther, Calvin, and
Knox.
In the mid-1700s, revivals under Jonathan Edwards, the Wesleys, and
George Whitefield sparked the First Great Awakening. A hundred years
later, Charles Finney and the camp meeting preachers led the revivals
of the Second Great Awakening. And we’ve already mentioned Azusa
Street and the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in 1906.
Americans may not be as familiar with what God has done in other
parts of the world. In the last century or so, revivals in Wales, East
Africa, the Scottish Hebrides, and other places had major impacts that
carry on to this day. And the growth of the church in South America
and Africa has been nothing short of explosive.
The biggest revival in the lifetimes of most of those reading this
15
 PASTORING REVIVAL

was what the media named The Jesus Revolution. For about ten years
starting in the late 1960s, millions of people, including me, experienced
faith either for the first time or at a significantly deeper level. The
commercial success of retrospectives such as The Jesus Revolution
movie testify to the enduring effects of this move of God.
Now, with the Asbury outpouring, it appears that God may be doing
it again.
But there was a significant move of God between the Jesus Movement
and Asbury. Those involved called it The River. As the most recent
major revival, at least in North America, it may be the one we can learn
the most from.

The River Movement

In the mid-1990s, something began to happen in churches in the United
States and around the world. Scandals, ethnic tension, and wars had
caused many Americans to lose their faith in business, government,
and the innate goodness and progress of humanity. Environmental
problems, natural disasters, and a lack of progress against AIDS
and other illnesses had destroyed confidence in technology and in
intellectually-based solutions in general. A hunger arose for something
different. The parallels with today are obvious.
Across the nation and around the world, God began to answer that
hunger. The experiential reality of the presence of God, which is the
unifying characteristic of every major revival in history, was manifested
as seldom seen before. In the common phrase of what became a
movement, the River of God was sweeping across our land.
Perhaps the most famous examples, at least in North America,
were long-lasting revival meetings at the Toronto Airport Christian
Fellowship in Ontario, Canada, and at Brownsville Assembly of God
in Pensacola, Florida. Both of these churches held well-attended
16
 REVIVALS IN HISTORY: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS

services at least five nights a week for several years, and received major
mainstream media exposure. At the same time, more and more churches
experienced similar occurrences, both in and outside the United States.
These outbreaks quickly merged into a movement. It had no formal
structure, but those involved began to identify what was happening by
saying they were “in the River.” Dutch Sheets’ excellent book, The River
of God, explained and encouraged the movement using that imagery.
Though the name never seemed to catch on outside the revival, within
it the phrase became so well known that several worship songs were
written about it, including “Let the River Flow,” “The River Is Here,”
and “Find Me in the River.”
For the next few pages we’ll dive more deeply into the River than the
cursory overviews we’ve given previous revivals. There are two reasons
for this.

• The historical, cultural, and religious setting of the River is not far
removed from what we experience today, so people’s responses,
both secular and Christian, may be similar.
• Some veterans of the River who are attracted to present-day
outpourings may engage in the same physical responses as they
did in the 1990s, because they believe that’s what you do when
revival comes. This was already experienced at Asbury. These
learned responses — more about that in the next chapter — can get
in the way of the new thing God wants to do, so pastors should be
aware of them.

Much of Part 3 of this book is based on learnings from two pastors who
successfully pastored their churches through the River, not only during
the initial outpourings and active revival period, but in the decades
since.

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 PASTORING REVIVAL

Outbreak of the River

The first widely recognized outbreak of the River in North America
was the January 1994 visit of Baptist pastor Randy Clark to preach a
series of services at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
In what secular media dubbed “The Toronto Blessing,” the Holy Spirit
fell. Suddenly a large portion of the congregation found themselves
filled with an overwhelming sense of joy, and broke out in what was
dubbed “holy laughter.” Many also fell to the floor in an experience
already known in charismatic/Pentecostal circles as being “slain in the
Spirit.”
As these and other manifestations continued night after night, people
began to come from not only the Toronto area but from around Canada
and as far away as Hong Kong.
A year and a half later, on Father’s Day, 1995, something similar
happened at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida.
Outbreaks that received less attention in the secular media occurred
at other churches, including Smithton Community Church in 1996,
where a Pentecostal congregation of 180 members in a Missouri town
with a population of 532 hosted over 250,000 visitors over the next
three years; Rock City Church in Baltimore in 1997; and Washington
Crossing United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania in 1998.
It was unusual for a revival service to be shorter than three hours, and
five was not uncommon. Richard Crisco, youth pastor at Brownsville,
wrote in his book It’s Time: Passing Revival to the Next Generation,

People ask how we can do this night after night. How can we not
do it night after night? Fish were made to swim in water. We were
made to live like this. God wants us to live and move and have our
being in Him, in His presence.

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 REVIVALS IN HISTORY: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS

Worship is the all-consuming activity of heaven. This was just a

foretaste. Who would not like to spend several hours a night in heaven?
Most revivals have been identified with one or two major leaders,
such as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, or Wesley and Whitefield.
By contrast, no one particular leader was in charge of the River. Rather
than being the effect of an orchestrated promotion, the River had its
source in numerous local pastors and prayer warriors across the country
and around the world who were moved to pray for revival, and whose
prayers were answered. Some people prominent in the River have,
rightly or wrongly, been given a bad reputation in some circles. In most
cases those things happened in later years. In quoting them I imply
neither support nor non-support of anything they may have said or
done outside the context of the citation.
In sum, the River revival sprang up spontaneously in answer to prayer,
focused on worshipful sensitivity to God, and had thousands of people
spending their free time in church and reading the Bible instead of
walking the streets or watching television.

Characteristics of the River

As American streams of the River continued, the movement gradually
shifted from an emphasis on God’s power experienced in physical
manifestations to an emphasis on God’s presence experienced in a sense
of divine love and even intimacy. Richard Crisco echoed a popular way
of expressing this change of emphasis when he wrote,

In the recent past, the Church has done a lot of seeking; but much
of that seeking has been for God’s hand, and not for his face.
Christians have sought the Lord only for what He could do for
them and how He could bless them.

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 PASTORING REVIVAL

The imagery sees God’s hand as the source of blessings, what we can get
God to do for us, whereas God’s face represents an intimate personal
relationship with God for love’s sake. This new emphasis is illustrated
in the opening words of a worship song written by Matthew Hardy
and Ashley Thompson for the revival services at Baltimore’s Rock City
Church:

There was a time when I came to know your name.

There have been times when I only sought your hand.
But now, O Lord, I seek your face,
For only your presence will do.

According to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, author of Revival, this kind of

emphasis is a sign of true revival.

It is indeed God coming down, God, as it were, no longer merely

granting us the blessings. . . . It is a consciousness of the presence
of God the Holy Spirit literally in the midst of the people.

Several of the long-running River revivals began while guest speakers

were preaching. This may be because people were hearing familiar
truths expressed in a different way. Also, people often pay more
attention to a “visiting expert” than their same old pastor. On the
other hand, there is evidence in the Bible, revival history, and my own
experience that some people seem to “carry an anointing” that can lead
to revival whenever they visit a receptive place.
In some cases the guest speaker stayed on or returned to conduct
most or all of the special revival services. In other places the pastor
shared those duties with visiting evangelists or even pastors of nearby
churches.
At Toronto and Brownsville, the revival services seem to have eclipsed
20
 REVIVALS IN HISTORY: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS

the normal program of the churches, sometimes adding ministries,

sometimes replacing them. At other churches, regular activities
continued with the revival meetings added on.
Other characteristics common to the churches in the River include

• An emphasis on prophetic intercession: seeking God’s guidance as to

what to pray for, then praying for it fervently
• A lack of focus on speaking in tongues and healing compared to some
previous revival movements; though both happened frequently,
they were not central to the movement
• A large role played by young children, especially in giving prophetic
messages and praying for healings
• An interdenominational/nonsectarian flavor
• A lack of emphasis on any particular person as leader
• Evening services normally lasting several hours, beginning with an
extended time of musical worship and ending with a ministry time
that continued until the last person had been ministered to
• A belief that what was being experienced was the beginning of a much
greater revival, which may be the one that precedes the return of
Christ.

Let me add here that I do not recall any kind of emphasis on money or
offerings in any of the scores of River revival services I attended, with
the exception of one traveling evangelist.
Every cultural phenomenon develops its own jargon, and the River
was no different. Phrases commonly heard included

• Soaking: spending time resting receptively in the presence of God,

often done in homes as part of individual or small-group worship
• Carpet time: lying on the floor, either as a voluntary prostration to
pray or just rest in the presence of God, or as the result of having
21
 PASTORING REVIVAL

been slain in the Spirit

• Drunk in the Spirit (Acts 2:13-16; Ephesians 5:18): when a person’s
mind and body were so joyfully overcome by the presence of God
that the physical effect resembled a “happy drunk.”

Differences of emphasis

Despite these similarities, the River movement was by no means

monolithic. The Toronto revival, marked initially by laughter, was seen
as primarily a revelation of the joy and grace of God, while people in
the Brownsville revival typically found themselves weeping and feeling
a call to repentance and holiness.
Randy Clark, John Arnott, and Rodney Howard-Browne saw “doing
carpet time” as a valuable opportunity for God to minister within a
person. On the other hand, I once heard Rick Joyner announce at a
crowded conference, “Please don’t fall on the floor. If you do we won’t
be responsible for what happens to you.”
Some of the leaders in the River took various forms of corporate
spiritual warfare very seriously, but in How to Increase and Release the
Anointing, Howard-Browne wrote,

This game of spiritual warfare is nothing more than a spiritual

Nintendo game played by baby Christians who have no under-
standing of the fact that Jesus defeated the devil two thousand years
ago.

Yet despite these differences, the overall attitude among the leaders of
the different streams of the River was one of tolerance, humility, and
mutual support. Randy Clark was typical when he wrote in Learning
How to Minister Under the Anointing,

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 REVIVALS IN HISTORY: LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS

I caution you against turning my observations into laws . . . God

uses other people in a way that is very different from what I have
talked about, and it really is God. So don’t make my observations
and suggestions “Saul’s armor.”

Criticism of the River

As with previous revivals, the River was called by some a “counterfeit
revival” and “apostasy.” These were not always malicious attacks.
Church people trust their pastors to not let them be led astray. When
a new spiritual movement surfaces, part of a pastor’s job is to discern
whether it is or is not of God, and then to lead their congregation either
to embrace or avoid it. For pastors unfamiliar with revival, this placed
them in a difficult position. Sometimes avoiding new things can seem
like the safest course.
However, a revival is not a monolithic entity. Each service, each
speaker, each member of the congregation introduces a different
element. Each of these elements may involve a mixture of godly,
human, and other influences. Thus the job of pastoring a revival is
more complex than deciding whether to endorse or condemn an entire
movement.
Almost all the religious criticism of the River revivals had to do with
unusual behaviors reported to take place in some of the services. How
to view these is a complicated question. We’ll devote the next chapter
to it.

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 3

Unusual Behaviors: Validation, Distraction,

or Deception?

The house of the Lord was filled with a cloud, so that the priests
could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of
the Lord filled the house of God.
— 2 Chronicles 5:13–14 NAS

When He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the
ground.
— John 18:6 NAS

An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled
away the stone and sat upon it. . . . The guards shook for fear of
him and became like dead men.
— Matthew 28:2–4 NAS

As these verses demonstrate, human responses to a powerful manifesta-

tion of God’s presence vary, but they can sometimes be dramatic.
Contemporary accounts of historical revivals, including the writings
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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

of such leaders as Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and Charles G.

Finney, are replete with references to people trembling, crying out,
falling to the ground, falling into trances, and even stranger occurrences.
In fact, one can hardly find a major revival movement of the past
in which such things did not happen — or which was not soundly
castigated by many church leaders of the day because of them. Imagine
if people started doing these things in one of your church services —
especially if you were unprepared! This chapter is to make sure you
won’t be blindsided.

Unusual Behaviors Are Not New

Jonathan Edwards, in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God,
gives this account from the 1730s:

Their joyful surprise has caused their hearts as it were to leap, so

that they have been ready to break forth into laughter, tears often
at the same time issuing like a flood, and intermingling a loud
weeping. Sometimes they have not been able to forbear crying out
with a loud voice.

At the famous Kentucky Cane Ridge camp meeting of August 1801,

unusual behaviors were termed “exercises.” Daniel Cohen writes in his
book on revivalism in America,

The exercises came in six distinct varieties. They were commonly

called the laughing and singing exercise, the falling exercise, the
rolling exercise, the jerks, the barking exercise, and the dancing
exercise.

John Wesley, eighteenth-century founder of Methodism, often expe-

25
 PASTORING REVIVAL

rienced physical reactions in his meetings. We’ll look at his thoughts

concerning them in the section on pastoral discernment and response.
As investment offers carefully remind us, past performance does not
guarantee future results. As common as these behaviors were in recent
revivals, they do not seem to have been a big part of what happened at
Asbury and other colleges in 2023, though there were some isolated
exceptions. Nonetheless, history implies at least the possibility that
when the next revival comes, you as pastor may be called on to shepherd
your people through what can be rather disconcerting events.

Objections
The most vociferous critics of unusual manifestations seem to be those
who’ve had the least experience with them. Their objections are usually
for one of three reasons:

1. Some believe that miracles, prophetic gifts, and anything else that
can’t be explained by natural causes and scientific reasoning are
superstitious or magical thinking and do not really exist (anti-
supernaturalist theology).
2. Others acknowledge that God worked in miraculous or super-
natural ways in Bible times, but believe he ceased working that
way after the Bible was completed and the twelve apostles died
(cessationist theology).
3. Still others feel that some behaviors violate Paul’s direction that
all things should be done decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:40
ESV).

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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

Validation, Distraction, or Deception?

Proponents of unusual behaviors often see them as validation, manifes-
tations of God’s presence that prove God is working in the revival.
Others see them as purely human distractions. Some critics even
consider them a demonic deception.
Properly discerning the source of these behaviors is at the heart of
your pastoral responsibility. Let’s look at the possibilities more closely.

Divine validation
Proponents claim unusual behaviors in revival services are manifesta-
tions of God’s presence and power that validate the revival as a true
move of God. In addition to the verses cited at the beginning of this
chapter, they point to passages like these:

• You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. (Acts 1:8
NLT)
• My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but
in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might
not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians
2:4–5 ESV)
• The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. (1 Corinthians
4:20 ESV)
• . . . having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to
do with such people. (2 Timothy 3:5 NIV)
• Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have
been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am
going to the Father. (John 14:12 NIV)

Certainly, God can move without a visible demonstration of divine

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 PASTORING REVIVAL

power, but people cannot move in divine power without God. If truly
divine power is demonstrated, clearly God must be present.

Human distraction
There’s no question that people crying out, moving oddly, and falling
on the floor can be distracting. Some critics argue that God would
not cause such distractions from the proper business of a worship
service, which they see as praising God, proclaiming the gospel, and
administering the sacraments.
Most in this category attribute unusual behaviors to human emotion-
alism, responses to psychological suggestions from the leader, or an
unconscious desire to fit in by doing what others are doing. Some go
further and accuse revival leaders of deliberate emotional manipulation.
Others believe the manifestations are completely fraudulent, engaged
in by henchmen of the revivalist to excite people and gain notoriety for
the leader.

Demonic deception

The third explanation advanced for unusual behaviors is that those

engaging in them are being spiritually deceived, and the behaviors are
actually demonic in origin.
Many in the secular world, and even many pastors, would dismiss
this explanation out of hand as ignorant superstition or, at the least,
based on an unwarrantedly literal interpretation of scripture. However,
it has been said that Satan’s greatest deception is making us believe that
he does not exist. Ironically, this can be exacerbated by those who claim
that anything they disagree with is demonic.
Well-attested experience throughout revival history indicates that
some strange behaviors may indeed be demonic in origin. These can be
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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

demonically inspired actions aimed at causing a distraction or throwing

doubt on the validity of what God was doing. More often they were the
reactions of demons to a powerful presence of God, as in Mark 9:25-26,
where a demon threw a boy to the ground in the presence of Jesus.
Demonic manifestations can be common where God is moving.
Claudio Freidzon, a leading pastor in the Argentine revival, recalls
his early experiences in Holy Spirit, I Hunger for You. “Dozens of men
and women gave indications of being demon-possessed, and we had to
deal with them in a separate place.” Many pastors have found the best
thing to do in those cases is to move the afflicted people to where they
will not disturb the flow of the meeting, and have a specially trained
team of deliverance ministers work with them. In fact, this is a good
way to deal with anyone who is disrupting the meeting in a negative
way, demonic or not.
Demonic influence should be a diagnosis of last resort, and deliver-
ance ministry should be left to those called to it. However, if you are
forced to deal with a situation of possible demonic influence, take the
authority Jesus gave. In the Great Commission, Jesus commanded
the apostles to make disciples . . . teaching them to observe all that
I have commanded you (Matthew 28:19–20 ESV). One of the things
Jesus commanded was to cast out demons (Matthew 10:8). We see this
demonstrated years later in the ministry of Philip, who was not one of
the twelve apostles (Acts 8:7). Mentions of this authority can be seen
throughout church history.
If you are not familiar with deliverance ministry, I encourage you
to learn about it. Begin with your own Bible study on the subject.
Books many have found helpful include The X-Manual: Exousia—A
Comprehensive Handbook on Deliverance and Exorcism, by seminary
professors Peter J. Bellini and Stephen Seamands; Biblical Guide to
Deliverance, by Randy Clark; and Free in Christ, by Argentine deliverance
minister Pablo Bottari. If you feel called to go further, the surest way
29
 PASTORING REVIVAL

is to find a mature Christian experienced in this area and learn from

them in person.

My View: It’s Complicated

Why do these physical manifestations happen, and why do they differ
from person to person and revival to revival?
Much of it, of course, depends on what God is doing in a given
situation. But the human element plays a bigger part than many might
suppose.
I like to believe that every sermon and worship song I wrote over
thirty-eight years of ministry started from divine inspiration transmit-
ted through my human spirit. But I also know that each one had to
work its way through my human mind and my physical voice, with
very uneven results. Sometimes I took the time to really hear God,
sometimes I was rushed. Sometimes I felt good, sometimes I felt bad.
Sometimes I lost my train of thought or fumbled a guitar chord.
God has chosen to work through people. The fact that a message,
song, or other activity is inspired or initiated by God doesn’t guarantee
that it is perfectly delivered by the human vessel through whom it is
given. And the fact that it is imperfectly delivered does not invalidate
the inspiration of the message.
Different people can respond to the same spiritual stimulus in very
different ways. I remember one time when a person going out of church
thanked me for something they thought I said in my sermon, and the
person right behind them thanked me because they thought they heard
the exact opposite! As a pastor, you’ve probably had similar experiences.
Different and even inappropriate responses to a move of God do not
mean it was not really God. Most people’s responses to almost anything
are filtered through their personality, their experiences, their current
circumstances, and what they’ve been taught.
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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

For instance, I was in a small-town ecumenical worship service a few

years ago when the leader called everyone to a time of prayer. Some
came up to the altar; some stood where they were with hands raised
and head up; some knelt in the pew with hands folded and heads bowed,
facing toward the front; some sat; some turned around and knelt with
their hands folded over the pew seats. Some prayed silently, some
prayed quietly in English, some prayed in tongues. All were sincerely
responding to the move of the Holy Spirit. No way of responding was
better or worse than any other. But almost every person did it the way
they had learned in their church. Does that mean it wasn’t really God?
Does it mean one way was of God and the rest were merely human? Of
course not.
The same dynamic holds with responses to a sense of God’s presence
in revival. Those who were active in a previous move of God are used to
the responses of that time. Very naturally, they will tend to respond the
same way to the next move. It may be that their actions are genuinely
Spirit-led. It may also be that they learned thirty years ago that a certain
action is what you’re supposed to do in a revival. Just because it’s a
learned behavior doesn’t mean it is wrong or inappropriate.
On the other hand, in the new thing God is doing, some of the old
responses might be more of a distraction than a blessing, especially if
the old veterans attempt to “correct” what happens in the new move.
The point is, discerning whether God is present in a revival service
or movement is not an either-or, all-or-nothing proposition. God does
not make us puppets. Our response to what God is doing is subject to
our own humanness, with all the mix of psychological, physical, and
cultural influences that implies. Not just the overall movement, but
every part of it, calls for careful pastoral discernment.
Here’s the way I understand it. God created human beings in God’s
image (Genesis 1:26-27). As God is the inseparable divine Trinity of
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he created us as an inseparable human
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 PASTORING REVIVAL

trinity of spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Have you ever tried to think analytically when you had the flu, or
pray fervently on two hours of sleep? Have you ever not noticed a
physical injury in the excitement of playing sports, or let the intellectual
stimulation of tracking down the particular meaning of a Bible verse
distract you from its spiritual message? Each part of our being affects
every other part.
Among other things, that means our ability to receive, interpret,
respond to, and apply what God tells us or gives us is partial. The portion
of our human spirit that is truly in tune with God is not the only factor.
Our personality, physical condition, expectations, mood, worries, and
many other factors also enter into how we interpret and respond to a
move of God’s Spirit. I’m sure that many times the spiritual impact of
one of my sermons was cut short because someone was worried about
the roast in their oven!
This truth has direct and specific application to what we do in
church. In fact, Paul thought it was important enough to mention
its implications three times in the section of his writings that most
directly addresses the conduct of public worship.

• We know in part and we prophesy in part (1 Corinthians 13:9 ESV)

• Let two or three people prophesy, and let the others evaluate what is said
(1 Corinthians 14:29 NLT)
• The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets (1 Corinthians 14:32
ESV).

Paul is saying that even when things originate directly from God, like
prophecy, we humans have an amazing ability to get at least part of it
wrong. The appropriate response is not judgment but collaboration.
The fact that elements of personality or learned behavior may be
discernible in a person’s response to a move of God in no way lessens
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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

the genuineness of the experience. As pastor, receive and encourage

what you discern to be from God. At the same time, don’t hesitate to
give guidance where a human element may be mixed in. You don’t need
to worry about quenching the Holy Spirit in another person if your
correction is guided by the Holy Spirit in you.
Every situation will be different. Have confidence in your dis-
cernment of God’s leading and your understanding of the dynamics
involved.

Pastoral Discernment and Response

Worship, prayer, confession, and physical actions such as trembling,
weeping, laughing, and falling down are common responses to a
powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. The particular form they take for
each person is influenced not only by what God wants to do in them,
but also by a mix of each individual’s spiritual, mental, emotional, and
physical state, their personality type, and their expectations, based on
what they have seen or heard of previous moves of God, what they are
told by the speaker, and what they see others doing.
This mixed response is one factor that makes pastoring revival so
difficult. What is the proper pastoral approach to these phenomena?
The first task is to discern the source. Is it the response of a human
body overcome by the power of God? Is it a human imitation of such a
response? Is it the response of a demonic presence within the person
reacting to the presence of God? Or could it be a combination of these?
As pastor, whenever you are not the one preaching or conducting a
service, you have two main responsibilities. First, guard your people
against false teaching and things that would draw them away from God.
Second, see that everything is done decently and in order (1 Corinthians
14:40).
Of course, what is considered decent and orderly in a Pentecostal
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 PASTORING REVIVAL

service may seem chaotic to a Presbyterian. So part of your discernment

is to consider whether a given activity is outside the bounds of decent
Biblical order, or just outside the bounds of your own comfort zone.
How do we discern between what the Holy Spirit inspires and what is
merely learned or cultural behavior? While there is no obvious answer
to such questions, we must beware of creating a false dichotomy.
Don’t assume that a learned or cultural behavior cannot be inspired
by God. If a way of doing something, whether it be taking the offering
or dancing in the Spirit, is basically the same after revival as before, it
may indicate a cultural or learned aspect to that element of worship,
but that does not necessarily imply that the Holy Spirit is not in it.
Perhaps one of the key requirements for pastoring ongoing revival is
the willingness to live with such questions rather than seeking to analyze
and pigeonhole everything. The temptation to strictly label things as
either “of the Spirit” or “not of the Spirit” might well be a contributing
factor to the death of some revivals. Proper spiritual discernment is
a clear biblical duty for all Christians, and especially pastors. Putting
God in a box, however, is one of the fastest ways to grieve and quench
his ever-dynamic, ever-creative Spirit.
As mentioned earlier, John Wesley was no stranger to unusual
behaviors in his meetings. He spent much time thinking and praying
about them, and recorded his ponderings in his journal.

I look upon some of those bodily symptoms to have been preternat-

ural or diabolical, and others to have been effects which in some
circumstances naturally followed from strong and sudden emotions
of mind. Those emotions of mind, whether of fear, sorrow, or joy,
I believe were chiefly supernatural, springing from the gracious
influences of the Spirit of God which accompanied his word.

Wesley saw the pattern as follows:

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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

1. God suddenly and strongly convinced many they were lost

sinners, the natural consequence whereof were sudden outcries
and bodily convulsions; 2. To strengthen and encourage them that
believed, and to make his work more apparent, he favored several
of them with divine dreams, often with trances and visions; 3. In
some of these instances, after a time, nature mixed with grace; 4.
Satan likewise mimicked this work of God, in order to discredit the
whole. . . . At first it was doubtless, wholly from God. It is partly
so at this day; and he will enable us to discern how far in every
case the work is pure, and where it mixes and degenerates.

In Brownsville, Pastor John Kilpatrick developed a list of five questions

to help in discerning whether a particular activity was of God. He
trained his altar workers and ushers to use these same questions to
maintain order.

1. Is Jesus being lifted up?

2. Is this creating a greater hunger for God and His Word?
3. Is this leading people to love God and each other more?
4. Is this bringing truth and greater spiritual depth?
5. Is there any practical change taking place (sometimes this must be
judged over a period of time)?

Roger Helland, in Let the River Flow, provides and comments on a similar
list of criteria for judging the phenomena, based on the writings of
Jonathan Edwards:

1. Does it esteem the Lord Jesus Christ?

2. Does it operate against the interests of Satan’s kingdom?
3. Does it honor the Scriptures?
4. Does it operate as a spirit of truth?
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 PASTORING REVIVAL

5. Does it operate as a spirit of love for God and people?

John Wesley advised his followers to test the manifestations.

I warned them, all these [manifestations] were in themselves, of

a doubtful, disputable, nature; they might be from God, and they
might not; and were simply not to be relied on, (any more than
simply to be condemned,) but . . . to be brought to the only certain
test, the Law and the Testimony.

Wesley stressed that a changed life is the only sure sign of God working.

I know several persons in whom this great change was wrought in

a dream . . . And that such a change was then wrought, appears
(not from their shedding tears only, or falling into fits, or crying
out: These are not the fruits, as you seem to suppose, whereby I
judge, but) from the whole tenor of their life, till then, many ways
wicked; from that time, holy, just, and good.

Given the ambivalent nature of physical manifestations, what should be

the pastoral approach to them? In 1759 Wesley provided good balance
as he looked back at the early days of the Methodist revival:

The danger was, to regard extraordinary circumstances too much,

such as outcries, convulsions, visions, trances; as if these were
essential to the inward work. . . . Perhaps the danger is to regard
them too little, to condemn them altogether, to imagine they had
nothing of God in them, and were a hindrance to his work.

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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

Differences of Experience
So far we’ve been talking about those who experience manifestations of
different kinds. In every meeting, however, there will be others who do
not experience anything. This difference immediately raises concerns
in a pastor’s heart. How do we minister to these disparate experiences?
Roger Helland sensitively writes,

There must be wisdom to pastor the phenomena. God loves

everyone, and works in a unique way with each person. Even
though we may teach this, some won’t believe it. “That person was
touched, why wasn’t I?” They will need assurance. . . . Because the
gifts of God are based on grace and not on merit, they appear to
be unfair. . . . Therefore, people must be taught not to strive or
unrealistically expect things to happen to them. Yes, they should
seek the gifts and grace of God; they should be open to receive, but
they should not set themselves up for disappointment or failure.
. . . We must give gentle counsel and not fail to use models and
testimonies of people who have renewal fruit but did not experience
dramatic manifestations.

Whatever the cause, the guiding principle is found in Jesus’ parable of the
tares and the wheat in Matthew 13. In a 1998 academic paper, seminary
professor Stephen Seamands quoted Francis Asbury, contemporary and
colleague of John Wesley:

The friends of order may allow a guilty mortal to tremble at God’s

word . . . and the saints to cry and shout when the Holy One of
Israel is in the midst of them. To be hasty in plucking up the tares,
is to endanger the wheat.

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Seamands went on to comment,

There were many in Wesley’s day who accused him of being an

enthusiast [fanatic] because he let so many tares remain. There are
many today who would say the same thing about those who are
pastoring what’s going on in Toronto. My point is that when you
function with this more complex understanding of the sources of
manifestations, you sometimes may allow some tares among the
wheat. At other times you may determine that the tares are indeed
taking over and they’ve got to be plucked out for the sake of the
wheat.

In other words, sometimes you have to let some less desirable things
happen, to avoid the collateral damage of accidentally shutting down
genuine new experiences.

Slain in the Spirit

The most characteristic physical manifestation of recent revivals, with
the possible exception of weeping, is being “slain in the Spirit.” This
term, and others such as “falling under the power” and “doing carpet
time,” refer to a person falling to the ground, purportedly under the
influence of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it happens when a revival
leader touches them on the forehead, giving rise to the charge by
critics that those who fall were actually pushed, but often there is
no physical contact at all. Looking at the way different leaders in
the River movement dealt with this phenomenon can help us as we
prayerfully consider how we will respond if unusual behaviors come to
our churches.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, author of Revival, explains it this way:

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 UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS: VALIDATION, DISTRACTION, OR DECEPTION?

Sometimes this sense of power and glory is so great that people

are prostrated to the ground by reason of it. As you hear of people
literally fainting when they suddenly get a piece of good news,
which they have not expected, so, when men and women experience
this glorious presence, sometimes, it is too much for the physical
frame.

An excellent treatment of this subject is Francis MacNutt’s Overcome

by the Spirit. One chapter lists the following positive results of the
experience:

• A demonstration of God’s power

• An intimate experience of God’s presence
• An impetus to conversion or repentance
• An environment for healing
• Healing of body and spirit—including physical healing, inner
healing, and deliverance from evil spirits

In revivals where this phenomenon often happens, pastors and leaders

usually provide “catchers.” These are people trained to stand behind
those they believe might fall, to ease them to the ground. (For some
reason, those slain in the Spirit almost never fall forwards.)
There was friendly disagreement among revival leaders over the
question of whether the possibility of falling in the Spirit should be
mentioned as people were being invited to ministry time. Some were
concerned that talking about it could create a psychological suggestion
in some people’s minds, resulting in people falling because they felt it
was expected. Francis MacNutt, while acknowledging this possibility,
opted to briefly explain the phenomenon so first-time visitors would
not panic if people started falling down around them. He wrote in
Overcome by the Spirit,
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I try first to give the purposes of resting in the Spirit as I see them,
and then — to obviate the power of suggestion as much as possible
— I ask people neither to seek the phenomenon nor to fight it. If we
manufacture it, no one is helped. Indeed, trying to make it happen
can actually block anything God might wish to do.

It’s important, when discussing this phenomenon, not to raise expecta-

tions too high. True, it sometimes happens to people who are resisting
falling or even skeptical about its reality — including one of my own
teenage sons during a visit to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship.
More often, though, those who experience it have responded to an
invitation for prayer and have seen others fall to the ground before
them.
The slain in the Spirit phenomenon is nuanced over a continuum
of experiences, from those who voluntarily prostrate themselves in
adoration, to those who come expecting to fall, to those who fall despite
their efforts to remain standing. Neither end of this continuum is
more or less spiritual than the other. The attitude of the body does not
necessarily reflect the attitude of the heart.

40
 II

Part 2: Three Case Studies

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they

were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of
the ages has come.
— 1 Corinthians 10:11 ESV
 4

Case Study 1: Rock City Church of

Baltimore

I first became aware of the revival at Rock City Church in late 1997,
when my wife Paula found accounts of it on the internet. What I
experienced there had a lasting impact on my life and ministry.
Rock City Church is a non-denominational church situated on a hill
just off an intersection of the Baltimore Beltway (Interstate 695). It
sprang out of Rock Church of Virginia Beach, Virginia, one of the first
large charismatic churches on the East Coast. I chose it as one of my
dissertation case studies for three reasons.

• Compared to the movements in Toronto and Pensacola, the out-

pouring in Baltimore reflected a greater emphasis on intimately
experiencing God’s presence. This was in character with what
seemed to be the most recent focus in the move of God.
• The location, about 45 minutes away from my church in Maryland,
was convenient.
• Most importantly, I felt that the revival at Rock City Church might
be the beginning of a regional revival that could involve the church
I pastored.
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Beginnings
In 1983 Bart Pierce, a former professional surfer and building contrac-
tor, moved from Virginia with his wife Coralee to pastor a struggling
church of thirty-eight people meeting in a tent on the north side of
Baltimore, Maryland. Less than a year later there were five hundred
people in the church. By 1993 the church numbered 1,500.
Then Pierce took a year off to investigate other ministry possibilities.
His return met with great misunderstanding and confusion. By 1995,
when the church moved into the present three-thousand-seat sanctuary,
attendance had dropped back to five or six hundred. It stayed in that
range for the next year.
Though technically located in the suburbs, Rock City Church was
and remains an intentionally multi-ethnic congregation with a focus
on ministering to the city of Baltimore, especially the poor. This was
seen not only through traditional programs such as a food pantry but
also in more unexpected ways. For instance, if an inner-city child was
killed in a drug deal or gang fight and the family or local church could
not afford to buy a coffin, Rock City Church would often quietly pay
the bill. During the course of my study, in fact, the church changed its
name from Rock Church to Rock City Church (now Rock City Church
of Baltimore) in order to emphasize its focus on the needs of the city.
In mid-January, 1997, Pierce attended a pastor’s retreat in Florida
where he met evangelist Tommy Tenney. He invited Tenney to
accompany him back to Baltimore to speak. Pierce described the
eighteen-hour drive north as “an encounter with God as we talked
about what God was doing and what we believed.”
When they arrived at the church the next morning, Sunday, January
17th, they found two elders standing inside the door weeping, just as the
Pierces and Tenney had wept during the drive. When worship started,
people began crying out and falling under the power of God throughout
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the building.
That Sunday morning service lasted until 2:00 a.m. Monday. Revival
had begun.
Tenney, who lived in Louisiana, preached revival services in the
Baltimore church almost every Monday and Tuesday evening for
more than four years, while traveling internationally for preaching
engagements during the rest of the week. Pierce and Tenney grew so
close that when I interviewed them together they often finished each
other’s sentences. During this time, Tenney wrote his first books, The
God Chasers, God’s Dream Team, and God’s Favorite House.
The Baltimore revival did not receive as much media attention as
Toronto or Pensacola, but word got out, especially via a July 1998 feature
article in Charisma magazine. People came from across the nation and
around the world.
Bart Pierce already had some experience with the press. In 1988
Baltimore Orioles star pitcher Scott McGregor gave up baseball to
become an assistant pastor at Rock City Church. Pierce resisted the
temptation to use the situation for publicity, choosing rather to shield
McGregor as he matured in the faith. Pierce demonstrated the same
attitude toward the revival.
I attended worship services at Rock City Church a dozen or more
times between 1997 and 2000. All but two of these visits were to the
Monday or Tuesday evening revival services. In the course of gathering
data for my dissertation, I also visited a complete Sunday morning
service, which stretched well into the afternoon. In addition, I attended
two internationally advertised teaching conferences held at Rock City
Church, and traveled there three times for interviews. One of these
interview occasions occurred on a Sunday evening and I was able to
experience the beginning of a regular Sunday evening service.
The revival at Rock City Church was characterized by a quiet intimacy
with the Holy Spirit. The phenomena associated with other outbreaks
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of the River were not unknown at Rock City Church, but they were not
the focus. The attitude was one of seeking the loving presence of God,
and then allowing God to do whatever he wanted to do. The worship
music, much of it composed in-house, was written and performed with
a becoming combination of skill and humility. Tenney’s preaching
was gentle and engaging. Either alone was worth the effort to get to
the services. But it was clear that the sole purpose of both music and
preaching was to usher in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Indeed,
Tenney often spent more time inviting people to experience God’s
presence and love than he did preaching.
Unlike at some revivals, Tenney did not line people up and lay hands
on them all himself. He did join Pierce and other pastors and prayer
counselors in individually praying for people during the end-of-service
ministry time, but he preferred to encourage people to open themselves
to the Holy Spirit right where they were rather than seeking prayer
from a particular person. As a result, at the end of the service people
would be found quietly weeping, rejoicing, praising, and receiving from
God all over the sanctuary.

Seven Characteristics
The revival at Rock City Church was marked by seven characteristics.

1. An emphasis on worship
2. A strong sense of God’s presence
3. Lasting personal transformation
4. A lack of self-promotion on the part of the leaders
5. A marked devotion to the revival services on the part of many
members of the congregation
6. An intentional and successful effort to involve pastors and people
of other churches
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7. Increased motivation and power in social ministries.

An emphasis on worship

If one word defined the revival at Rock City Church, it was worship.
The emphasis was constantly on seeking a greater closeness of God
for God’s own sake. The phrase often used was, “seek his face, not his
hand”—that is, seek to know God for who God is, rather than for what
he can do for us.
The Monday and Tuesday revival services began at 7:00pm with
worship music. After an hour or so, Tommy Tenney would quietly
begin encouraging people to enter God’s presence. It was often hard to
tell when he transitioned from that to preaching, or if he transitioned
at all.
Instead of a plea for contributions, people brought their offerings
to the front while the singing continued. There were usually no
announcements and no introductions. Pastor Pierce was always there,
but often an entire service would go by without him ever taking the
microphone.
Sometimes there was a call for people to come to the front for special
prayer, sometimes there was not. Repentance, healing, re-dedication,
and other spiritual transactions were sometimes mentioned, but more
often, they were implicitly expected to happen as a result of the Holy
Spirit working within people.
At various times through the service, a significant percentage of the
congregation could be found prostrated in prayer—sometimes at the
front of the auditorium, sometimes in the aisles, sometimes under the
pews.
There was usually no official end to the service. People left when they
finished their business with God, often not until 11:00 p.m. or later.
Usually the gifted pianist and singer-songwriter, Ashley Thompson,
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had been playing and worshipping nonstop since the service began.
Often the whole praise team were involved for much of that time as
well.
The Sunday morning service I attended was very similar to the
evening revival services, though more structured. It lasted about four
hours, which the large congregation did not seem to think was an
unusual amount of time to spend in worship.
The attitude was perhaps best expressed by layperson Kay Culver,
who told me, “We just come in and say, ‘God, what can we do for you
tonight? What kind of mood are you in?’ And our hearts are always
broken, always ready for him to do whatever he wants to do.”
As in most churches, a key vehicle for expressing worship was music.
Tenney called music “the cradle in which the baby of worship is carried.”
He felt music should make worship easy. Revival is possible with hymns
and traditional songs; they can be wells of the water of revival. But
tradition tends to produce comfort, which dulls the spiritual hunger
so necessary for revival. The key is music, whether contemporary or
traditional, that reflects what God is doing and wants to do in the people.
Music minister Don Mark told me, “Before this [revival] started we
were singing songs that made us feel good—songs about us—without a
whole lot of consideration about ministering to the Lord. We’re now
singing songs about mercy and about love—songs of passion, songs of
our heart.”
Mark is an accomplished musician leading a quality worship team,
but he no longer carefully scripts the worship service. “I pretty much
come in here with an idea, after having prayed, where the service may
go, then I listen from song to song for the Holy Spirit to lead me.”
Almost all the worship music used in the revival services was written
at Rock City Church. Fifteen or more different people at the church
wrote scores of songs. As Mark put it, “We are hearing God’s words and
we have placed them to music.” Tenney explained, “When God visits,
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there are new songs and they’ll take you on to the next little piece.”
Mark summed up, “We consider our worship to be vertical. We come
in here to minister to the heart of God. If we delight the Lord, then
we’ve accomplished something we’re trying to do in each service.”

A sense of God’s presence

The second major characteristic of the revival at Rock City Church was
a pervasive intense sense of the presence of God. It was often described
as something almost tangible. Gwynn Hill, director of the Hiding Place,
the church’s home for women in crisis pregnancy, told me that when
the residents were brought to the revival services, “They come right
into this and experience what God is doing.”
The sense of God’s presence was not limited to adults. According
to Kay Culver, “All our kids have experienced it. One time we had so
many kids come that just got blasted out in the Holy Spirit that we just
had to open the doors and bring them out in the hallway and pray on
them. We’d never had this before, even three-, four-, five-year-olds
just getting into the worship and everything.” She added, “Pastor and
Brother Tommy have emphasized that it’s not the size of the crowd; it’s
not who does or doesn’t come; it’s that the presence of God is here.”
But the crowd was usually sizeable. One member explained it very
simply: “God’s presence was so strong here, people just began to
gravitate.”
The sense of God’s presence was not limited to the church sanctuary.
Staff pastor Bob Martak related a common experience when he said,
“I’ve been in my home, and in my car, and I lose control of all my
emotions because God’s presence, when it comes upon me, it’s just like
his arms are wrapped around me. There’s never been a feeling that’s as
wonderful or as powerful as that feeling is.”

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Lasting personal transformation

A recurring theme, especially among the laypeople interviewed, was the

personal transformation that came about in their lives since the revival
began.
Kay Culver described her experience this way: “You think you’re
saved until God comes a little bit closer and then you realize how much
more you need to change. God has turned a lot of my focus into getting
rid of the selfishness and to look at the real depth of my heart and the
depth of my purpose and motives for everything that I do. It has totally
transformed the way I see things. God has given me boldness in a lot of
areas. I’m now dancing where I was scared to death to show any kind of
worship or freedom or expression of love. Our hearts have not been the
same. Even my job has been impacted by what’s happened here because
I’ve changed.”
Staff pastor K. C. Carter, director of Adopt-a-Block and A Can Can
Make a Difference ministries, related, “I was here before the revival
broke out, and was being raised up in that ministry where I was just
running in the flesh, thinking I was doing something. After the revival
fell there was a big change in my life. I began to repent every day. I
learned that I should be obedient to God’s word, what I was hearing
through the Spirit, what I was hearing by my spiritual authority.”
Music minister Don Mark echoed those sentiments. “When his
presence came in such a dynamic way, I found out how far away from
God I really was. I thought I was in God. I wasn’t even close. So there
is this tremendous repentance that takes place.”
Member Pam Pauley said, “When this first started, my heart was hard.
He just broke my heart and I began to cry and weep, and ever since then
it’s like I can’t stop it! A gift of intercession came out that I’d never had
before.”
In the culture of Rock City Church being broken is a good thing,
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implying openness to God. In fact, it’s something to be sought and

protected, not only for the individual’s sake, but for the sake of
maintaining revival in the church as a whole. Member Gwynn Hill
put it this way: “One of the things that I’ve learned is to maintain a
brokenness, a broken heart, a repentant heart, a clean heart, a guarded
heart. To stay guarded with what’s going to protect what God is doing
here and not to allow gaps and a major breaking down where the enemy
can come in.”
Pierce explained, “The more you get in this, the more I find people
who are in sin and never knew it. It starts getting exposed. Your whole
moral compass starts to line up with God’s compass. Years and years
of church life will put so much debris in our heart that we can’t even
hear God, we can’t even find God, though we are sitting in a place with
his name smeared all over it. Repentance opens again that heart for
removal of the debris. Once we get the debris out of our lives, then we
can go into the world and know his glory’s going to come.”
Pastor Carter summarized, “There are churches that are going to hell
in a bobsled. If you ask people in the churches, they’re miserable. All
we did, we fell back in love with our God. When you are in love, you
don’t mind showing off. You don’t mind walking down the street with
a glory. We just fell back in love with our heavenly Father. If this isn’t
God, I’d rather do this until he comes.”

Lack of self-promotion

Many people think of revival like Neil Diamond’s song, “Brother

Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” with all the focus on a charismatic
personality on the stage. That was decidedly not the case at Rock City
Church. Sometimes an entire revival service would pass without Pierce
ever taking the microphone. In fact, it was not until I had attended
several revival services that I was even sure who the pastor was.
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Church member Kay Culver observed, “Pastor Bart just humbles

himself to allow God to do what he wants to do, and he gives God the
place. He steps down. I’ve watched him almost in a physical motion,
just step back and say, ‘Okay, God.’ He and Brother Tommy both do
that. It’s like, whatever God wants to do.”
This attitude carried over into the approach toward physical manifes-
tations. As we’ve seen, some revival leaders sought to prepare people
for manifestations or even play them up, leading critics to say they were
merely responses to psychological suggestion. Pierce told me, “What
I’ve chosen to do simply is not prepare them, because I couldn’t get the
balance [between preparation and suggestion].”
Instead, Pierce addressed unusual behavior after it happened, if he
addressed it at all. He prepared a flyer with Bible references to give to
people who questioned what they saw or experienced. As for Tenney,
he felt that kind of decision belonged to the pastor. “I don’t ever even
touch it, because that’s not my place as the evangelist.”
I saw a similar attitude in other areas. Personal prophecy, in which
a person feels they have received a specific message from God for
an individual rather than a general word for the congregation, was
acknowledged as a gift of God, but it was not emphasized. Even sermons,
while carefully prepared, were not the centerpiece of the service. Pierce
and Tenney felt the presence of God spoke more directly to people’s
needs than any sermon could.
This attitude of humility carried over to the rest of the church.
Layperson Wayman Hicks related, “In one of the meetings Tommy
Tenney and Pastor Bart preached about how revival should affect you
in such a way that you really do become a servant. That’s the thing I
see in a lot of people’s lives, they come and become more of a servant.
I was asked to become an usher. There was shift in my experience of
revival at that point.”
A member of the staff expressed the common view. “God has a thing
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to do. We are here to give God a place to do that, to give people a place
to come. It may be that he will do that at other places, but for right
now it seems to be that he wants to do it here. We are just helping to
facilitate it.”

Devotion to the revival services

The revival at Rock City Church sparked a remarkable devotion among
many people. A number of the laypeople I interviewed claimed to have
been at every service since they started coming. Ashley Thompson, the
unpaid pianist whose voice and music defined the Rock City revival
almost as much as Tommy Tenney’s preaching, was at work from the
beginning to the end of every service since the start of the revival, except
for a brief absence to give birth.
Usher Hicks admitted there was a cost to such devotion. “For the first
year and a half, my wife and I both attended revival services. We have
two little kids, and for the majority of the time I was just on the floor,
bawling [in response to God’s presence], while my wife did stuff with
the kids. So, after that year and a half, we made an agreement that she
would come on Mondays and I would watch the kids, and I would come
Tuesdays and she would watch the kids. A number of us have paid the
cost—my wife and I, my family. But I guess what we’ve gotten from it
has outweighed any sacrifice. The things we’ve given up, we’ve decided
we can do without.”
Perhaps the record for effort to attend belonged to Ruth Cave and
her husband Bob: “We travel an hour and forty minutes every service
to get here. We live in New Jersey. We come down at least twice a week.
When they have special meetings, conferences, Sunday mornings, we’re
here for all that also.” The reason? “It has changed my life.”
Such devotion was not due to threats or cajoling from the pulpit.
Michael James Allen, a faithful attender, declared, “Every time we’re
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here at these revival services, we’re here because we want to be here.”

Many people came from distant places to experience what God was
doing. Church secretary Ciel Grammar told me, “We see so many people
coming in from other states and countries and we see how they are
being touched and they are being blessed. It’s so neat to see them coming
to the altar, sitting in the pews crying, pouring their hearts out, and they
don’t know us. They just know God is here. They are just so touched
to be here.”
The multicultural membership of Rock City Church combined with
the international visitors to create tremendous diversity. Member
Michael James Allen commented, “I have never been in a church where
I saw so many different ethnic groups come together. At a service one
night, there were twenty-four different nationalities here.”
Hicks added, “As ushers, it gives us an opportunity to ask, ‘Why are
you coming here? Why from so far away?’ The main theme is that
these folks are just so desperate for God, and where they are attending
church, they don’t experience it. They are willing to sacrifice, pay the
cost. Tuesday night when I come in, I always take a count for myself.
Seventy to eighty percent of the people that come are not members
here. Out of that seventy to eighty percent, thirty or forty percent are
new for the first time.”

Sharing with other churches

In all the services I attended, I never once heard anything that could be
construed as an attempt to woo members away from other churches.
Pierce’s vision was for people in other parts of the world to say, “I’m
going to the revival in Baltimore,” and when asked what church, to be
able to say, “I hear it doesn’t matter, it’s in all of them.” He believed, “It
has to go outside of this church. If it doesn’t go outside of this church,
it will not be what [God’s] plan is to touch the city, the nation, and the
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world.”
Pierce has been instrumental in bringing the pastors of the greater
Baltimore area together, promoting the idea that they are not the pastors
of their individual congregations as much as co-pastors of the city.
In February 1998, Rock City Church sponsored a three-day “Peace for
the City” retreat attended by approximately sixty pastors from a variety
of denominations and non-denominational churches in the Baltimore
area. The focus was on prayer for unity and revival in greater Baltimore.
Bart Pierce, taking a typically low-key, behind-the-scenes approach,
invited others to do the preaching. The retreat was repeated in 1999,
and again in 2000. I was blessed to attend all three.
The Baltimore Covenant, which codified the idea that all the ministers
of a city co-pastor it together, was drawn up at the first of these. Pierce
and Tenney, supplying words for each other’s thoughts, said of the
covenant, “It didn’t create unity, but it created the boundaries, the road
for unity to come.”

The Baltimore Covenant

We, the city-wide Gatekeepers, covenant this day to submit to
the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ reflected in John
13:34,35 that we will be known by our love one to another. “A
new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I
have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
We purpose in our heart to fulfill the call to oneness as expressed
in Ephesians 4:1-6 by these actions:

• We covenant in sharing of pulpits without regard to race, ethnic, national

origin, or denominational affiliation.
• We covenant that in securing our city-wide borders as Gatekeepers,
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we will not allow schism, disputes, unkind criticism, or defamation of

character in our midst.
• We covenant as fellow shepherds and brethren in the Messiah, we will
not tolerate the unethical practice of sheep stealing and recycling of
disgruntled members without conferring one with another. We agree that
these matters will be handled in the spirit of reconciliation.
• We covenant to deal with a fallen brother or sister in love according to
Biblical principles as stated in Galatians 6:1. “Brethren, if a man be
overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the
spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”
• We consciously covenant to fellowship together, covering one another in
the spirit of prayer, protection, and care.

As we covenant to pastor our city, we commit our gifts, callings and

resources to our brethren to strengthen the work of the Kingdom,
for a great “Harvest of Souls.”
I, _____________, as a Gatekeeper, sign this covenant in
commitment to the articles above herein stated.

Usher Wayman Hicks observed, “There are no differences, we’re all

pastoring the city. To see these pastors come in here and hug and put
their differences aside, only the true presence of God could do these
things.”
Kay Culver added, “That’s the thing us women noticed. Men were
touched during this revival, men were crying, men were coming
together. Male pastors were coming together, as well as some female
pastors in this city. Pastor Bart Pierce’s heart is to gather the pastors
together because he knows the power of that unity against the enemy
and for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.”
One staff pastor said, “We’re starting to network with churches that
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we’ve never had a relationship with before. That signals a paradigm

shift. We’re just along for the ride.”
Hicks sounded like he was paraphrasing John Wesley as he summed
up. “Pastor is always looking to unify in everything. I think it’s one of
the reasons why God has really blessed him to see such great things in
the church here. Pastor doesn’t squabble over doctrine. He taught that
to us. Bottom line is: Is your heart right with God? Are you right in
your relationships with people around you? Can you stay broken and
can you stay humble? And can you bow when you see somebody higher
than yourself, even though you may not agree with everything that they
say? Can you embrace someone else, even though they may not be of
the same beliefs all the way around with you?”

Enhanced social ministries

A hallmark of Rock City Church is its social outreach, from before the
revival began to the time of this writing. Social programs make up the
“Martha ministries” counterbalance to the “Mary ministries” of worship
(Luke 10:38-42).
Social programs include

• “A Can Can Make a Difference,” which annually provides many

tons of free food to individuals and church food pantries in the
Baltimore area
• “Adopt-a-Block,” a program started by Rock City Church that works
with other churches, social agencies, and the city of Baltimore
to clean up and reclaim drug-infested inner-city blocks through
placing church members as residents in houses or apartments
within those blocks
• “The Hiding Place,” a shelter for women and girls, especially those
in crisis pregnancies
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• “Nehemiah’s House,” a shelter and rehabilitation center for homeless

men

These programs, all of which were in place before the revival began,
are funded almost exclusively by grants from various foundations. The
church employs a full-time grant writer for that purpose.
All of the social programs took, in Pierce’s words, “a remarkable turn
up” when the revival began. He estimated that the tonnage of free
food distributed to the needy through the church’s “A Can Can Make
a Difference” program increased 30 percent. In addition, the ministry
was given new tractor-trailer trucks for delivering the food. Other new
items, such as building supplies, also began to be donated. During the
revival, the Nehemiah’s House men’s shelter added twenty-five new
beds to the existing thirty-one. The Adopt-a-Block program continued
to reclaim four to six inner-city blocks each year, and several homes
were donated to the ministry.
A more direct spiritual influence was felt in the social ministries as
well. K. C. Carter heads up some of these programs. He commented,
“Adopt-a-Block was active before the revival began. We take back drug-
infested blocks in the inner city. Since the revival started, the presence
of God comes in there, right in the inner city, and we’re seeing people
getting saved. Not only that, we see pastors begin to work together
right there in the inner city. Pastors call me and say, ‘Man, I went to a
block party [the first step in reclaiming a block]. Now I want to do that.’
We’re beginning to not just pastor our churches but we’re beginning to
pastor our cities.”
One staff member related the enthusiasm this created in the church:
“It was a Thursday afternoon, I looked in the newspaper, we had an
article there. The first thought was, we are affecting the city.”
It was not only organized social programs that were strengthened
by the revival. Layperson Glenda Wooden told me of her own private
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social ministry movement: “My daughter and I go and knock on our

neighbor’s doors and just say, ‘Hi!’ We’ve frightened a lot of people, but
it’s amazing, I’ve had people come to me and say, ‘We need food,’ and we
say, ‘How can we help?’ God has changed our hearts enough to know
that every single person has a need. All of the kids come and during the
summertime we would be handing lemonade out of the window. My
sixty-five year old Jewish neighbor comes to me when he needs me to
bandage his wound. I know he came to me because of what I’ve given
him. The aging family that lives down the hall, they come to me. The
young lady who lives around the corner, when she needed food, she
came to me. Other kids, when they need to go places, they come ask
me. And that’s not because of who I am, because who I was, nobody
came near me. You couldn’t even walk across my path!”
This personal involvement didn’t come about by accident. According
to Kay Culver, Pierce taught his congregation, “Open your home, if
you’re in a position to do that. Have people over. Feed them, house and
clothe them, help to meet their needs. Don’t just think that something
supernatural is going to fall on them. Be a conduit. Throw that fifty in
that man’s hand. Give those extra clothes to someone.”
Culver commented, “We help in the natural, as well as with the
spiritual needs, and I think that’s what helps to keep the balance. Mary
and Martha.”

Rock City Church 24 Years Later

On March 17, 2023, twenty-four years after the study cited above,
I spoke with Bart Pierce, now a Bishop, who recently celebrated his
fortieth year as senior pastor of Rock City Church. Below is a transcript
of that conversation, conducted by telephone from Missouri, slightly
edited for relevance and clarity.

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Bishop Pierce We were so blessed to be in that setting. We all got

something to help us. All got something different, probably, but we all
got something collectively that we knew God was in that house.

David Oh, no question. So what has God been doing there in the last
24 years?

Bishop Pierce Well, number one, I’m getting old. And that’s okay.

David You didn’t look it when I saw you online the other day.

Bishop Pierce Well I manage to dress up pretty nice.

What happened, David, is we went through the process of walking
away from that. But it was not a quick turnaround for the process
because we had re-ordered our whole life. We had re-ordered the
church schedules, our personal life. We pulled one of my sons, my
youngest son, out of school and homeschooled him. So we were in a
process of at least a year of just kind of getting our feet back again into
some form of normalcy, realizing we would never be the same again.
And that brought us into a place of, “Now what, Lord?” And God’s
presence, even to this day, if we are in a moment of prayer or moment
of worship or something, and we really turn our faces towards him, it’s
not but a moment or two before his presence just rolls in.
We’ve always said, “Where he’s been, he’ll come again,” and “God is
attracted to his own presence.”
We went and saw a gentleman named Edward Miller. He was used
by God to start the Argentine revival with Tommy Hicks. And we went
and met with him, Tommy [Tenney] and his wife and myself and my
wife. He was able to help us understand some things.
Tommy asked him, would the revival last? And Dr. Miller, without
any hesitation, said no. He said they’re not meant to last. They are to
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revive. It’s like a dead person that gets the paddles put on their heart.
They are revived and you don’t keep shocking them. So we heard that.
And my wife jumped in and she said, “Well, what do we do?” And he
said, “You dig a well.” You dig a well so that all that God did during
those meetings and during those moments could flow into that well,
and you would drink from that well the rest of your life.
That became our hope. That became something that we could really
lay hold of, that those of us that had those moments in the presence
of God, we would be able to go back to them at a moment’s heart
movement, and we could drink from that. And so that’s really been a
sustaining thing for many of us.
Of course, his presence is so strong still. We still make fresh bread
for every service and we have it there on the altar [representing God’s
presence; see Exodus 25:30]. We don’t always use it, but it’s always there
and people will take it at times and things happen.
We also play worship music 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the
sanctuary, except when we’re actually in there occupying it. We have
on CD many of the music recordings that we produced and we have
worship going on 24-7. That’s kept the fire lit, sort of like Israel was
told they had to keep the fire lit in the tabernacle constantly. So we’ve
kept the fire going.
And the church has grown. We have a day school and it’s just exploded.
We have a camp for kids from June to August; this year, we’ll have right
about 500 kids at that camp. Our Bible school has tripled. In September
we’ll fully occupy an additional building. God’s really, really just very
graciously blessed us.
And we have over 130 churches now in other countries and around
the nation. So God’s multiplied just about every area that we could be
involved in.
Right now, we feed about 65-68,000 people a month.

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David My goodness, right there in Baltimore?

Bishop Pierce Right in Baltimore. Our warehouse is constantly moving

food in and moving food out. Tractor trailers are constantly interacting
with people up there. And so that’s been a real big thing that’s going on.
And then at the same time, we have a home for young women who
get pregnant, and we’ve now had a little over 1400 babies born there.
So all of that just from those meetings. Some of it is new and some of
it’s just erupting in growth and blessings.
The other area that you might know is that we had a thing happening
with pastors in the area called Peace for the City.

David I was part of that.

Bishop Pierce Okay. Well, we laid that aside a few years after we
stopped the meetings. We had meetings for about four or five years,
then we stopped those meetings. Now, relationships didn’t stop, but the
focused, concentrated meetings that we were having with those pastors,
we laid that aside to see what God would say to do. And just the end
of last year we got a real strong word to call the pastors back together
again.
We’ve been doing that monthly now for the last probably seven
months now, eight months, and April the ninth, which is Easter
Resurrection Sunday, down in the harbor in Baltimore, we’re having a
sunrise service. And we have churches, I don’t even know the number
exactly right now, but we have over thirty-six bishops working with us
from all around the area. It’s a two-hour service. It starts at 6:30 in the
morning, which, that’ll be a miracle in itself.

David Praise the Lord.

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Bishop Pierce It’s about prayer. We’re coming back together to pray
and to just really ask God to heal this city and heal this area.
So that’s kind of a short synopsis of what happened in the meantime.
There are so many wonderful miracles and things that have happened
in people’s lives.
Tommy Tenney preached here about seven or eight months ago for
the first time since he stopped coming to those meetings.

David I bet that was powerful.

Bishop Pierce Oh, it was very, very, very powerful. Tommy and I have
been in communication but this was the first time he actually came back
and preached. He’s been traveling all over the world. And it was really
good.
Folks like yourself or others who came in from other countries [for
the revival meetings] will stop in. I ran into a guy in the Walmart about
a week ago. I didn’t see him. He saw me, came over, introduced himself,
and he said, “Twenty-three years ago, you changed my wife’s and my
life. We’d been missionaries in Australia. We came to those meetings,
you met with us and said come by tomorrow and see me,” and for no
reason that I would have known, he said I asked him, “Are you able to
pay your current mortgage?” And he said, “No.” And I went and got
a check and I paid his mortgage. And he just told me, “It changed our
whole life being in those meetings.” And then he told me about what
was happening in Australia, and he said a guy showed up to preach in
Australia and they’re in the outback. The guy came and they got talking,
“Where are you from?” And the guy said, “Well, I’m originally from
Baltimore.” And the guy said, “Hey, did you ever go to this church called
Rock City Church?” He said, “Well, yeah, yeah, I went there 23, 24 years
ago,” or whatever. But he said, “I went there, and I was searching for
God and God changed my life and today I’m in full-time ministry.”
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We find people now all over the world. People in Israel will tell us
they still listen to our worship music.

David I do, too, sometimes.

So that’s the fruits of the revival carrying on.

Bishop Pierce That’s right.

David Back to Peace for the City for a minute, are you still using the
Baltimore Covenant?

Bishop Pierce Yes. What we did was we took it and added two more
sections that included the next generation. A lot of the guys that
originally were part of it are still. Some of the others are no longer
in ministry because of health issues, and some of the other pastors died.
So these younger pastors have come in and we’re kind of helping them
embrace what we did, but not make that the model they have to follow.
Just encouraging them that they can do this. So we’ve added a couple
of things in that covenant that would include them.

David As I interviewed you twenty-four years ago you were in the midst
of it, and I got some wonderful information about pastoring revival. Is
there anything you would like to add, anything you’ve learned as you
thought about it over the intervening decades? Is there anything you’d
like to pass on along those lines?

Bishop Pierce Well, I think, David, one of the things that we have
witnessed is that you have to realize, first of all, that it’s a sovereign thing
and you can’t just arbitrarily try to duplicate it. And if you keep that in
mind, then you won’t frustrate yourself by trying to say everything we
do has to look like that.
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What came was a wonderful outpouring. Our lives will never be the
same. Now we have to bear the fruit of that outpouring, and that might
look a lot different.
We had people, of course, who were with us through that period
because they just wanted God. He just moved here. Once that moved
on and that heavy weight of that lifted, they found themselves going on
in life to other journeys and places and so forth — which is fine, which
is wonderful. And you have to be able to embrace that and not see that
as a decline of something. It’s just another page in the book.
The worst thing you can do is look at the after-effect and become
critical, questioning, “Why did it go, why did it lift?” It’s never meant to
stay. It’s meant to revive us. And it’s the fruit of what we walk in from
that point on, that should be evidence that we had that.

David How did you know it was time to end the meetings with Tommy?

Bishop Pierce Three and a half years into it, God spoke to me one
morning while I was in prayer and said, “Are you willing to let my
presence go into other churches in the city?” And he gave me the
example of what David did with the Ark, when he took the ark and put
it in Obed-edom’s house. And then he went back and retrieved it, and
brought it into the city. [See 2 Samuel 6.] And I said, “I don’t understand
it, but Lord, sure.” And immediately I was aware that Peace for the City
had been set up so we’d have relationships to be able to say to these
other pastors, “We’re closing the meeting down. But you are more than
welcome to have these meetings and run with them.” And so being able
to allow that to happen in other places and not become judgmental or
jealous or critical.
Like with Asbury, when that outpouring took place. They’ve had that
before, I think, three times there. And now there’s the movie “The Jesus
Revolution.” That movie is profound because it has to do with the Jesus
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movement, which I was a part of.

David Me too, at the tail end.

Bishop Pierce We were at Virginia Beach, and we saw thousands of

hippies get saved. And that was a gift. But then we moved on from that.
And it’s good to see it in reflection. But where you are today may not
be where you are a year from now. The Scripture says we move from
glory to glory to glory. We are changed into his image.
So that’s what I say to pastors. They go, “Well, how do we get the
revival to happen in our church?” And I tell them, “I don’t have a clue.”
All I know is we were hungry for God. We were humble enough so
that God could come in and interrupt everything. And that hunger,
that humility, joined up with our prayers to want him, not just an event.
And maybe, maybe, that opened the heavens.

David When I talked to you twenty-four years ago, we talked about

things that could cut a revival short. I remember you saying that you
had your staff read the Charles Finney list [see Chapter 10], among
other things. And you emphasized having to pastor the members of the
church who did not immediately jump into the revival and who maybe
never did. I found those very, very important. Is there anything else
along those lines about pastoring the church in the midst of a revival
that you would like to add?

Bishop Pierce When you’ve had an experience like that, it can be

intimidating when you talk to some group and you tell them about
all the wonderful things that God did, and yet they’re not having that
experience. So you have to measure that out so that you don’t make
something unattainable. You tell them that there’s more of God, but
not make it so “you didn’t have that” or “you weren’t there.” That would
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create negativity. So what we’ve tried to do is encourage people and

the younger generation that they can have their own outpouring, they
can have their own Jesus revolution, and not say it has to look like the
one we had. But it must have certain characteristics which would be:
God, His word, hunger for prayer, hunger for souls, and a huge dose of
humility.

David Would you say those are the hallmarks of a genuine revival?

Bishop Pierce Yeah, I do.

I don’t call Asbury a revival — that’s just words, terminology — I
try not to refer to what happened in Baltimore or what happened in
Toronto or Brownsville, I don’t think they were revival by the typical
language associated with a revival.
For me, revival that I read about in the 1700s, 1800s, the Great
Awakening, all those things with Charles Finney, all of those guys,
Jonathan Edwards and all those guys, it changed nations. Whole nations
were turned upside down. Inventions and creations came to the surface.
Things happened that never could seemingly happen before.
So when I say “revival,” it has to shake more than a university or more
than a local church.
I mean, they tell stories when Azusa Street with Daddy Seymour
broke out in 1906, the revival with Evan Roberts in Wales. 125,000
people got swept into the kingdom within a week. And Azusa Street,
they were in the streets of San Bernardino, California, and L.A. and
at night they would hear the songs sung out in the streets. Hundreds
of hundreds of thousands of people were on fire for God. And when
Charles Finney walked into factories up in New York, the factory people
ceased to be able to work. They were on their faces weeping. And whole
legislative bodies in Colorado shut down and out in Oregon they shut
down the local legislative bodies and held prayer meetings every day at
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noon. Policemen formed choirs. Courts were shut down because there
was no crime.
When you see what revival does, revival shapes nations. And so I
just kind of stay away from saying this little outpouring — and I don’t
mean little by any measure, what happened with us will change our
lives forever. But it was not a revival. It was an awakening, it was an
outpouring, it was a visitation of God, only to make us hungry for a real
revival.

David Amen. And I agree with you on the terminology. I just want to
mention to you that I am using the term revival in my book just because
that’s what most people recognize.

Bishop Pierce Exactly. You’re a hundred percent right. And that’s why
I qualified what I said. It’s terminology, just words.
What I’m trying to say to you, as someone who’s mature enough to
understand this and was in those experiences enough that it’s moved
your heart to write about it, is that we must not ever be satisfied with
something that’s less than something that’s greater.

David Thank you so much. You’ve answered the questions I had, and I
really do appreciate your time.

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 5

Case Study 2: The Crossing

Washington Crossing United Methodist Church, informally known as

“The Crossing,” occupies a large, modern brick facility on a country
road in affluent Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about forty miles north
of Philadelphia and not far from Princeton, New Jersey. Originally
housed in a historic church near the site where George Washington and
his troops made their famous Christmas Eve crossing of the Delaware
River, the congregation moved to its present building in 1985. It became
the second case study for my dissertation at the urging of my advisor,
Dr. Steven Seamands, who felt it was important to include an example
of a mainline denominational church in revival.

Beginnings
Dr. Scott McDermott came to The Crossing in 1993. The previous
pastor, who had served a long pastorate and built the new building,
withdrew from the denomination to plant a new church a short distance
away. About half of the seven hundred members went with him. Faced
with a substantial mortgage and severe financial problems, McDermott
modeled prayer and sacrificial giving. A year later, revival struck.
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McDermott had not been teaching on or expecting a powerful move

of God in his church. It began with a sermon on Nehemiah’s seven
days of rejoicing, which led to a week of “rejoicing services.” On the
second night, as people came forward for prayer, they began to fall to
the ground under the power of the Holy Spirit. This was the beginning.
Despite publicity in the October 1998 issue of Charisma magazine,
the revival drew few visitors.
Like Bart Pierce and Tommy Tenney, Scott McDermott was very
helpful in facilitating my research. He told me via email that what he
called “the work of renewal” in the church began in 1994. “From that
time a work of transformation has begun.”
Rev. McDermott believed what was happening at Washington Cross-
ing was “at least a two-pronged effort.” Along with the spontaneous
move of the Spirit in renewal, specific pastoral leadership actions “such
as the development of mission, vision, and philosophy of ministry
statements, as well as the development of leadership issues within the
staff and lay leadership” all contributed to the overall transformation
of the church.

A Visit to The Crossing

Five years into the revival, the congregation was largely made up of
young to middle-aged adults and their children. The two identical
Sunday morning worship services featured a casual atmosphere and a
contemporary praise band. Evening renewal and prayer services were
attended almost exclusively by church members.
I visited Washington Crossing on May 15-16, 1999, arriving Saturday
evening in time for the weekly renewal service. Dressed in coat and
tie, I immediately stood out as a visitor among the casually attired
parishioners, but I was warmly welcomed.
The sanctuary was furnished with padded stacking chairs, with ample
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open space at the front and rear. A band led perhaps eighty people
in praise and worship, followed by a sermon by blue-jeaned assistant
pastor Mike Sullivan, as Rev. McDermott was away.
The sermon ended with an altar call to which most of the people in
the room responded, lining up in six or seven queues at the front of the
sanctuary, where they patiently waited as teams of usually two people
prayed for them. The prayers often took several minutes and almost
invariably resulted in the person receiving prayer being slain in the
Spirit.
Prayer is foundational at Washington Crossing. A recent addition
to the services was a midweek time of “soaking prayer,” where people
were invited to bring pillows and relax on the floor in an atmosphere
of quiet, receptive prayer for the evening.
Sunday morning, by invitation, I attended the 8:30 a.m. prayer
meeting of the ministerial staff and musicians. There I met Rev.
McDermott. A casual atmosphere again prevailed as jeans or khakis
and polo shirts, or similar styles for the women, seemed the order of the
day. Prayer was in a circle, not orchestrated but orderly. Occasionally
someone would suddenly bend sharply at the waist and shout, “Oh!,”
an action common to those whose revival pedigree traces back to the
Toronto outpouring.
At 9:00 a.m. the first service began, followed by an identical service at
11:00. Sunday services were held in the gymnasium using stacking
chairs, the sanctuary having been outgrown. Attendance at each
service was approximately four hundred people. The congregation
was predominantly white, reflective of the demographics of the area.
McDermott estimated the average age at twenty-nine. The casual dress
reflected an intentional effort to make people of all socio-economic
levels feel welcome.
The service began with praise and worship, followed by announce-
ments, both live and via Powerpoint and video projection. The sermon
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was given by guest speaker Terry Teykl, author of a number of books

on prayer. Rev. McDermott, in khakis and polo shirt, sat in the front
row of the congregation. At the second service, he was joined there
by his United Methodist District Superintendent, whose black suit
stood out starkly in the comfortably dressed crowd. The two services
were essentially identical, even though McDermott said he did not
plan out the services beyond a simple formula of worship, sharing, and
preaching.
Sunday evening I attended the weekly “Concert of Prayer.” Approxi-
mately two hundred people met in the sanctuary for a time of praise
singing and corporate prayer. After thirty to forty-five minutes they
broke up into smaller groups which gathered around eighteen signs
distributed around the room. The signs bore such inscriptions as,
“Confession and Repentance,” “Prayer for Revival,” “Prayer for the Inner
City,” “Upcoming Events,” “Our Ministerial Staff,” and “Pray as the Spirit
Leads You.”
The prayer service ended with approximately twenty elementary-age
children, who had just returned from a retreat, being invited to form
two parallel lines facing each other. The adults then walked very slowly
between the lines while each child laid hands on them and prayed. The
adults were obviously affected by this “fire tunnel,” most of them crying
their way to the altar rail where other adults prayed with them.
I talked with senior pastor McDermott, assistant pastor Sullivan, and
their wives over lunch that afternoon. The Sunday evening service
afforded opportunity to speak with several laypeople, including key
leaders. It is significant that most of the top lay leaders were among
the 25 percent of morning attendance who came back for the evening
meeting.

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Characteristics
Seven characteristics defined the move of God at Washington Crossing.

1. The centrality of prayer

2. People being slain in the Spirit
3. Revival confined primarily to the local church
4. A casual atmosphere
5. Increased social action
6. An ongoing connection to the revival at Toronto Airport Christian
Fellowship
7. Periodic waves of renewal

Prayer

The main defining characteristic of the revival at The Crossing was

prayer. Randall Baker, chair of the church council and a veteran of
leadership in a number of churches, told me, “The emphasis on prayer
here is unbelievable.” Church leaders intentionally underscored that
emphasis when they moved the church library out of a prime location
near the sanctuary and turned that space into a prayer room.
Scott McDermott remembered, “The night revival hit, I was praying
for people.” And when a new wave of revival came through in March
of 1999, he said, “We got to the point of the teaching of the Word and
I said, ‘I’m not going to preach today. I’m just going to stay right here
and pray and praise the Lord until I physically can’t.’”
The congregation responded in kind. McDermott described the
people’s response that March Sunday morning. “We had people lining
up. I came back that night for a prayer meeting, and I was really awed.
We prayed in intercessory prayer for about two hours, then we prayed
for individual people for three hours.”
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McDermott said God also invaded the staff prayer meetings. “I mean,
hours of intercession. We couldn’t even talk! The presence of God is
so overwhelming. You have a striving very deep in you, deep private
personal intercession. A couple of hours a day we’ve interceded. I felt
called to keep praying more. I would pray about two hours a day. And
then God just seemed to show up. What God wants, I think, is a feeling
from the heart. And that can happen through prayer. You’ve got to
pray.”
It is easy to overlook the fact that McDermott was already holding
regularly scheduled and well-attended prayer meetings for the staff,
over and above the congregational prayer meetings, before the Lord
“invaded” them.
Baker recalled, “We used to have a Sunday evening service with thirty
to fifty people. Scott had this vision, or felt led, that Sunday nights,
instead of having teaching or preaching, we’d be having a concert of
prayer. We’ve been doing this two years or more, and it’s two hundred
people praying. You pray for something and God answers it. We try to
lay down our agendas and see what God would want. We pray for it.
Pray for unity, for revival.”

Slain in the Spirit

In keeping with many other occurrences of the River revival, a clear

characteristic of the movement at Washington Crossing was people
being slain in the Spirit. McDermott remembered it being so from
the start: “The night revival hit, I was praying for people, and they
began falling on the floor. Our worship leader, Walter, he’s an ordained
Methodist pastor, goes down, and as he’s going down, he said, ‘I don’t
do this.’ Well he did, and the room was aghast. And the next night we
had over a hundred and twenty-five people—people dancing, about ten
o’clock at night, people all over the floor.”
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The phrase, “people all over the floor,” recurred several times in the
interviews. It speaks to the prevalence of the phenomenon, not just in
the initial outpouring, but as the revival continued.

Revival confined primarily to the local church

In contrast to the revival at Rock City Church, what happened at The

Crossing seemed to be much more of a local church renewal. I was told
it was rare for people from other churches to attend the renewal or
revival services. God’s focus at The Crossing seemed to have been on
helping the Christians there attain a new relationship with God.
McDermott said, “What’s remarkable is the life-changing, wonderful
longing after God. People are sitting in our services, burning in their
heart. Folks are getting saved at our regular Sunday services.”
Layman Todd Phillips amplified. “People’s value systems have
changed. We’re seeing the things of the world stripped off of them.
We’re seeing them equipped to serve the Lord.”

A casual atmosphere

Another characteristic of the Washington Crossing revival was its casual

atmosphere. The intentional informal dress has already been described.
This attitude carried over into the worship. It was not at all casual in the
sense of being irreverent. Instead, there was a casualness, a tolerance,
about letting each person worship in his or her own way. At any one
time, some people would be kneeling, others dancing, others quietly
sitting with head bowed or with hands and face raised, while others
could be lying prostrate on the floor.
Phillips compared the attitude to the classic charismatic church he
came from. “What God has been doing here has been very charismatic.
It has not been the emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit or the exercise
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of the gifts, but on the presence of God, and his passion for us, and
his sovereign power to move and do things that would defy the typical
charismatic boxes of how various moves of the Spirit work. It has been
very different from that stand.”

Increased social action

The Washington Crossing revival supported the idea that true revival
will always result in social action. McDermott said one hundred people,
one-seventh of his congregation at the time, regularly drove forty-five
minutes to be involved in inner-city ministry in Philadelphia and in
Camden, New Jersey. “We have one group of people that are going to
Philadelphia prayer-walking through crackhouses and things like that.
It’s just amazing.”
McDermott described a new partnership between the church school
and an inner-city elementary school, with the children visiting each
other’s locations to develop relationships. He mentioned mission trips
to Siberia, Africa, Azerbaijan, and Mexico, among other projects. These
trips are “not missions-programmed. They’re God touching people’s
hearts to go do these things.”

Connection to the Toronto Revival

The Washington Crossing revival maintained an ongoing connection
with the revival at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. McDer-
mott and members of his staff and congregation made regular visits,
and McDermott was invited to speak there. He even took his District
Superintendent to Toronto, with the result that local United Methodist
pastors could earn continuing education units for making the visit.

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Waves of renewal
At the time of the case study, God’s move at The Crossing had been
going on for over five years. During that time, there were a series
of renewals or strengthenings of the move. In my 1999 interview,
McDermott said, “It has been waves. Came a wave in ‘94, then God
would blast certain spots of the church just unexpectedly: the men’s
retreat, women’s retreat, youth retreat. People getting saved, shaking,
just shaking in the power of God.”

The Crossing 24 Years Later

On March 27, 2023 I spoke with Scott McDermott by telephone. He
was still Senior Pastor at The Crossing, completing a long tenure which
is a rarity in Methodism, where bishops normally appoint pastors
to different churches every few years. Below is a transcript of that
conversation, edited for relevance and clarity.

David What has God been doing with you and with The Crossing since
I talked to you twenty-four years ago?

Rev. McDermott Well, it’s been an interesting time as things have

really evolved. I think the work kept getting deeper over the years. Our
prayer ministry really expanded into other areas from since you were
there. We now have healing rooms. We have prophecy rooms. We have
inner-healing rooms. It’s really been pretty incredible. And a number of
my staff have gone on to start ministries and they’re ministering around
the world, which is really awesome.
I’m about to retire here in the next couple of months. I’m back in with
Randy Clark. I just did seven lectures in the Holy Spirit at the graduate
school so I’ll shift to that part-time.
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What’s astounded me is how God’s given us favor with the Methodist

church. I cannot, for the life of me, believe that. I just can’t believe it. I
have had such favor from every bishop to renewal. I’ve seen openness to
what we’re doing. I’ve seen a willingness to receive what we were doing.
It just challenges my paradigm. And people in the Conference [United
Methodist regional body] have experienced some really interesting
things, and they’ve made note of it. And I’m very thankful for that.
Life is full of ups and downs. I’m pastoring thirty years now in July.
You go through many iterations. And you learn about the organization
and renewal and how you get this thing to work together. And all kinds
of things that just go with pastoring a church. It’s really been a very
interesting journey. God’s been good. I mean, I can really say it’s been
really, really, really rewarding.
Doors opened up. I was teaching at SMU for ten years in their Doctor
of Ministry program. And again, I found such openness to my journey.
It was just unbelievable sharing about this vision encounter I had. It’s
been fascinating. It’s been quite a journey.

David At the time, I was interviewing you because the church was
considered actively in revival, part of the River. Would you consider
that it still is? Or if not, how did it end?

Rev. McDermott It is, it is. It continued pretty intense for a while —

I mean, it really still is — but, how do I describe it? It’s still a renewal
church, without a doubt. His presence comes.
I watched fires come and go around the country. A church would get
lit up for a while and then sort of go away. And I thought, what is the
difference? And one thing that I believe — now I have no documentation
on this, it’s totally anecdotal— is the commitment to intercessory prayer.
We had a weekly prayer meeting that went on for ten or fifteen years
that had over a couple hundred people in it where you pray for a couple
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of hours. I mean, we’re talking about some incredible meetings. And

I really feel that revival is best supported with — you need the Word,
obviously we can’t discount the Scriptures — but the heart of revival is
fueled by intercessory prayer.
It seems that God honors humility, right? God goes where he’s wanted
the most to be. And I think that is what prayer does.
I think people want an experience, but they don’t understand that it’s
all through prayer. That’s what deepens and sustains, you know? And I
believe that was what allowed us to stay in this place longer than many
did.
I mean the whole church changed, and it’s still that way. Prophecy
rooms, everything. It just all flows out of that.
I think there’s a dimension of the prayer life of the pastor, which
I think is very significant. And I think there’s also a commitment to
corporate intercession that makes a difference.
You know, in most churches the prayer meeting, it’s like four or five
people, and that’s about it. We’re talking about people who are hungry
to intercede.
I think this heart for it is so key. The longest service we had was eight
hours. I finished praying for the last person at 4:30 in the afternoon.
Then they came back two hours later for three more hours.
I think the problem is, we want the thrills and chills and good feeling,
but God’s not after that. God’s after our lives. And I believe the kingdom
advances on intercessory prayer.
Now, here’s what I wrestle with: the question was, you know, are we
earning it? Is it like, required to pray?
I’ve talked to pastors about my prayer life. And they would just feel
guilty because they go, “I’m not praying enough, I’m not—.” You know,
I get it.
I came to this conclusion. It’s not well thought out but here’s my
feeling: prayer is not the means by which we earn the favor of God, it’s
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the means by which we receive the favor of God. So when you’re face
down before him, that just deepens things. And I think in our situation,
we’re in a very affluent, highly educated area, I think God wanted us to
know it’s all about him and not about us. When you’re in that place of
humility, that’s where God really works.
So we did it. Everything was formed in prayer. At our staff prayer
meeting we prayed for an hour. Everything was based on prayer. And I
think that people saw that. I mean, it really was.
If you really believe Wesley, who says God does nothing save in answer
to prayer, how does that change what you do? It changes everything.
One night I had a friend coming from Georgia — I moved up here
from Georgia — and he came into this prayer meeting on Sunday night.
It was over 100, 200 people every week. So he’s in this service. It just
flows. There’s worship happening, there’s communion, people kneeling
at the altar, there’s prayers going. It’s just free-flowing. I can’t even
describe, different every week. I said to him at the end, “How do you
feel, tell me about your experience?”
He said, “I felt like I was in God’s living room.”
And I thought, that’s it, you know?
And so, when you’re in that place — I can have pastors come from
the Conference, David, progressive pastors, you never could predict
it. And I’ll watch them, and they’ve come to me and said, “I love what
you’re doing.” People can be so real before God. I love this.
Anyway, you get the idea. But I think prayer is the key element to it. I
think that’s the big lesson.
I’m concerned that people just want a good week of meetings or a
few good moments. We need that, our hearts have to be reset. But if
revival is not helping us to walk better you know something’s missing.
It’s just an emotional experience. Now we need to go deeper than that.
That’s what I think.

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David I agree 100%. But let me ask you, I’ve experienced what you
pointed out, that in most churches the intercessory prayer meetings are
three or four people. I had the blessing to attend one of your Sunday
evening intercessory prayer times and yes, hundreds of people there.
Did that just happen, or is there something you did to create that hunger
for prayer? As a pastor, how did you cause it, create it, feed it, or at least
not get in the way of it?

Rev. McDermott Well, let me tell you, a funny thing happened. This
lady really helped me out.
I had a really good prayer life. I prayed two hours a day. That was my
regular intercession before revival broke out. I remember I couldn’t
even talk in the presence. I’d get here early and pray, and I couldn’t even
move, the presence of God was so deep on my life. And I didn’t know
what was happening.
I loved to pray, always prayed and would wait hours as a teenager
when I came to Christ, but it was never like this. It was really very, very
deep.
So I felt good when I was talking to this person that I was in a good
prayer space. And she said to me, “Well, who are you praying with?”
I mean I had a pretty good prayer life, I could check off the list. But she
said, “You need to pray with other people, you need to have a corporate
prayer session.” And it just stuck with me.
I based the style of the prayer meeting off my own personal prayer
life. We had a Sunday night service and I said, “Let’s make it a prayer
meeting.” I had no idea who would come, and I can’t even tell you how
many came the first time. I don’t even remember how it grew. It just
began to grow and people would just show up. It was just fun to watch
God work.
It’s definitely a challenge to do that. There’s something about seeking
God together, right? But she’s the one who challenged me.
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David You say that you feel like you’re still in revival. Is there a place
where a church is done being in revival and becomes a revived church?

Rev. McDermott That’s a good question. I think you need revival

even though you’re in revival. I think it’s going to take an incremental
physical revival. Don’t go after revival, go after God’s presence.
I think it’s a title, you know? I know there are all these studies about
what revival does. Are we still in it? How do you measure that? I think
we always want more. I mean, look, we have incredible — people sense
the presence of God when they walk into the building.
I have people from the Conference who are not evangelicals walk
into the building and they go, “I really sense God’s presence in here.” I
mean, we’re talking about that kind of stuff.
Look, we want more, I’m sure we’re not where we need to be. It can’t
be just, we sit around in a meeting because we’re there.
The New Testament church, were they ever not in revival? The Book
of Acts is thirty years of church history and the Spirit is being still
poured out like twenty-something years after Pentecost. It happens to
me. There’s a measure of living in the Spirit, it’s like we learn that this is
how we live. I learned early on. God called. I felt the Holy Spirit. This
is very humbling.
But God told me what was happening among us wasn’t an experience
to have. It was a lifestyle. It’s not just a one-off “I had this happen to
me.” It’s an invitation to an open door for a way of living.
It’s not just about encountering the Spirit. It’s about learning to walk
in the Spirit. And I think that’s where we are. Sure we’d like more
encounters. This is part of who we are, but we want more. You still
want revival.
Now are we in revival? That’s a great question. I would say it depends
how you define revival, right? What does that mean? I think it’s about
learning how to walk in the Spirit and grow in the Spirit.
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But the things that God deposited are still there. And I think that it’s
really pretty awesome. I’m thankful for that.

David Absolutely. Is there anything else that you would like to add? My
thought in particular was not so much the pastors who are really seeking
and praying, but the pastors who have a layperson go to someplace like
your church or like Asbury to visit and bring it back, and all of a sudden
this stuff is happening in the congregation and the pastor kind of is
blindsided and they start looking for books on what do I do now? Do
you have any advice for that kind of a situation?

Rev. McDermott I think pastors take congregations across thresholds.

When God visited The Crossing, the weird thing was it just happened.
We didn’t seek it. I didn’t teach on it. I didn’t teach on the Holy Spirit.
I’d been there a year. What was about to happen none of us saw coming.
It just happened.
So I was going down to Brownsville and teaching a seminar for
pastors, and I realized that our model isn’t typical. The typical model is
this: it’s tell and show. You can teach them and then they can experience
it. That is typical. That’s the best way to lead. Help you understand.
But there are times when God has to show and tell. It’s the opposite.
It’s like the day of Pentecost. He just shows up. And then you have to
explain that, like Peter did. People are going, “What’s happening?”
It’s much easier to criticize than it is to lead. You can stand in a revival
movement in the congregation and critique the guy on the platform
until it’s happening in front of you and you go, “Wait a minute, what’s
going on here?” It’s a different ballgame. And you’re trying to really
discern the Spirit in those moments. You’ve got to work through it.
Here’s my takeaway: when these waves of the Spirit come, ride the
wave as far as it will take you. Practically speaking, you can’t do it
forever. I mean, Toronto did it for years, but they couldn’t find their
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church after the first few months. Who’s here and who’s not?
And Asbury had to go back to normal life. They couldn’t quite keep
going. So there’s elements of practical sustainability. That’s really true.
And you have to look at it. But when these waves come — we had several
waves come, more than several — you ride them. It’s hard to see. You’re
aware that all of the sudden this is just not happening anymore. But
you take that for as long as you can take it and you sort of just go with
it and see what you learned. In those days of extended meetings you
learn more in a week than you’d learn in ten, twenty years.
We had an outbreak happen in 2008, an amazing healing. It was
unbelievable. We had a guy get out of the wheelchair and walk. He
hadn’t walked in two or three years. I mean, the air left the room. It
was out of the box. I watched this guy every week come to church and
this guy brought him in a wheelchair, wheeling him into the church. I
mean, it was unbelievable.
So you have these moments come, and you lean into them. You learn
from it and you watch how God moves and it’s pretty astounding.
I still keep curious and keep learning, keep reflecting. And when the
moment comes, step through the door. When God opens the door, just
step through it.
And you don’t try to make it happen. It’s a hard thing. I mean what’s
hard is knowing that passive and active part. It’s more of an art form
than a science.
I know you have to pursue revival, but sometimes they just try to get
the emotions all worked up. Actually, I think that’s what made Asbury
so beautiful. It’s so pure. You want that purity in it. And that’s what I
think makes it an art form. It’s a sense of, I can’t even describe it. But
when the moment comes you jump through it, take it for what it’s worth,
and you learn from it and then you grow in it. And this is how God
really changes our lives and really uses us.
I would rather go to church on a Sunday morning and not come out
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and say, how great was the pastor, the sermon was fantastic, or how
great was the worship, it was fantastic. I want to come out of church
and say, wasn’t God amazing? And that’s what’s missing. It’s about the
superstar preacher, the superstar worship leader. And, you know, it’s
not. Church is about his presence.
When you travel in the world, you realize it’s about his presence.
That’s what sustains the church. And I think revival reminds us, the
Asbury revival, it’s about him. It’s not about us. It’s not about our agenda.
It’s not about how big our church is, how big our budget is. It’s about
hearing his voice. It’s about being willing to be used again. And God in
revival presses the reset button. It’s like everything goes back to “this
is the priority.” And you begin to live that, and that’s what causes this
advancement forward in the Spirit. And God begins to move. More
than you know.
I mean, that’s all it is. But, you know, different roles in the kingdom,
how God uses us. I’ve been thankful that God’s allowed me to see what
I’m seeing in my lifetime.

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Case Study 3: The Author’s Experience

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive

words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your
faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. — 1
Corinthians 2:4–5 NIV

God has allowed me to experience revival from three different perspec-

tives: seeker, pastor, and student. Beginning sometime in the 1990s, the
above passage was the key verse that guided my life and ministry. (For
the first ten or so years it was Joshua 1:8, and since I retired from pastoral
ministry and began writing it has been 2 Timothy 2:2.) Experiencing,
sharing, and understanding the Holy Spirit of God in all the ways he
works and reveals himself has been my passion.

Mr. Wentz, Seeker of Revival

I was born and raised in a church-going family in Maryland. Growing
up believing in God, I can’t say for certain when I first crossed the line
between being lost and being saved in terms of where I’ll go when I
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die. But I can pinpoint when I gave myself completely to God. It was
the summer of 1972, when I was eighteen, at a Young Life camp in
Colorado.
On Wednesday evening of the week at camp, a speaker explained the
gospel, then told us all to go spend twenty minutes alone with God and
pray. I felt I truly wanted to commit my life to follow Jesus. At that time
the most important thing in my life was my saxophone. I told God if
he wanted me to dig a hole and bury my sax and never play it again, I
would. It was the best way I could think of to illustrate how serious I
was.

If it’s more of God, I want it!

Later that summer I was invited to a Full Gospel Businessmen’s meeting.

It was 1972, and the Jesus Movement was spreading across the nation.
I was one of perhaps five hundred people there. Indonesian evangelist
Mel Tari gave a message on the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know
what that was, but I thought, If it’s more of God, I want it. This is not the
place to debate various theological views of the Holy Spirit, his baptism,
and his gifts. What I will say is that I received a prayer language that
night that has been an important part of my life ever since.
“If it’s more of God, I want it” pretty much sums up my attitude. I
understand that God is one, in a fully orthodox Trinitarian way, and
in that sense, I can’t have more or less of God; I either have God in my
life or I don’t. I also understand that some would turn that around, and
say the issue is letting God have more or less of me. Since that night in
Colorado, I have done my best to let God have all of me.
It’s been said that some Christians have more faith in the devil’s ability
to deceive us than in God’s ability to keep us. My view has always been
the opposite: I will seek God in any way that doesn’t go against the
Bible, and trust God not to let me get off track.
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I know the dangers of false spiritual experiences. On the other hand,

in Luke 24:25 Jesus said that being slow of heart to believe is foolishness.
It’s not an intellectual condition. It has nothing to do with intelligence
or education. It’s an attitude of the heart. Paul told us love believes all
things (1 Corinthians 13:7). If something purports to glorify Jesus, I
will give it every chance to do so.
The guiding principle is 1 Thessalonians 5:21–22 (ESV): Test every-
thing; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. Or as I heard
a country preacher put it, “Be as smart as an old cow: swallow the grass
and spit out the sticks.”
Isaiah promises, Your own ears will hear him. Right behind you a voice
will say, “This is the way you should go,” whether to the right or to the left
(Isaiah 30:21 NLT).
Almost exactly that happened to me a few weeks after that Full Gospel
meeting, when I was invited to hear another speaker. During a break, I
distinctly heard a voice saying, “There is a spirit of error here.” I took the
warning and never went back. It turned out to be a pseudo-Christian
cult that could have led me into a morass of error.
That was the only time I ever heard God speak in what seemed like
an audible voice. I believe he did it that time because he knew I was
sincerely seeking him and I was in spiritual danger, and I was too much
of a spiritual new-born to recognize his voice any other way.

Systematic theology!

That fall I began studies at the University of Virginia, with a major in

systems engineering. One day I ran across a book about systematic
theology. I was fascinated. Imagine capturing all knowledge about God
through systems theory! I could see myself putting it all together, neatly
explaining how God works in flow charts and diagrams.
As I began trying to apply my scant knowledge of systems theory to
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the little I knew of theology, suddenly I was overwhelmed with a sense

of the arrogance of my trying to define and codify God in that way.
Ever since I have had a healthy terror of “boxing God in” and so limiting
my ability both to recognize and join in his graceful, sovereign actions
in my life and the world. Instead, I was reinforced in my desire to be
open to new spiritual experiences, as long as they promise to glorify
Jesus and are not clearly against the Bible. That attitude has guided the
rest of my life.
God used my four years in college to begin widening my experience
of Christian spirituality. I attended churches from Baptist to Catholic
to Episcopal to a Jesus Movement commune. I played in what was then
called a “Jesus rock band” and attended some of the first “Christian
Woodstock” Jesus Festivals.
One evening in my third year in college, shortly after getting married,
I felt God saying he would call me to some kind of ministry, but the time
was not yet. So in 1976 I completed my degree, moved to Michigan to
work as an engineer at Ford Motor Company, and became active in a
small Church of the Nazarene congregation.
We were only in Michigan a little over two years, but it was there, in
the context of that little blue-collar Nazarene church, that my greatest
spiritual growth occurred.
I say “in the context” of that church, because the growth didn’t come
from a formal church activity. Rather, a group of seven or eight young
adults from the church began meeting in each other’s homes one night a
week for Bible study. We didn’t follow a program, and none of us had any
theological education. The pastor was aware of our gathering but not
involved. Yet the prayers, personal sharing, and informal collaborative
Bible study in that small group resulted in more growth than any other
experience of my life.

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Jesus Revolution land

In 1978 I felt God leading me to leave my engineering career and enter

seminary. After much prayer, consultation, and investigation, Paula
and I and six-week-old Joshua packed up and moved to Santa Ana,
California, where I enrolled at Melodyland School of Theology. The
name came from the Melodyland Theater, which had been donated for
use as a Bible school with the proviso that the name be retained. It was
right across the street from Disneyland, and during breaks in evening
classes, we could see the fireworks going up over Snow White’s Castle.
Melodyland was not fully accredited, but it was one of only two
seminaries I could find that were teaching about the baptism and gifts
of the Holy Spirit. The other was the Assembly of God Graduate School,
which had a prerequisite of New Testament Greek. Greek had not
been part of my engineering curriculum, and I recognized some of the
Melodyland professors as authors of books I’d read, so Melodyland it
was.
I’m not sure I fully appreciated it at the time, but at Melodyland I
was right at the source of the Jesus Revolution, both geographically and
theologically. Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel was twenty minutes away,
where our landlord played bass on arguably the first contemporary
praise and worship music record album, recorded there by Maranatha
Music. Half an hour in the other direction, John Wimber was just
beginning the Bible study that grew into the Vineyard Churches. And I
remember a guest lecture at the seminary by one of Oral Roberts’ healing
revival colleagues, who gave us practical tips on how to recognize and
follow God’s lead in large meetings.
During this time I went to as many revival meetings as I could, though
they weren’t usually called that. It was at one of these that I was first
slain in the Spirit.
For me, it was a very peaceful, non-emotional experience. At the
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end of the service, the speaker invited to the front anyone who wanted
prayer. I forget the specific wording, but I took it as, “anyone who
wants more of God.” That was me! So I went up, along with scores
of others. The preacher laid his hand on people’s heads in turn and
prayed for them. Some remained standing; others fell to the floor, eased
down by “catchers” stationed behind them. When he gently touched my
forehead, I remained conscious, not trying to fall but not trying to resist.
I sagged back into the hands of the catcher and was lowered to the floor.
For several minutes I lay there. There were no great revelations, but a
wonderful sense of peace. Then I got up and returned to my seat.
Melodyland sought to cater to all denominations, but most students
went on to pastor non-denominational churches. However, after much
prayer and investigation, I felt God was leading me to the United
Methodist Church, largely because they were open to my charismatic
experience.
As I worked my way through the rather involved United Methodist
pre-ordination path, I was repeatedly told, “You can do this step, but
as long as you’re at that unaccredited seminary, you can’t do the next
one.” My reaction was always, “Well, I know God has called me to
this, so that’s God’s problem.” When my next meeting with the District
Committee on Ordination rolled around, invariably something had
changed, and I was allowed to continue to the following step.

A pastor but still seeking

Sure enough, after three years of full-time study, in 1981 I received

my (unaccredited) Master of Divinity degree from Melodyland, and
was appointed pastor of two small United Methodist congregations in
Maryland. I was allowed to transfer two years of M. Div. credits to Wes-
ley Theological Seminary, a United Methodist school in Washington,
D.C., and studied part-time until I received my second M. Div. there. I
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used to joke that I should mount the charismatic and mainline diplomas
back-to-back, and turn the appropriate one to face outward depending
on who came into my office.
After the mandatory trial period, I became a fully ordained United
Methodist pastor in 1988.
I continued to seek more of God. In the 1980s I attended church
growth conferences featuring Paul Yonggi Cho, John Maxwell, and
Robert H. Schuller, healing ministry conferences by John Wimber,
and services by Kenneth Hagin and Benny Hinn. I also went several
times to large inner-city African-American Pentecostal churches to hear
speakers like Kenneth Copeland and Larry Lea.
My first experience in the River occurred when I heard South
African evangelist Rodney Howard-Browne as he was just coming to
prominence. Having first seen “holy laughter” and people “slain in the
Spirit” on a small scale almost twenty years before, I was not taken
aback by these phenomena.
In the next four years, my family and I visited the Toronto Airport
Christian Fellowship, site of the longest-running continuous revival
in North America. I experienced a number of the various streams that
make up the River, including a Morningstar conference on prophetic
ministry and revival meetings led by Rodney Howard-Brown and Randy
Clark. I attended three of Rock City Church’s “Peace for the City”
retreats and the international “Light the Nations” conference featuring
major leaders of revival from Argentina, Canada, the United States, and
other nations.

There’s always more

In all these, I don’t think I can remember a time when I did not respond
to an invitation for prayer. One of Randy Clark’s early books is titled
There’s More. My attitude continued to be, If there’s more of God, I want
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it. And God is infinite, so there’s always more.

As the twenty-first century dawned the River movement began to
wane. I continued to seek out opportunities to attend services and
conferences, but to be honest, many of them began to seem more and
more like charismatic hype than genuine revival. Much of that, I’m sure,
was well-intentioned preachers trying to hold on to God’s presence
by continuing to do what seemed to work before. Some, though, gave
the appearance of purely human effort. Seeking God, for me, began to
revolve more around small groups and my private devotions.
As I write this, I have retired from pastoral ministry and moved to
a very rural area where big-name traveling preachers are not likely to
come. But I continue to seek revival. Even before Asbury I saw things
in small towns and country churches that I believe are the birth pangs
of revival to come.

Rev. Wentz, Pastor of Revival

I served as a full-time United Methodist pastor from 1981 to 2015.
During that time I pastored six congregations in five places in Maryland.
(In the first appointment, like many beginning Methodist pastors, the
bishop assigned me to serve two small churches at the same time). In
2015 I retired and moved to the Missouri Ozarks, where from 2016 to
2020 I pastored a small church part-time in retirement.
During those 38 years of pastoral ministry, I never stopped seeking to
bring revival to the congregations I served. None of them experienced
a sudden outpouring of the Holy Spirit like that seen in Toronto,
Brownsville, Smithton, Rock City Church, or The Crossing, but I believe
they were revived nonetheless.
The fact is, most pastors will never have the kinds of experiences
related in the previous two case studies. I just named five churches
in which major outpourings of the Holy Spirit occurred as part of the
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River Movement. There may have been more, but those were all I can
think of. At the same time, countless thousands of pastors attended
services at those churches and sought to carry embers of revival back
to their congregations. I was one of those thousands.
It would be great if God chooses your congregation as one to whom he
will send a major outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Part of my motivation
in writing this book is the hope that if more pastors and congregations
are prepared to receive it, he will send it to them. However, if the next
revival follows the pattern of past history, it will come to most churches
as embers carried from another place. I include this section in hopes
that you may learn something from my own efforts as a pastor in revival
trying to carry it to the congregations I served.

Worship wars

When I began pastoral ministry in 1981 it was still common to hear a

certain kind of pastor preach that “rock-and-roll is of the devil.” It must
have been something about the music they objected to because their
opinion didn’t change no matter how worshipful the lyrics. You might
find the occasional acoustic guitar in country churches, but electric
guitars and rock-and-roll backbeats were met with suspicion among
pillars of the church almost everywhere.
I, on the other hand, was a product of the Jesus Revolution, coming
from playing in a Jesus Rock band in college and three years of
seminary in the birthplace of Contemporary Christian Music. I was still
young enough that when I started in ministry, a grizzled old country
blacksmith took one look at me and proclaimed, “They sent us a dad-
blamed schoolboy!” For me, expressing Christ through rock-and-roll
was only natural.
Despite what some of my older parishioners may have thought, I
didn’t introduce contemporary music to be rebellious. For me, praise
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and worship music with modern instruments was the soundtrack of

revival.
I was moved from the two churches of my first appointment before I
had a chance to do more than introduce the idea of modern music.
In my seven years at the next church, I began a contemporary service
that eventually drew a larger attendance than the traditional one. This
was the period between the Jesus Revolution and the River Movement.
That church experienced some significant divine healings and other
miracles, including a woman whose hearing was restored after being
lost to nerve damage in a brain cancer operation, but none of these first
churches experienced anything like the kind of revival we’re talking
about in this book.

Importing revival

In 1990 I was appointed to a church south of Baltimore whose history

dates to before the American Revolution. Still meeting in the small
white clapboard church erected in the 1880s, when I came they offered
two identical services at 8:30 and 11:00 am.
A year or so after arriving, I started a contemporary service at
9:30, meeting in the church Fellowship Hall, which was in a separate
education building. As at the previous church, this grew to be the largest
service, though attendance at the traditional services remained stable.
Discipleship, service, and outreach expanded, but again no sudden
outpouring of revival. One couple thanked me for introducing them to
more experiential worship, then left for the Assemblies of God where
they could worship that way all the time!
It was during this time that I became aware of the River movement. I
read all I could about it, took my family to Toronto to attend a revival
service, and heard revival speakers whenever possible. When I learned
what God was doing at Rock City church I attended as often as I could,
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often taking my family or church members. As a pastor, I longed to

bring this move of God to the people under my care.
My approach was to preach on the relevant Biblical passages, mention
my own experiences, and invite those interested to come back at a
different time to hear more. This followed the pattern of revivalists of
two hundred years ago, who preached the gospel in the morning and
invited people to return in the evening for a seekers meeting.
In our case, what I invited people back to was a Sunday evening praise
and worship service. I called it First Corinthians Fellowship, after Paul’s
summary of the New Testament’s longest section on public worship in
chapters 11-14 of 1 Corinthians:

Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize. When you meet

together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some
special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and
another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done
must strengthen all of you. (1 Corinthians 14:26 NLT)

When we began First Corinthians Fellowship in mid-1997 we met one

Sunday evening a month. Soon those who were coming asked if we
could we double that. The bi-monthly schedule continued for the next
two and a half years.
The format was similar to that of evening revival services in other
churches in the River, except that there was no formal preaching, and
we did not receive an offering. First Corinthians Fellowship was a no-
time-limit gathering for praise, worship, and whatever the Holy Spirit
wanted to do. It never drew a large attendance, but it radically changed
the lives of those who attended, and many others through them.
Most of those who came normally attended the contemporary service,
which met in the Fellowship Hall. However, we chose to hold First
Corinthians Fellowship in the church sanctuary, because it seemed like
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a more worshipful setting. As a pastoral issue, even that decision faced

some blowback. Some dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist members had
opposed starting the contemporary service because they didn’t like “that
kind of music,” even though it was at a separate service in a different
building. When they found that on Sunday nights guitars and drums
were being played right in the sanctuary they were not happy. But by
this time the contemporary service had been around for a couple of
years, the sky had not fallen, and some of the new people attracted by
the new music had turned out to be pretty good folks after all. When
these things were gently pointed out, the rumblings died down pretty
quickly. As pastor, I tried to smooth the way by reminding long-time
members of what I called their long “tradition of innovation” in years
past, including holding summer services in an outdoor Chapel in the
Woods and parking lot “church in your car” services.
Our faithful praise band members began showing up around 5:30 pm.
They had already set up and torn down the drum set, instruments, and
sound equipment once that day in the Fellowship Hall. Now they did it
all over again in the sanctuary.
The gathering began at 6:30. It would often not end until three hours
later. As I look back I am amazed at the dedication of the band members,
who may not get home until after 10:00 pm, with many going to work
early the next morning. Yet they did this twice a month for two and a
half years. Obviously, they felt God was doing something they thought
made it worthwhile.
We began with music. I led the band and wrote many of the songs.
Much of the other music was written at Rock City Church or was
popular contemporary praise and worship. As time went by, several
church members wrote songs, usually as poems which they asked me to
set to music. Historically, most revivals have spawned their own music,
as people open themselves to the creative gifts of the Holy Spirit.
We would start with a tentative playlist of perhaps twenty songs.
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As the evening wore on, I tried hard to be open to the Holy Spirit’s
guidance as to what songs to play, often skipping songs or rearranging
the order. We usually began with a number of upbeat, joyful, even
fun songs, expressing the joy of the Lord which was such a big part
of many streams of the River, with everyone on their feet and many
people dancing in the aisles. I gave no direction about this other than to
encourage people to freely express their worship and not worry about
what other people would think about them. I often told them, “I hate to
break this to you, but they’re not thinking about you at all!”
Gradually the songs would begin to express more intimate worship.
When it seemed the time was right, usually after about an hour, we
laid the instruments down, took a seat, and listened for a message from
God.
This never involved a prepared sermon. Someone might share
a prophetic word, usually starting not with the classic Pentecostal
“Thus saith the Lord,” but with the more charismatic or third-wave
formulation, “I feel like God is saying . . .” These would be informally
evaluated according to 1 Corinthians 14:29 NIV, Two or three prophets
should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said . On rare
occasions there might be tongues and interpretation, evaluated the same
way.
Sometimes I would feel led to share something, never more than about
five minutes, and rarely prepared in advance. Usually, I just opened it
up for anyone who felt they had something to share. Most often this
was a testimony of what God was showing someone or doing in their
life. Several people might share in a given evening, speaking from their
seats and often building on each other. As pastor, I tried to maintain
a balance. I encouraged people to speak and thus gain confidence in
their ability to hear from God and share what they were hearing. At the
same time, I tried not to let it degenerate into a discussion of opinions
or recounting of anecdotes, or let one person dominate.
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Sharing time transitioned into ministry time, when members of the

congregation gathered around and laid hands on those requesting
prayer. Over the two and a half years the services were held, many
later reported answered prayer of various types, several testified to
immediate divine healings, and a handful of people were slain in the
Spirit. It was not uncommon for people to report seeing angels in the
sanctuary.
As pastor, I chose not to sensationalize any of this, or even publicize it
outside the church. Those who experienced these phenomena were free
to share with friends and other members of the congregation as they
desired. Nonetheless, some leaders in the Baltimore River movement
visited twice and encouraged me that what was happening in First
Corinthians Fellowship was a small but valid stream of the River. As
with Washington Crossing, our services attracted very few visitors.
In our case, in addition to my lack of publicizing the services, this is
probably because “revival tourists” visiting Maryland would have been
attracted to the better-known services at Rock City Church.
First Corinthians Fellowship attracted a very loyal following, but
never a very large one. At the time it was happening our average Sunday
attendance was around 40 at the 8:15 traditional service, 70 or 80 at
the 9:30 contemporary service, and 60 at the 11:00 traditional service.
Attendance at First Corinthians Fellowship averaged 25-30. Almost all
of them came from the contemporary service. Revival had certainly
come to the church, but not all the church had come to revival.
In fact, this was not unusual. Even congregations that experience
a massive outpouring of the Holy Spirit have their late adopters and
holdouts. As a pastor, I had to be careful not to let my enthusiasm for
what God was doing on Sunday evenings distract me from ministering
to those who were not involved in it.
After about two and a half years, several of the most consistent
attenders moved out of the area, including a key member of the band.
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Some other regulars became embroiled in strong disagreements over

some church administrative issues. After prayer and discussion with
the remaining attenders, it became clear that it was time to end the
bi-monthly First Corinthians Fellowship gatherings.
Even though only a relatively small part of the church membership
were active in these services, the flame of revival they represented had
a profound effect on the church as a whole.

• Attendance at the two traditional services remained strong while

the newly started contemporary service grew to become the largest
of the three. At all three services the worship space was comfortably
full, and the parking lot was stretched beyond capacity
• Giving increased, allowing many new ministries as well as hiring
additional staff and air-conditioning the hundred-year-old church
building
• Attendance at weekly Bible studies increased
• A deaf congregation that had shared the building for many years
was taken into full partnership in a new Cooperative Parish, with
the pastor of the deaf church also becoming a part-time associate
pastor of the hearing church

A number of new ministries were begun, almost all of them initiated

and overseen by lay volunteers active in the revival services. These
included:

• Monthly Christian rock concerts featuring bands from the Balti-

more/Washington area
• Monthy community breakfasts
• Mission trips
• Participation in the local Thanksgiving parade, with the praise band
playing on a float
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• An evangelistic outreach offering free bottles of water at a local flea

market
• An adult literacy program
• A care and counseling ministry
• A youth band
• Monthly “Rest and Restoration” times in the sanctuary featuring an
hour of live harp music to aid people in “soaking in the Holy Spirit”
• Even an evangelistic Christian mime troupe!

In addition, several laypeople active in First Corinthians Fellowship

went on to ministries beyond the local church:

• Three women who had had abortions in the past began a regional
ministry to help other women find not only God’s forgiveness for
their sense of guilt, but also healing from the spiritual and emotional
trauma they experienced
• Michael Goins was instrumental in the growth of the international
Transformation Project Prison Ministry
• Ray and Kathryn Leight founded Faith by Grace, a national ministry
focused on helping people find inner healing and freedom in Christ

The church may have never experienced a sudden overwhelming

outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but I think all these accomplishments
from such a small group of people certainly testifies to his working in
revival.

Reviving the remnants of a church split

In July of 2001, about six months after First Corinthians Fellowship

ended, the bishop transferred me to another church. I followed a pastor
who was retiring after over thirty years in that congregation, a very
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unusual length of time among Methodists. Under his leadership, the

congregation had grown from twenty or thirty in attendance to over
six hundred. For many members he was the only pastor they had ever
known.
Theologically, the retiring pastor and I were very similar; in fact, I had
considered him a mentor. Ecclesiologically, however, we were quite
different. He had cultivated a vision for the congregation of becoming a
pastor-centered mega-church. Indeed, three Sunday morning services
averaging around 650 total attendance were filling the available space,
and he already had an architect’s drawing for a new building.
Shortly after I replaced him, church leaders asked me for my vision
for the church. I didn’t have a ready answer, but after some weeks of
prayer, I told them what I felt God was showing me.
A strong and vibrant structure of small groups was in place involving
perhaps 80% of the regular attenders. I proposed that instead of
constructing an expensive new sanctuary, we have a rotating one-
quarter of the small groups meet for church in homes each Sunday
morning. This would open room for visitors in the services. In addition,
my philosophy is that any two Christians should be equipped and
motivated to be the church and have church any time, any place, with
anybody (Matthew 18:20). This plan would automatically develop new
lay leadership to do that.
I thought it was a great idea. But the response of the leaders was,
essentially, “No, not that vision! Tell us the megachurch vision!”
The retired pastor and his family, contrary to denominational policy,
had continued to be active in the church. When, after three years, it
became clear that I was not going to adopt his megachurch vision, he
and two staff members left and planted another church fifteen minutes
away. Their first service was on Easter Sunday. They took with them
over a third of the people, most of the lay leadership, and most of the
main givers, and left behind a mortgage, a large missions commitment
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to support, and a very demoralized congregation.

I refused to call it a church split, though that was clearly what it was.
Instead, I talked about two different plants growing in the same pot
which needed to be separated into different pots so each could grow.
As one of the staff members who had left was put forward as the pastor
of the new church, I chose to see it, for myself and for the congregation,
as him following God’s call to step out by faith into a new ministry.
I refused to let bitterness take root in myself or in those left behind.
Instead, on the last Sunday before they left I called the staff member up
to the front and prayed for him and the new church he was starting.
Then I prayed, preached, and worked for revival among those who
remained.
As at the previous church, there was no great outpouring of the Holy
Spirit over the whole congregation. Again, I was a pastor in revival
trying to bring it to my church, carrying the fire and trying to create
spiritual hunger in the people.
I had inherited a Sunday morning schedule of a small traditional
service in the old sanctuary followed by two contemporary services
in the gymnasium. Part of the contention with leaders who left was
my refusal to cancel the traditional service. It had not been unusual in
the contemporary services for people, especially youth, to come to the
front to kneel and pray at the end of worship.
I put a rug in a corner of the gym at the foot of a large wooden cross,
and invited people to make their way there to pray at any time during the
service. It soon became common to see ten or twenty people kneeling
there. Some were worshiping. Others were praying for God to move in
the service and the church. Others, praying for a personal need, usually
had someone else praying with them. After the service, I joined trained
lay ministers in personal prayer for these requests.
In preaching for revival, I chose not to focus on external phenomena
such as laughing, crying, or being slain in the Spirit. Instead, I
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encouraged openness to the Holy Spirit and whatever he wanted to do in

each person’s life, and taught about how to hear from God and respond
with faith. I also introduced the concept of soaking in the Holy Spirit,
and made opportunities for people to experience it. I consciously tried
to raise expectations, otherwise known as faith, that each one could
personally experience God’s presence.

A week of prayer

The closest we came to a big outpouring of the Holy Spirit at this church
was during a week of prayer in the summer of 2005. In some ways it
was similar to an old-fashioned scheduled revival meeting. We had
services nightly for six nights, and the objective was to revive faith and
passion. However, the focus was not on preaching or evangelism, or
even intercession or petition. Our requests centered on asking God to
provide us with strategies, resources, and effectiveness in carrying out
his call for us. But the real goal was for each person, not just the pastor
or those in leadership, to hear from God and share the results.
Attendance each night averaged forty to fifty people. This was only
about one-sixth of the post-split Sunday attendance, but it included
most of the church leaders and a gratifying number of youth. Over the
course of the week perhaps a third to half of the congregation came at
least once.
After some musical praise and worship and a few words of instruction
on the night’s focus, I released everyone for about half an hour to visit
different places in and around the church. They could visit prayer
stations set up for different ministries and concerns in different parts of
the building and property, walk a prayer labyrinth, or do whatever God
led them to do. Throughout, they were encouraged to listen for what
God might be telling or showing them. At the end, everyone gathered
again for a time of sharing.
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I urged people to write prayers on sticky notes. By the end of the

week the wooden cross was covered with confessions, one wall was
papered with thanksgivings and praise, and another wall with prayer
requests.
All this was encouraging. But where I really saw the Holy Spirit
moving was in people’s openness to listening prayer, receiving and
sharing what they felt God was saying or showing them. This was not
limited to just the few members with a charismatic background. Many
experienced this for the first time.
I asked everyone to write down what they felt they were receiving
from God. Here is a small sample.
From a young woman:

I walked into the stairwell by the elevator and thought about how
it is one of the least used spots in the church. I just had to stop and
cry. And pray for the dark spots and hidden corners. I didn’t get
farther. I just sat and repeated that to God and cried.
I also realized I was right by the door and I “should” move. But I
couldn’t. And later I realized why (after the weeping let up.) We
are always in danger of someone opening the door to our dark spots
and hurting us. We shouldn’t have dark spots - no cobwebs, no
dust, no places we don’t go. God wants His lights there.
The prayer is corporate and for individuals. And it’s from God.
I wasn’t seeking it — I was utterly surprised by bursting into tears
in the stairwell.
Our darkness needs to come to light.

From a member of the church council, an engineer not normally given

to this kind of thing:

My prayer: Lord, may we (the [church] family) be conscious of

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your spiritual kingdom and aware of your provisions.

The Lord’s Response:

• A Vision: I saw a man who looked like Jesus, that is he looked like the
more common portraits and portrayals of our Lord. He was looking up
while he was standing outside in the middle of a thunderstorm. With his
hands outstretched to the rain coming down on him, he was smiling. I
interpret the storm to be our challenges and the rain to be God’s provision.
• A Word: [The church] is a tool for God’s use. I interpret this to mean we
are to be useable.
• A Word: [The church] is to reflect God’s glory. I interpret this to show
us how he will draw people to [the church]; and, once again, we must be
able to reflect — we must be holy (1 Peter 1:15-16).
• A word: This time is not about the survival of “our” church. I interpret
this to mean that no one should forget whose church this is…it belongs to
God.

My request: That you [leaders] who read this would prayerfully

discern the accuracy of my interpretations and the source of the
revelations.
Lord Jesus Christ is my Master. I no longer am. Praise Him.

From a government bureaucrat who had been mainly a pew-warmer:

When I went to the sanctuary, I was led to pick up the hymnal first
— that surprised me, but I followed, and was led to hymns 130 and
131: “God will take care of you” and then “We gather together to
ask the Lord’s blessing.”
Clearly, his message was, ask his blessing, discern his will, display
faithfulness, and all will be provided. Then he led me to Psalm 40
— more reassurance — what a wonderful experience!
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From a high-school boy:

As I stood outside the labyrinth, I saw a journey. An adventure,

a decision to follow Christ, and a path to find him. The first few
steps were mysterious. How long is the path? Would I ever make it
out? I didn’t know…
As I got a little way down the path, I noticed I was right next to
the center, the goal. It was right there, so easy. But a little purple
line separated me from it, showed me there were no shortcuts. As
I walked on, it seemed like I was getting further from my goal.
Though I was closer, I walked along the outside of the maze.
I saw others outside the maze staring at me and I was embar-
rassed. I could have turned around and run outside the maze, but
instead I glanced at the center. I saw my prize, though the distance
between us seemed to grow, and I pursued it.
As I walked on, people would pass by me, separated by that purple
line. Some looked like they were ahead of me, or behind me, or
going the wrong way. But I couldn’t tell, so I had no place to judge
them.
As I seemed to be going in circles, I eventually reached the center.
There, I found God. His gift, His grace, His presence. And now, as
I glance at the entrance, I know what needs to be done… I can’t help
others here in my little God circle. I must make another journey,
back outside, to share my experience with the world. That way,
when the world is destroyed, they can take refuge with me in God’s
maze and we can worship him all of our days.
And so I leave this place and start a new journey.
(I nailed my plan for my life on the cross, and God gave me his
plan for my life. When I traveled through the maze, God showed
me life, He showed me how it appears and what to do. Please share
this with others, I’m not the only teen who needs guidance.)
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From a high-school girl:

I was walking in front of the church, by the corners of [the

intersecting roads] and I saw all the people driving by, and many
of them probably didn’t know or had misconceptions about God.
Then I saw the rain headed this way, and this little analogy came
to me:

• All the people were driving home because of the storm, and the rain was
already starting in a few drops.
• The coming “storm” of God’s power will bring many people “home,” and
it’s already beginning.

Now, I don’t know if that was really from God or if that was just
me. But I think it would be really good if it were from God. It
seemed to fit together a bit too well to be entirely from me, so maybe
God’s saying this could be if you pray for it. Or it could be — I’ve
never had anything like this happen before and I’m not entirely
sure it’s not from me because I don’t have any experience with this
sort of thing.

As far as I know, none of these people had “any experience with this
sort of thing.” It was clearly a move of God’s Holy Spirit.

Revival rejected

But somehow it didn’t lead to church-wide revival. Despite the

undeniable experiences of God’s presence, there was no call to continue
the meetings, even on a monthly basis. In fact, within a few weeks
the council was back to focusing on the church’s financial difficulties.
Within four months, discontent among influential members of the
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congregation had grown to the point that I called a “Town Hall,”

an open forum for questions and comments, but without decision-
making powers. One long-time member who felt she wasn’t getting
the attention she deserved took the floor to tell me, “You need to stop
spending so much time with God and start spending more time with
us!”
I wish I could tell you why this happened and how to prevent it in
your church, but I can’t. Looking back in the years since I have not been
able to identify anything I did wrong or should have done differently,
although I certainly might have missed something.
My takeaway is that God will not force revival on people who are
not willing to accept it, even if at first they think they are. The pastor
should not feel guilty if that happens.

Satisfied Christians
In 2007 I was appointed to a “tall-steeple” church in a prominent
location in a small city. My first impression was that it was a
congregation of old people and their parents. Forty years before, it
had been one of the largest and most influential churches in the city,
and many of the parishioners were still living in that past. However, as
someone said, “No matter how hard you pray, you will never wake up
and find that it’s 1960 again.”
A key aspect of revival is the freedom to move around, whether it’s to
lay hands on someone in prayer, to dance with joy, or even to be slain
in the Spirit. The architecture of the sanctuary mitigated against all of
this, with two sections of long immovable pews, steps and an altar rail
across the only open space, and solid wooden stalls for the pastor on
the pulpit side, the reader on the lectern side, and the choir behind.
For me, though, the biggest obstacle to church-wide revival was the
fact that so many members seemed satisfied with where they were
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spiritually. True, some were dissatisfied with the state of the church,
but that was because it was no longer what it had been, not because it
was not yet what it could be. Many were wonderful saints with great
Bible knowledge and years of following Jesus. Still, there was little
hunger for more.
Two examples illustrate this.
About a year after I came, I realized it was the fortieth anniversary
of the beginning of the Jesus Movement. I knew that many of the
young people who had been part of that had moved away from it as
they got jobs, got married, and raised families. Now children were
grown and gone, retirement was looming, and many were looking
back nostalgically on their youthful idealistic enthusiasm for Christ. It
seemed to me a perfect time to try to reignite that revival fire.
I talked about this to the church council, and proposed that we sponsor
a Jesus Movement reunion festival featuring bands and speakers from
that time. An influential council member was from the next generation
older than me. His response was, “You mean you want to invite a bunch
of hippies?!” Most of the council had the same negative reaction, and
what I believe was a great opportunity was dropped.
The second example is the response of the congregation when genuine
revival-like things did happen. On two occasions, several months apart,
I invited guest evangelists for evening services. In both cases, the focus
of the evangelist was on equipping the saints for ministry (Ephesians
4:12) by teaching them about divine healing and then inviting them
to pray for each other. In both services people were healed as other
laypeople prayed for them, or as they prayed for other people ( James
5:16).
Those healed testified in Sunday church services. Some of the healings
made a visible physical difference in the person. The healings lasted.
Yet significantly fewer people came to the second meeting than the first.
After the second meeting, even with its new healings and testimonies,
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there was not enough interest to schedule a third.

A similar thing happened with several attempts to hold evening praise
and worship services. All I can conclude is that most people were
satisfied with their Christianity as it was.
Having said this, there was a small core of people who seemed to catch
revival fire. The flame was preserved through a home group called
Flowing in the Spirit. I encouraged the ten or fifteen who attended
to open themselves to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and
several of them reported life-changing experiences. However,revival
never spread to the entire congregation.
In 2015, after thirty-four years working for revival as a full-time
pastor, I felt called to change my ministry focus to writing and took
early retirement.
I recount all this to share another side of pastoring revival from the
previous case studies. I pray both experiences, the massive outpourings
of the Spirit and the trickles of revival, will help equip you.

Dr. Wentz, Student of Revival

One of the first books I read as a pastor, after finishing all the required
reading for seminary, was Charles Finney’s classic Lectures on Revival. I
also read Charles H. Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, and historical
accounts of Wesley, Whitefield, Cane Ridge, Azusa Street, the American
healing revivals, and others. My motivation was not academic but
practical. I was a student of revival because I wanted to help my church
experience it.
At the height of the River movement, shortly after we began First
Corinthians Fellowship, a wonderful older woman in the church offered
to pay my tuition and costs toward a Doctor of Ministry degree. I was
surprised, not to say shocked, but I gratefully accepted. When time came
to select a dissertation topic, I quickly settled on “Pastoring Revival.” I
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had read plenty on revivals in history but very little about what to do
when you are in the middle of it.
As mentioned previously, my dissertation adviser recommended
a case study of two churches in the River. This involved research,
interviews, and visiting the services. Up until this time, my mindset
when I visited scenes of revival was to enter in as fully as I could, soak
up all I could, and bring it back to my church, both for my own sake and
for that of my people. Now I had to step back and try to see things more
objectively. I moved from participant to observer. It was a different
perspective, but I believe a very valuable one. I would not have been
able to compile the recommendations for pastoring revival that make
up the rest of this book without it.
Interestingly enough, my D. Min. work was done at Asbury Theo-
logical Seminary, the graduate school of the university where the 2023
Asbury outpouring started. When I attended in the 1990s, people still
spoke of the revival which struck a chapel service there in 1970. In
addition, extended revivals had struck the college in 1905, 1908, 1921,
1950, and 1958. I’m tempted to suggest a study about why one place
experienced so many outpourings, but I suspect the answer would be
similar to what a Buckingham Palace groundskeeper told a tourist who
asked how they got the lawns so nice: “First, begin 400 years ago.” Or
as Bart Pierce told me, “Where he’s been, he’ll come again.”
I readily acknowledge researcher bias. I believed, and still do, that
the River was a wonderful blessing from God, despite the inevitable
mistakes which accompany anything in which human beings are
involved. However, I do not believe my bias in favor of the River
adversely affected my ability to do meaningful research and analysis, or
to come up with the conclusions that constitute the remainder of this
book.

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 III

Part 3. Pastoring Revival: Shepherding

the Flock Without Getting in God’s Way
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which
the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the
church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
— Acts 20:28 NAS
 7

Pastoring a Move of God — Isn’t That

Presumptuous?

I believe the enemy does not want revival to occur in America, and
so pastors must guard against his attacks. We must learn to pastor
a revival or else run the risk of wandering away from the River. —
John Kilpatrick, When the Heavens Are Brass

If revival is truly a movement orchestrated by God, isn’t it a bit

presumptuous for human pastors to inject themselves into it? Why
not just sit back and let God do whatever God wants to do?
Wesley Campbell, pastor of New Life Vineyard Fellowship in
Kelowna, British Columbia, chose to introduce Spirit-led prophetic
ministry to his church in the context of small groups. In Welcoming a
Visitation of the Holy Spirit, he describes what happened the first time
they brought the ministry into the main church service.
The Holy Spirit came powerfully. People responded. Many fell on
their faces in repentance. Pastor Campbell writes,

As this surreal picture unfolded, I was abruptly yanked back to

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reality by a man pulling on my pant leg. It was a deacon in

our church. He had a look of panic on his face. Desperately
he asked, “Wesley, can I go to the bathroom?” I whispered in
a hushed tone, “Yeah, sure, go to the bathroom.” … When the
supernatural intersects with the natural there exists the possibility
for tension. That is why there must always be a leader. Renewal
or no renewal, somebody has to be there to say, “It’s OK; you can
go to the bathroom!”

Most scholars of revival agree that human actions and attitudes,

particularly those of the pastor, can kill a move of God before its
potential is reached. Being overly controlling and trying to make
God’s actions fit our theological boxes can quench the Holy Spirit (1
Thessalonians 5:19). Failure to provide Biblical safeguards or trying to
use the revival to build our own ministries or reputations can grieve
the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). Either one can bring a revival to an
untimely end.

Strike a Balance
There’s a balance to be struck between God’s initiative and the pastor’s
oversight. In The River Is Here, Melinda Fish writes,

What God is able to do in any local church or city, during this or

any season of renewal, depends on the discerning, faithful responses
of leaders who have learned above all how to get out of His way
and let Him move.

As a pastor, it’s humbling to think how many times when God was
working I might have been like a four-year-old “Daddy’s helper,”
thinking I was contributing when I was really just in his way.
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On the other hand, you can overdo getting out of God’s way. John
Kilpatrick advises,

A flock needs a shepherd all the time, so a pastor cannot retreat

from his [or her] duties just because God’s Spirit has taken over.

Fire is a wonderful thing, if properly tended. If it gets out of the fireplace,

it will either die or become destructive.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Revival won’t look the same in every setting. In fact, given the infinite
creative diversity of our God, it would be surprising if any two churches
experienced revival in exactly the same way. As we’ve seen, Rock City
Church and The Crossing had major differences. Each also differed
in many respects from other churches in the River such as Toronto
Airport Christian Fellowship and Brownsville Assembly of God — not
to mention the churches which experienced revival under the ministries
of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, and others throughout history.
And all were different from the outbreak that seems to be starting in
colleges today.
Clearly, God does not limit his sovereign moves to only one setting.
God can bring revival to college campuses, independent Pentecostal
churches, traditional mainline denominational congregations, and
everything in between. Successful pastors of revival do not try to force
their church’s experience to mimic any other.
It seems evident that the culture of a given church plays a large part
in determining how revival will look in that place. Tommy Tenney
certainly believes, from his experience of revival in many settings, that
this is the case. There were many aspects of the revival meetings at
Rock City Church that were very similar to how they have always “done
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church” at that place, though they may have become invested with a
new sense of spiritual presence. The worship at Washington Crossing
changed after the revival began from traditional to contemporary, but
it’s difficult to know how much of that was a necessary characteristic
of revival and how much was just adjusting to the times. Certainly,
in almost everything except the manifestations of revival, Washington
Crossing remained typical of successful evangelical United Methodist
churches across the country at that time.

New People
One of the first effects of revival is an influx of new people. Martin
Lloyd-Jones points out in his book, Revival, that these new people are
not likely to be a homogeneous unit, either with themselves or with the
existing members of the church.

You get a cross-section of every conceivable type and group in

society, irrespective of class, age, temperament and everything else:
a most astonishing feature, but one which is found with strange
regularity in all the stories.

And all of these people must be welcomed, often healed, discipled,

equipped, and incorporated into the church. In other words, they must
be pastored.

Leadership Counts
Other than two years as a missionary in the Georgia colony when he was
a young man, John Wesley did not himself pastor a local congregation,
but for decades he oversaw Methodist societies that were in revival. In
his journal entry for June 5, 1772, he compares revivals in two English
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towns, Weardale and Everton, on several points. His fifth point of

comparison is pastoral leadership.

There was a great difference in the instruments, whom God

employed in one and in the other work. Not one of those in or
near Everton had any experience in the guiding of souls. None of
them were more than “babes in Christ,” if any of them so much.
Whereas in Weardale, not only the three Preachers were, I believe,
renewed in love, but most of the Leaders were deeply experienced
in the work of God, accustomed to train up souls in his way, and
not ignorant of Satan’s devices. And hence we may easily account
for the grand difference between the former and the latter work;
namely, that the one was so shallow, there scarce being any subjects
rising above an infant state of grace; the other so deep, many, both
men, women, and children, being what St. John terms “young men”
in Christ. Yea, many children here have had far deeper experience,
and more constant fellowship with God, than the oldest man or
woman at Everton which I have seen or heard of. So that, upon
the whole, we may affirm, such a work of God as this has not been
seen before in the three kingdoms.

Wesley Duewel’s book Revival Fire describes a revival in East Africa that
began in 1930 and lasted fifty years. In the midst of this move of God,

some Church of England friends felt someone should be sent to

‘control’ the revived people, but this could easily have led to grieving
and stopping the work of the Holy Spirit. Leadership from within
the revival needed to be raised up and guided. Someone from the
outside could not as fully understand or as wisely lead.

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Revival Fruit
Like any manifestation of true Christianity, revivals will validate
themselves by their fruit. Individual Christians will be drawn closer to
God and a godly life. Pastors will be encouraged and renewed in faith,
hope, and vision. Churches will worship with renewed passion, disciple
with renewed understanding, and serve with renewed compassion and
grace. Communities will be transformed as Christian values of love
and grace are lived out in the lives of those who have been renewed.
Every person, every pastor, every church, and every community need
these things. That’s why God moves us to pray for revival, it’s why he
sends it, and that’s why it is so important to know how to shepherd
your people through it.

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Acquiring the Fire: Pastoring to Prepare for

Revival

Then those who feared the Lord spoke with each other, and the Lord
listened to what they said. In his presence, a scroll of remembrance
was written to record the names of those who feared him and always
thought about the honor of his name.
— Malachi 3:16 NLT

The famous 19th -century preacher Henry Ward Beecher once wrote,

In our church we have had for years an able-bodied committee

whose duty it is, when anyone is discovered asleep in the congrega-
tion, to go at once into the pulpit and wake up the pastor.

When I asked Bart Pierce why God chose him for the Rock City Church
revival, he answered, “God always finds a man that he can ‘beat the hell
out of.’ Then he may be able to use him.”
Tommy Tenney added, “God chose Bart because he had been doing
the right stuff for a long time, and he was hungry, desperate—not just
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to do the things of God, but for God Himself. It’s getting very difficult
to find pastors who are desperate enough for God to abandon all their
programs, yet have a heart enough for man that they’ll do the programs.”
When God chooses where to send revival, it seems he favors pastors
who

• fear the Lord

• always think about God’s honor and glory
• stay alert
• are humble
• are desperate for God
• have a heart for people

Lightning, Seed, Sharing

Revival is like lightning: you can’t make yourself be struck by it, but
you can make it more likely that when it strikes, it will strike you. If you
want to be hit by lightning, hold a metal pole on a bare mountaintop in
a thunderstorm. If you want to be hit by revival, persevere in fervent
prayer.
Revival can also be like a seed germinating. In 2015 I retired from
full-time pastoral ministry and moved from Maryland to a farm in the
Missouri Ozarks. There we began working with the Department of
Conservation to transform a former cow pasture into a habitat friendly
to birds, bees, and butterflies. We assiduously sprayed to eradicate the
imported pasture grasses and seeded with native wildflowers. As the
next spring came, we eagerly looked for signs of what we had sown,
and we did see some. But we also saw many other plants we had not
seeded, all over the field! The conservation agent explained that these
were from seeds that lay dormant in the ground waiting, sometimes
many years, for the right conditions to sprout. Our preparation had
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provided the right conditions.

Like a seed, revival may lie dormant for many years. When the right
conditions come, seeds scattered years before will sprout, some of them
in surprising places.
For example, a friend wrote me of something that happened in his
church’s prison ministry shortly after the Asbury outpouring. Most of
their prison chapel services are apparently rather routine. This time,
the leaders felt led to replace the regular live service with a video of
one of their home pastor’s sermons and altar calls. Oddly enough, it
was one that didn’t seem to get much response in the church service.
But in the prison, as my friend described it, “Thirty or more inmates
responded to the showing with confessions and crying and emotional
manifestations of God’s movement changing their lives.”
This was hundreds of miles from Asbury. On the surface it seems
completely independent of what happened there. But I believe this and
many other incidents are the first fruits of revival seeds that have lain
dormant for decades.
Revival can strike like lightning or spring up like a seed, but it can
also be carried from one place to another like a carefully tended flame.
So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while
he himself carried the fire and the knife (Genesis 22:6 NLT).
Revival flame is carried when people who have experienced it in one
place talk or preach about it somewhere else. Pastors who are seeking
revival for their church often open their pulpits to such testimonies. But
sometimes it’s just laypeople talking to their friends about what they’ve
heard and seen in other places. The pastor may know nothing about it
until things start happening in a church service or prayer meeting.
The word revival implies a bringing of new life to that which was
languishing. New life certainly seems to have been the effect of the
move of God in Rock City Church and Washington Crossing. Both
were experiencing the aftereffects of major congregational upheavals
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when revival came.

However, in neither case did revival come at the lowest point. Both
churches were on their way back up when the Lord’s move appeared. It
seems that neither being a dying nor a healthy church is a precondition
for revival, but being unwilling to remain in a depressed state may be.
This brings to mind the statements of Pierce and Tenney about being
hungry and desperate for God. In Tenney’s estimation, maintaining
that hunger is the key to maintaining revival. Keeping that hunger alive
in the congregation is largely a function of pastoral leadership.
Can you create hunger? Of course you can. The whole restaurant
advertising industry is built around that fact. They’ve done studies.
They know the color orange makes people hungry. They know the
smell of bacon makes people hungry. They know a sizzling sound
makes people hungry. There’s even a slogan in the advertising business:
“Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
Ask God to show you the spiritual equivalent of orange, bacon, and
sizzle for your congregation. You’re not manipulating. Jesus said, Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6 ESV). You’re
just helping them get blessed.

Four Actions
Historically, revival comes in waves. As talk of revival spreads and the
spiritual temperature across the country rises, it becomes easier for the
dry tinder in other churches to catch revival flame. So how do you raise
the lightning rod, stir up the seed bank, or prepare tinder and kindling
in your church? Four actions can help you and your people be ready
for what God might do.

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Pray for revival

If there’s one common thread among revivals throughout history, it’s

a lifestyle and atmosphere of prayer. This could include specifically
asking God for revival, but it doesn’t have to. Continual prayer opens a
spiritual channel between a church and God through which it’s easy for
revival to flow.
Pastors can’t make revival. You can hold special meetings and book
famous speakers. If it’s your style, you can manipulate emotions and
advertise with hyperbolic promises. Those things can generate crowds,
but they aren’t revival. If we want genuine revival, we have to ask God
for it.
When we’re praying for revival, all the normal rules apply.

• Pray earnestly: The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power
and produces wonderful results (James 5:16 NLT)
• Pray with faith: You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you
will receive it (Matthew 21:22 NLT)
• Pray with others: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything
you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you (Matthew 18:19 NLT)
• Pray persistently: One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that
they should always pray and never give up (Luke 18:1 NLT)

Preach about revival

Create hunger and expectation in your people by using the power of
the pulpit. Revival is not a subject to be covered in one sermon. Here
are just a few things you can preach about.

• What revival is and isn’t

• The need for revival in our world
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• The need for revival in your church

• The need for revival in individual Christians, including yourself (be
vulnerable but prayerfully wise here)
• Revivals in the Bible
• Revivals in history
• Current revivals around the world, especially in Africa and South
America
• Revivals in the news
• People you know who have experienced revival

If you have experienced revival yourself, by all means preach about it.
Just be careful not to let people think you feel like the experience makes
you more holy or spiritual than those who have not experienced it, or
that others have to experience it the same way you did.

Expose your people to those who have been touched by

revival
Most people who have experienced revival love to talk about what God
has done. Invite some of those people to speak in your church. They
don’t have to be famous evangelists or revival leaders, though don’t pass
if you have an opportunity to host one.
Laypeople can often convey a greater sense of genuine excitement
than professional speakers. If it’s one of your members, someone your
people know, or someone from a neighboring church, that can lend an
invaluable sense of authenticity. If they aren’t comfortable preaching a
whole sermon, or you aren’t comfortable turning over the pulpit for a
whole service, ask them to give a testimony.
Testimonies are a powerful tool that is underused in most churches.
The Bible says, They have defeated [the dragon] by the blood of the Lamb
and by their testimony (Revelation 12:11 NLT). In particular, testimonies
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from those who have been involved in revival can have many positive
effects.

• They help listeners realize revival is a real thing that happens to

real people like them
• They reduce fear of the unknown
• They help people recognize that God can use revival in different
ways for different people
• They demonstrate that revival is not just for fanatics
• They can raise the listener’s faith: “If revival can happen to that
person speaking, maybe it can happen to me!”

Create opportunities for your people to practice acting like

revived Christians in a revived church
In 1738 John Wesley returned to England from a failed missionary
trip to the American colony of Georgia. Thirty-five years old and an
ordained priest in the Church of England, he was so discouraged he
began to doubt whether he was even saved. His journal entry for March
6 records this fascinating interchange:

I found my brother at Oxford, recovering from his pleurisy; and

with him Peter Bohler: by whom (in the hand of the great God) I
was on Sunday the 5th clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of
that faith whereby alone we are saved with full Christian salvation.
Immediately it struck into my mind, Leave off preaching. How
can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?
I asked Bohler, whether he thought I should leave it off, or not?
He answered, “By no means.”
I asked, “But what can I preach?”
He said, “Preach faith till you have it, and then, because you
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have it, you will preach faith.”

Applying Bohler’s advice to revival, it might sound this way: “Act as if

you are experiencing revival till you have it, and then, because you have
it, you will experience revival.”
But wait! Isn’t it hypocritical to preach about faith when you don’t
have it, or to tell your church to act like it’s been revived when it hasn’t?
Wesley apparently had a similar concern, but he pushed forward
anyway.

Accordingly, Monday 6, I began preaching this new doctrine,

though my soul started back from the work.

I believe whether it’s hypocritical or not depends on your intentions.

If you’re trying to convince other people you’re more spiritual than
you really are, that’s hypocrisy. But if your goal in acting like a revived
Christian or church is to become one, that’s not hypocrisy, that’s acting
in faith. Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it,
and it will be yours (Mark 11:24 NIV).
So what do I mean when I say, act as if you are experiencing revival?
I’m not talking about imitating the preaching and activities of whatever
big revival may be in the news. Those are just outer manifestations.
True revival is on the inside, of a person or a congregation.
When I was young, it was not uncommon for my friends’ car batteries
to go dead. If they had a stick shift, the solution was a push-start. You
put the car in neutral, pushed it until you got it rolling, jumped in, put it
in gear, and let out the clutch. If everything went right, the engine fired.
Suddenly, instead of you pushing the car, the car was carrying you.
Acting like you’re in revival when it hasn’t started yet is a spiritual
push-start. Lead your congregation to do the things that a healthy, on-
fire church does. Whether it be prayer meetings or prison ministry or a
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new worship style or street preaching or a food pantry or whatever God

leads you to do, do it out of faith and obedience as if your hearts had
already been changed. I believe you’ll experience a spiritual combustion
that will take off and carry you and your church far more abundantly
beyond all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20 NAS).
That’s what happened to Wesley. Two and a half months after the
above experience, he reluctantly attended a Bible study where someone
was reading from Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans. His journal
records,

While he was describing the change which God works in the heart
through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I
did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance
was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and
saved me from the law of sin and death.

That was the beginning of the Methodist revival. It and its grandchil-
dren, the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, are still going strong
after almost two hundred years.
I’m not saying that if you pray and preach and expose your people
to revival and give them opportunities to act like a revived church,
God will necessarily send a great church-wide outpouring that draws
international attention. That’s up to God. Pursue God, not revival, and
leave the results to him. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33 ESV).
As I described earlier, in my own ministry First Corinthians Fellow-
ship, the Week of Prayer, and Flowing in the Spirit were all efforts
to do what I have described, and none of them resulted in a dramatic
community-wide or even church-wide move of God. However, groups
within each church did experience revival, and in each case the whole
church benefited.
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Guarding the Flame: Pastoring During

Revival

Sustained revival affects a church in various ways. Many members will

become personally revived. This may lead them to new ministries, or it
may lead them to pursue their old ministries with new zeal and power.
Revival may touch the largest part of your congregation, as at Rock City
Church and The Crossing, or only a few, as in my own experience.
Some of those not touched will object to some part or parts of the
revival, and either try to disrupt it or leave the church.
Still others will appear almost to ignore the revival, continuing their
old religious habits in the same way they always have.
It’s fun to spend all your time with the revived folks, but you’re still
the pastor of the whole church, so you have to figure out how to pastor
all three groups.
At the same time, new people will come. Depending on what God is
doing at your particular church, they may be curiosity seekers attracted
by reports of something different or revival-hoppers looking for the
next spiritual experience. Or they may be people who know some of
your members and see a difference in them, or who were affected by
new ministries spawned by the revival.
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By and large, the curious and the hoppers won’t stay. That’s not a
failure on your part. They came because they heard about something
unusual, and unless God does something new in their hearts, as soon as
the next noise happens they’ll be off again.
But some didn’t just hear about something, they saw something. They
saw a changed person in their friend or a changed church in the new
ministries. They saw evidence of the ability of God to make not just a
noise, but a difference, and they wanted that difference in their own
lives. These are the ones who are most open to discipleship.
How do you balance all of this, get God’s priorities, lead all the
segments of your congregation, continue to deal with the inescapable
pastoral fact that Sunday comes every week, and do it all in a way that is
sustainable over months and years? In other words, how do you pastor
revival?
I don’t have any magic answers, but based on everything I’ve learned
as seeker, pastor, and student of revival, here are some thoughts that I
pray will be helpful. These are roughly sequential, but there’s a lot of
overlap. You’ll probably have to balance several of them at the same
time.

Welcome the Holy Spirit

Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. — 1 Thessalonians 5:19 NLT

Many translations read, Do not quench the Spirit. That’s a good and
accurate translation, but I really like the NLT reading as well. Perhaps
it’s because I remember watching the TV character Archie Bunker
silence his poor wife by yelling, “Edith, stifle yourself!”
It’s bad when a man treats his wife that way. It’s worse when a pastor
treats the Holy Spirit that way. Yet we can do that, all too unknowingly,
if we dismiss out of hand anything that doesn’t fit our theological box
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or our ecclesiastical comfort zone.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should enthusiastically
endorse every weird thing that may happen just because somebody
claims it’s the Holy Spirit. As pastor, you have a duty to guard your
people against false claims and misleading directions. But it’s also
important to maintain a general heart attitude of openness and welcome
instead of suspicion or control.
Since ancient times, churches have started their services with prayers
inviting God to come and move. Formal liturgies begin with a prayer
called an invocation because it invokes the presence of God. Less
liturgical churches often just say, “Come, Holy Spirit.” The wording is
not important. The important thing is a desire to welcome God the
Holy Spirit, whose temple the church is, to manifest himself in and
among his people in any way he desires.
I love the story in Acts 12 when the angel breaks Peter out of prison.
Peter goes to Mary’s house, where he knows the church has been praying
for him, and knocks on the door. When Rhoda answers, she’s so shocked
to see him, she slams the door in his face! The prayer leaders aren’t
much better; they tell her she must have seen a ghost! So much for
Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will
be yours (Mark 11:24 NIV).
My point is, if you’ve been inviting the Holy Spirit to come to your
service and one day he shows up, don’t slam the door in his face. Invite
him in and make him welcome.
Even in revival, your church is made up of human beings. That means
there will inevitably be some things you will have to guide, correct,
maybe even rebuke (2 Timothy 4:2) if you want the Holy Spirit to feel
welcome. If you are truly seeking to follow his guidance as you do
this, the result will be even greater freedom, love, peace, joy, and all the
Spirit’s fruits.
Work to inculcate this attitude not only in yourself but in your
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congregation as well. I can tell you from sad experience that the Holy
Spirit can be quenched and grieved by the people in the pews as easily
as by the person in the pulpit.

Explain What’s Happening

These people are not drunk, as some of you are assuming. Nine
o’clock in the morning is much too early for that. No, what you see
was predicted long ago by the prophet Joel.
— Acts 2:15–16 NLT

Imagine you are walking down the street in Jerusalem on Pentecost

morning. Suddenly you hear a noise that sounds like a hurricane,
but there’s no wind. Then you see flames coming from the upstairs
windows of a house, but there’s no fire. Then a bunch of fishermen and
women from Galilee rush down the stairs and start shouting in strange
languages. Wouldn’t you want somebody to explain what in the world
is going on?
What God sends to you is not likely to be as dramatic as the Jerusalem
Pentecost. It’s not even likely to be as dramatic as what happened at
Asbury. Perhaps people will start crying, or laughing, or testifying, or
prophesying, or speaking in tongues, or rushing to the front for prayer.
Whatever it is, it will be different from what your members are used to,
and those not caught up in it will want to know what is going on.
In Acts 2, Peter explained. Let’s look at what he did and said as a model
for how you might explain revival when it happens in your church.

• He was filled with the Holy Spirit (verse 4). Don’t try to explain things
in your own power or intellect. Ask God to put the words in your
mouth. After all, they’re his actions you’re explaining.
• He stepped forward (14). Peter was probably as awestruck and
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overcome as everyone else, but he was a leader. There’s a reason

the lists of Jesus’ followers usually start with his name (see Acts 1:13
and 15). Peter saw the confusion, he heard the negative rumors
starting (“They’re drunk!”), and he took action. As pastor, when
your congregation is confused and rumors start flying, don’t let it
mushroom. You’re the leader. Step forward.
• He stood with the other leaders (14). Yes, you’re the pastor and you’re
the one who has to speak up, but if you have other leaders with you
it will make things a whole lot easier down the road. That may not
be possible if revival breaks out suddenly (though if you’ve given
them this book to read it will certainly help). But as time goes on
and things in your church start to change, having your leaders share
your vision and stand with you can be a lifesaver.
• He got their attention (14). Peter had to shout to get everyone’s
attention. You just need to not let go of the microphone. Don’t
interrupt what God is doing, but if others try to interrupt or hijack
it, speak up, calm things down, and return control to the Holy Spirit.
• He spoke with calm authority (14). In modern pastoral parlance, he
was a non-anxious presence. His stance, his stature, the tone of
his voice, all conveyed reassurance. People thought, “Hey, there’s
somebody who seems to know what’s going on. He doesn’t seem
worried. Maybe it’s not the end of the world after all.” What’s
happening may be as new to you as it is to everyone else, but at least
you’ve read about similar things. In the words said over me at my
ordination, “Take thou authority!”
• He squelched the negative rumors (15). After getting the crowd’s
attention, Peter’s first concern was to stop the gossip. It’s fallen
human nature to assign a negative meaning to things we can’t
understand. Before saying what was happening, he clarified what
was not. He didn’t just make a counter-statement: “No, they’re not
drunk.” He added a reason to believe: “It’s too early for that. It’s
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only nine in the morning.” If unusual things start happening in your

service people probably won’t think everyone stopped by the local
bar on the way to church. They’re more likely to think people have
suddenly become fanatical, or been hypnotized, or contracted mass
psychosis. Whatever they think, you need to reassure them that
nothing bad is going on.
• He cited Scripture (16). Whenever you explain something spiritual,
you’re on solid ground if you can cite a Scripture for it (in context,
of course). Notice that the passage Peter quoted didn’t address the
particular phenomena of the morning — the rushing sound, the
tongues of fire, the unknown languages — but Peter was still able
to make the connection. This side of Pentecost, our task is easier,
because we have the New Testament as well as the Old.
• He turned the focus to Jesus (22-36). Peter didn’t try to explain every-
thing that happened in detail. Instead of focusing on phenomena,
he turned the focus to Jesus. The Holy Spirit doesn’t talk about
himself or his activities, he testifies of Jesus ( John 15:26). As you
explain what’s happening, don’t try to satisfy people’s intellectual
curiosity. You won’t be able to fully, and that’s not the real point
anyway. Your goal should be to inspire a spiritual hunger for a
deeper experience of God.

The need to explain things doesn’t stop with the initial events of revival.
Whenever something unusual happens you should be ready to explain
it, as best you can, both to those who are there and those who will hear
about it later.
For instance, any time you sense a special atmosphere in the room,
others will as well. But if you don’t tell them what it is and that you sense
it, too, they may think it’s just something in their head. The lessons
from Peter’s address in Acts 2 apply here also. It can be very helpful to
say something like, “God is here. I can feel his presence.” Or, “Do you
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sense something in the air, a special kind of atmosphere? That’s God.”

And go on to build their faith: “When God makes his presence known
like that, expect something to happen.” Or, “God is making himself
available to us in a special way. If you have something on your heart,
this might be a good time to talk to him about it.”
Remember, you don’t have to satisfy everyone’s intellectual curiosity,
especially when it comes to speculating about why God might or might
not be doing something. Just being able to give something a label and
cite precedence — from the Bible, reports of other revivals, or your
own experience — is all the explanation most people need.
And if revival causes you to make changes to business as usual,
whether it’s adding services or changing music or introducing testi-
monies or anything else, it’s helpful to add Peter’s method to your
normal process of introducing change.

Your First Set of Decisions

In the Introduction, we looked at the first set of decisions Kevin Brown,
President of Asbury University, had to make when revival broke out in
a chapel service. When revival comes to your church, you will also be
called on to make some decisions.
If it happens suddenly in a church service, as it did with Rock City
Church and The Crossing, many of your decisions will be similar to
those faced by Dr. Brown. If you’re working to import revival, as I did
throughout my ministry, there will be a different set of decisions.

If God takes you by surprise

You’re leading your congregation through a normal worship service,

and suddenly it’s not a normal service anymore. Perhaps someone
interrupts verbally, or starts acting in a strange way. Perhaps testimonies
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are a normal part of your service, but today they are unusually long, or
powerful, or plentiful. Perhaps half the church responds to the altar
call.
Your first responsibility as pastor is to discern whether what’s
happening is a human-initiated distraction, however well-intentioned,
or whether it’s God breaking into your service. The difficulty is that
even when it is God, he still works through humans saying and doing
things.
This is a good time to silently pray one of my favorite prayers: “Help!”
Then shepherd your flock, trusting that God will not let you lead them
astray as you decide:

• Will you call things to order and go on with your normal pattern
of worship, make adjustments, or abandon your worship plan
altogether?
• If someone wants to speak, will you give them the platform, will
you ask them to tell you what they want to say and then decide, or
will you just deny the request, at least for this service? If you let
them speak, will you give them the microphone or keep holding it
yourself?
• If you are recording or live-streaming the service, will you continue,
curtail recording, or keep recording but cease live-streaming until
later review?
• If things still seem to be happening as your normal dismissal time
approaches, will you extend the service? I have found it effective to
say something like, “It’s X o’clock, so if you have to go you may, but
God seems to be doing something unusual here so if you can stay
longer I encourage you to do that.” Also remember other people
or activities that could be affected by an extended service, such as
child care workers or another activity that needs the worship space.
• Will you schedule a special service, perhaps that evening, for those
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who want to pursue what happened? If not, how will you follow
up? How will you publicize it, and to whom?

If you’re importing the flame

A sudden outpouring of the Holy Spirit is exciting, and God can do

it anywhere at any time. However, that experience is limited to the
relatively small number of people who happen to be in a given church
service when it happens, or who can travel to that location for follow-up
services. For everyone else, the revival flame is carefully carried from
another place, stoked, and tended. If you are one carrying revival from
a place you’ve been, or hoping to light a match, your decisions will be
different.

• How will you prepare your people? Will your preaching and public
prayers focus on revival? If so, in what way?
• Will you try to bring revival into a regular worship service, or
schedule special services?
• Will you speak yourself, invite testimonies from laypeople, or invite
a guest preacher?
• What will be the marks of revival you teach and look for? Is there
anything you will particularly encourage or discourage?

Set Some Ground Rules

Ground rules are basic policies that keep you from having to make
decisions about the same questions over and over. They can save a lot
of time and avoid a lot of trouble. You can’t foresee every possible issue,
but it’s a good idea to think ahead of time about possible situations and
how you will want to deal with them.
You probably have some ground rules in place already, even if you
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don’t call them that. They are the practices that are so ingrained in
your congregation that members think of them as “just the way you
do things.” And they make sure new folks learn them! Things like the
unwritten church dress code, whether you allow food or coffee in the
sanctuary, what kind of outside groups or activities are allowed to use
your building, what kinds of decorations are allowed in the worship
space, and so on. Unless your congregation is a brand new church plant,
these are things that have grown up gradually over time as now and
then a new question arose.
Revival brings a lot of new questions all at once. Hence the need to
consciously create a new set of ground rules.
So what kind of ground rules do you need? Here are just a few of the
areas you might want to think about.

• Who is authorized to speak on behalf of the church?

• Will you limit service length?
• Will you set a curfew time for evening services?
• What will be your attitude toward visitors from other local
churches?
• What rules might you want about people taking photos or videos,
including sharing or streaming on social media?
• What rules might you want about using names or other personal
information on social media?

In thirty-eight years of ministry, I never ceased to be amazed at what

some people seemed to consider appropriate things to say in church or
post online. I suggest you consider ground rules that prohibit:

• Political speech
• Arguments about theological or eschatological opinions
• Implying that people who don’t come to revival services are less
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spiritual than those who do

• Implying that revival means your church is better or more spiritual
than others
• Implying that certain revival experiences are necessary for salvation
or to be a good Christian
• Urging people to leave their church and come to yours

As pastor, you might want to consider some personal ground rules

as well. One issue faced at Asbury was outside “revival experts” who
offered to take over what was happening. Most of these were, no doubt,
sincerely well-intentioned people who felt that their experience could
be helpful. If revival at your church garners some publicity, you could
be on the receiving end of similar offers, not only from revivalists,
but from denominational officials as well. If you have an appropriate
measure of humility, it can be tempting to defer to their presumably
greater expertise. However, God sent this revival to your church, not
theirs. And he sent it to revive your church, not their ministry. Think
and pray carefully about how God might want you to respond if such
an offer comes your way.

Be Open to New Experiences

An important principle of revival leadership is openness to whatever
new things God may want to do. John Kilpatrick wrote,

As God takes us “from glory to glory,” He will also take us out of

our comfort zones. When new and different things happen, we
must be careful that we rejoice, and enter into all God has for us.
If not, we may never taste of the next “glory” God is bringing.

“New and different” is a mild description of some of the things

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that happened in River services. Kilpatrick himself was at first

uncomfortable with many of the manifestations which occurred in
his church. After he began to experience some of them personally, he
became “more hesitant to stop and hinder others from doing the same.”
As we’ve mentioned, people who experienced the previous revival
may bring those responses and manifestations to the next one. This is
not necessarily good or bad. My attitude is to be open to anything that
is not clearly unbiblical unless God guides me otherwise.
So what does “unbiblical” mean? Some would say that anything not
specifically authorized or exemplified in the Bible is unbiblical. Carried
to its logical conclusion, that would rule out live-streaming, pipe organs,
and even church buildings. But the Bible says, Wherever the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17 NLT). One of God’s
major attributes is creativity. God will never go against his word, but he
loves to do new things. So I don’t consider anything unbiblical unless it
directly violates a biblical command or principle.
Again, we come back to 1 Thessalonians 5:21–22: Examine everything
carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil
(NAS).

Welcome New People

I saw a cartoon depicting the chair of the pastoral search committee
summing up the meeting: “So we’re agreed. We want a pastor with
dynamic, creative, forward-thinking new ideas that will attract more
people just like us.”
Unfortunately, that kind of thinking doesn’t just exist in cartoons.
Most normal methods of outreach depend largely on encouraging our
members to invite their friends and neighbors; in other words, more
people just like them. However, when revival breaks out, things are
different. We’ve already quoted Martin Lloyd-Jones’ observation in a
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previous chapter, but it bears repeating:

You get a cross-section of every conceivable type and group in

society, irrespective of class, age, temperament and everything else:
a most astonishing feature, but one which is found with strange
regularity in all the stories.

A lot of these folks won’t look or talk like your members. Some will
almost certainly violate some of your unwritten rules. Heaven forbid,
one might even sit in the church matriarch’s seat! Most of your members
won’t intentionally try to make visitors feel unwelcome, but it’s equally
true that most won’t realize how unwelcoming they can seem without
trying.
I don’t need to tell you how to welcome visitors, or how to encourage
your people to be welcoming. I’m just pointing out that in a revival
situation it can be more important than usual to devote some time to
intentional teaching on the subject.

Reassure the Fearful

After one Sunday morning service, a woman came up to me all aflutter.
“Pastor!,” she said, “You’ve changed everything!”
I wasn’t aware of any big change. I asked what she meant.
“The offering used to be before the sermon, but today it was after!”
One of the most natural and prevalent human emotions is fear of the
unknown. Almost as prevalent among religious people is fear of having
their spiritual security shaken. Revival can prompt both of these fears.
I was probably twenty years into being a pastor before I figured out
why so many people are so resistant to even small changes in the worship
service. It’s because, for many, the Sunday morning routine is their main
or only connection to God. If the routine is changed, their connection
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to God is threatened. That’s scary.

At the same time, revival often involves events or feelings people have
not experienced before. This can be frightening for those to whom it
happens directly. It can be even worse for those who only hear reports
of the crazy things that are happening in “those new services.” Has
their pastor gone crazy? Is the church turning into a bunch of religious
fanatics?
Usually, these fears can be allayed simply by addressing them, gently
but directly. A soothing explanation, bolstered by testimonies from
trusted church leaders, is probably all that is necessary.
Keep an ear open for specific concerns people may have. For every
person who talks to you about something, probably many more silently
feel the same way. For that reason, it’s a good idea to make your
reassurances publicly rather than just in private conversation with those
who come to you.

Educate the Skeptics

The modern western worldview teaches us to doubt anything that can’t
be measured, replicated, and explained scientifically. Unfortunately,
this attitude is often deeply ingrained even among faithful churchgoers.
We are all subliminally conditioned to be skeptical of things of the spirit.
The answer to skepticism is education. When people understand that
something is a known phenomenon and they’re given reasons to believe,
skepticism often disappears.
In many ways, education is just an extended explanation. As such,
you can follow the outline of Peter’s Pentecost explanation in Acts 2.
Depending on your preaching style, you could do a topical series on
revivals in the Bible and history, an expository series on revival passages
in the Bible, or a narrative series on your and other people’s personal
experiences with revival.
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I do recommend that you use your sermons for this education rather
than a Bible study or adult Sunday School class, just because the
questions probably run more widely than the attendance in those
groups.
For those who remain unconvinced after your best efforts to educate
them, perhaps they belong in the next section.

Silence the Cynics

There will be those who refuse to believe anything good about what is
happening in your church despite your best efforts to explain, reassure,
and educate. Fear is natural and skepticism can be healthy, but cynicism
is nothing but destructive.
If you’ve been a pastor for more than a few months you’ve probably
encountered your share of gripers, whiners, and complainers. Cynics,
critics, accusers, and nay-sayers can ruin your church’s morale, not
to mention your own. Revival, especially at the beginning, can be a
flickering spark. It needs to be carefully tended, not covered with a wet
blanket.
Paul wrote to Titus,

There are many rebellious people who engage in useless talk and
deceive others. . . . They must be silenced . . . So reprimand them
sternly to make them strong in the faith. . . .You have the authority
to correct them when necessary, so don’t let anyone disregard what
you say. (Titus 1:10-13; 2:15 NLT)

You have biblical permission, even an obligation, to restrict these

people’s platform for spreading negativity. If possible, get your
governing board or appropriate committee to stand with you; that
may take some educating of your leaders.
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If the troublemakers threaten to leave, ask them to close the door on

the way out. You can’t allow anyone to hold God’s work hostage to their
threats.
I realize those are strong words. I guess it’s because I’ve seen how
much damage people can do when they want to control the church
instead of welcoming what God is doing, or at least trying to understand
it.

Communicate With Other Pastors

It’s an odd thing, but if it’s not approached right, revival in your church
can be threatening to the pastors of other local churches. This is
especially true if you haven’t developed a good, trusting relationship
with them beforehand. It’s easy for some pastors to see excitement and
increased activity in your church and fear that their own members will
be drawn away.
It can be tempting to see other churches as your competition, but
I don’t have to tell you that’s not the case. Your competition is
the mattress, the fishing hole or golf course, children’s sports, and
everything else people could be doing on Sunday morning. The fact is,
nearby pastors can and should be your greatest support and resource.
Other than your spouse, only another pastor can understand the joys
and stresses of ministry. Only another pastor can give you advice that
is actually relevant to ministry. The only person who really knows how
to pray for a pastor is another pastor. And when it’s not wise to open up
to a member of your congregation or someone in your denominational
leadership, another pastor can be there for you.
Certainly laypeople can pray for you. Certainly laypeople can share
insights and encouragement. Certainly God can speak to you through
laypeople. But being responsible to God for the spiritual well-being of a
group of his children is a unique challenge. You need close relationships
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with others who share that burden.

Note: I’m not talking about the local ministerium that meets monthly
to drink coffee and decide who will host the next community Thanks-
giving Eve service. Those are fine as far as they go, but usually they
don’t go nearly far enough. I’m talking about pastors who will be open
and honest with each other and really pray together.
If you haven’t developed this kind of relationship with at least a few
other pastors in your area, don’t wait for revival or a natural disaster or
some other kind of precipitating event. Do it now.
You and the other pastors in your area should already be doing these
things:

• Praying together
• Coordinating church activities so you don’t all schedule Vacation
Bible School the same week
• Planning joint community activities or mission events to demon-
strate the unity of the faith and take advantage of strength in
numbers
• Warning each other about con artists going the rounds
• Telling each other if someone from their church suddenly starts
attending yours, especially if they are bad-mouthing the church or
pastor they came from

This creates a basis of trust for when revival comes to your church.
Then you can:

• Share what’s happening, so they aren’t going on rumors

• Talk about how to handle their members who visit your revival
• Discuss theological perspectives
• Learn from any who may have revival experience
• Offer any help you can in spreading the revival to their church
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Prioritize Among New and Existing Ministries and

Resources
As time goes on and the revival continues, you will have to plan and
prioritize accordingly. If the revival draws visitors they may bring
new resources, but that is not always the case. Your musicians, your
ushers, perhaps your childcare workers, whoever cleans the bathrooms
and takes out the trash, and you yourself, have limited amounts of
energy. In the initial excitement everyone may run on adrenaline, but
that can’t continue indefinitely. In the beginning you may postpone
or cancel committee meetings and other activities in favor of special
revival services, but eventually you will need to reschedule them.
Don’t assume that because God is inspiring the revival, that means
everything else should be sacrificed to it. Presumably, God also inspired
the good ministries you were engaged in before. Revival should enhance
these, not replace them. The new move may provide impetus to cancel
some hold-over relics that no longer represent effective ministry, but
that kind of evaluation should take place periodically whether or not
revival is happening.
This is not the place to get into how to go about planning and
prioritizing ministries. (My book, Pastoring: The Nuts and Bolts, goes
into detail about that among other things.) I just want to remind
you that if you’re not careful, revival can quickly deplete your limited
resources. Before that happens, it’s important to work through your
normal church decision-making processes to agree on priorities and
make some contingency plans.

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Be Willing to Make Changes

Revival changes people’s hearts. That heart change may need to be
reflected in other kinds of changes.
One example is the change in worship style at Washington Crossing.
At the time revival broke out, the church’s worship featured traditional
hymns and organ music. Once the revival was established, the hymnals
and organ were replaced with praise music and a contemporary band.
That’s about as big a change as a church can make, but the pastor and
congregation were willing to make it.
Martin Luther was willing to question traditional practices. Charles
Finney was willing to embrace then-unorthodox “measures” to promote
revival. Willingness to change and the ability to lead a congregation
through change are important elements of pastoral leadership at any
time, but especially in revival.
Members who are not involved in the revival may tell themselves this
is only a phase you are passing through, and things will soon return
to normal. Proposing changes to worship services or other church
operations implies that you intend this weird new stuff to be permanent.
That can inspire some strong opposition. As with any other changes
you propose, it’s important to seek God’s wisdom in the timing, in
getting appropriate backing from leaders and influencers, and in how
you communicate the reasons for the change and its benefits.

Keep Ministering to the Late-Adopters

Revival is by definition a new thing for the congregation. Like any new
thing, acceptance and adoption can be roughly plotted on a bell curve.
A few will be enthusiastic right from the start. As time goes on, more
and more will adopt the idea. Some will hold out a little longer, and a
few may never get on board.
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Remember that those who don’t get involved are still part of your
flock, and you are still their pastor. They still need and deserve your
attention, and their opinions and desires still count. Whether or not
they ever become supporters of the new thing, as long as they are not
actively opposing what God is doing, you need to support them.

Guard Your Character

Ron McIntosh devotes several chapters of his book, The Quest for Revival,
to the personal qualities of revival leaders that help sustain or cut short
revival. He sums up his findings by writing that the key is “the character
that makes up the private area of our lives. That is what causes the
momentary flow of God’s Spirit to become perpetual.”
He says the greatest enemy of godly character is success.

[People] will pray and fast, seek God, and wait on His favor in
trying moments, but once the breakthrough comes, they strangely
become self-sufficient. Somehow, they begin to believe the adulation
of men and become “doers” for God instead of “receivers” from God.

In Overcome by the Spirit, Francis MacNutt describes how this can

happen, and offers some advice from his own experience. He is writing
specifically about the slain-in-the-Spirit phenomenon, but his words
are good to remember regarding all the manifestations of revival:

If you find that people fall over when you pray for them, egotism
and vanity are certainly temptations you will have to conquer. . .
‘Slaying people in the Spirit’ is certainly a temptation to pride —
one of the most spectacular manifestations the ministry can offer.
It is dramatic, it is connected with me, it is visible. I need to work
to counteract in my own spirit any desire to show off. I have to
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develop a sense of detachment about whether or not it happens at

a given meeting — and certainly resist any effort on my part to
make it happen. Nor must I allow myself to feel inadequate when
it doesn’t happen (the flip side of pride). . . . Those of us who pray
need to remind ourselves, too, that people’s resting in our services
is not a sign of holiness on our part.

Here are a few reminders as you guard your character:

• Pursue holiness
• Be humble
• Be transparent
• Be accountable
• Be appropriately vulnerable
• Listen to constructive criticism and pray about it
• Ignore anonymous and destructive criticism; despair can destroy
your character as easily as pride
• Don’t steal sheep
• Don’t steal God’s glory
• Be overly careful and accountable about money and sex
• Specifically authorize one or two people to call you out whenever
they sense something you should address

I encourage you to ask a few trusted people in your congregation to

create a pastor’s prayer group, praying especially for your character,
wisdom, and energy. Preyed On or Prayed For by Terry Teykl and The
Prayer Shield by Peter Wagner are helpful books about how to do this.

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Protect Your Key People

Sometimes we pastors don’t realize the sacrifices of time and energy
our key people make. Adding revival services to your normal schedule
puts demands on your musicians, your ushers, your audio-video people,
your custodian, your childcare workers, whoever counts and deposits
offerings, and others. Usually they are happy to do it at first, especially
if they are experiencing revival in their own lives. However, as time
goes on and it begins to look like extra services are transitioning from
something special to the normal routine, it can become wearing. Many
of these people have a spiritual gift of helping (1 Corinthians 12:28),
which means they are unlikely to complain or even let you know they
are being overworked. It’s your responsibility to be aware and guard
them from burnout.
Here are some ways to protect your key leaders and workers:

• Publicly recognize and thank them

• Make a habit of asking them how they’re doing
• Set up a schedule that will spread the load
• Stick to the schedule so they can count on time for other things
• Make sure they prioritize their families
• Disabuse them of the notion that doing God’s work somehow means
they don’t need to take care of their physical, mental, and relational
health
• Teach them the importance of rest
• If you don’t already have one, create a systematic process for iden-
tifying, recruiting, training, equipping, deploying, and supporting
new people in these roles

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Guard Your Flock

One of the main responsibilities of a shepherd is to guard the sheep.
Revival can mean less danger from things like spiritual apathy, but it
can increase other risks — and often the new dangers are ones that
most pastors are not used to having to look out for. For example:

• Guard against pride: “God sent us revival! That must mean he loves
us more than the other churches!”
• Guard against complacency: “God sent us revival! That means
we’ve arrived! We don’t need to work on being spiritual anymore,
we’ve already reached the top!”
• Guard against division: “We go to the revival meetings a lot more
than they do. That means we’re more spiritual than they are. That
means our ideas are more Spirit-led than theirs are. That means
it’s our spiritual duty to squash their ideas by any means possible!”
• Guard against thrill-seeking: “People at that church have cooler
miracles than in our church. I’m going to start going over there!”
• Guard against presumption: “God’s blessing us with revival. That
must mean if we go way out on a limb and build a new building,
God will pay for it!”
• Guard against wolves in sheep’s clothing: “This new person says
they have more experience in revival than our pastor, and they
pointed out some concerns about our pastor that I never noticed
before. I’m going to start going to this new person’s Bible study so
I can learn the stuff our pastor isn’t telling us.”

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Keep Feeding Your Spirit

Acts 2:4 tells us that on the day of Pentecost 120 disciples were filled
with the Holy Spirit. Acts 4:31 tells us they were filled with the Spirit
again. Acts 4:8 says Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit in between
those times.
In Ephesians 5:18, Paul instructs Christians to be filled with the
Holy Spirit. He uses the Greek present tense, which means a repeated
or continual action rather than a one-time experience. It could
appropriately be translated as “be being filled” or “continually be filled.”
Why do we need to continually be filled and refilled with the Holy
Spirit? I heard a great answer to this question once, and I wish I could
remember who said it. The answer is: “Because we leak.”
That’s not a bad thing. Leaking the Holy Spirit all over is what
Christians are supposed to do. Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as
Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” John
explains, By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were
later to receive (John 7:38–39 NIV).
But you can’t keep pouring out if nothing is pouring in. You need to
keep your spirit fed.
It’s hard enough for pastors to feed their spirits under normal
circumstances. You can’t go sit under another preacher because you
work on Sundays. You can’t read the books you want to because you’re
too busy reading the books you have to. Even your Bible reading can
too easily become sermon research instead of spiritual sustenance. And
with meetings and counseling and hospital visits and administration
and worship planning and you name it, who has time to sit and soak in
God’s presence for an hour or two? Add the responsibilities of pastoring
a revival on top of that, and it’s no wonder your spirit could dry up.
You can’t let that happen. Your number one responsibility to your
congregation is to stay in touch with God.
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We commonly refer to pastors as shepherds, but the fact is we are

under-shepherds. Jesus is the shepherd. We pastor the flock on his
behalf. If we are not spiritually in a place where we can reliably be led
by his Holy Spirit, we are derelict in our duties. You have to feed your
spirit.
Just as a refresher, here are a few ideas about how to do that:

• Go on a retreat
• Journal
• Engage a spiritual director
• Watch or listen to recorded services
• Attend revival meetings at other churches
• Pray with other pastors regularly
• Declare a moratorium on electronics for a day or two
• Read faith-building books
• Try a Christian spiritual practice from outside your tradition
• Read or write poetry
• Listen to or sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians
5:19)

Remember the Sabbath

We may not all agree on what day the Sabbath is, or what we should
or should not do on the Sabbath, or even whether keeping a Sabbath
applies to us in the New Covenant. However, I hope we can all agree
that God told his people to follow his example of taking one day out
of seven to rest, and that he did not think it out of place to put that
instruction in the same list that addresses issues as serious as stealing,
adultery, and murder.
In other words, taking a break now and then is not a sin. It might
even be one of the Ten Commandments.
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Can I be honest with you, pastor? I have to tell you something you
may not want to hear: if you take a day off, your church won’t fall apart.
Your people won’t drift away. Revival won’t stop. They can get along
without you for a little bit.
But if you don’t take time to rest, you might fall apart. Your passion
might drift away. Your physical heart might even stop. You can’t get
along without rest.
For some reason, taking time off seems to be one of the hardest things
for pastors to do. And when revival comes, it seems even harder. But
that can be when it’s most important.
I remind you again: Charles Finney, who knew a little something
about revivals, said one of the main killers of revival is physical
exhaustion of the leaders.
‘Nuff said. Go take a nap.

From Revival to Revived

If revival is an intervention by which God breathes new life into a
church, like spiritual cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, then it should
be a temporary phenomenon. When the church starts breathing on its
own, CPR is no longer needed. This is the view Bart Pierce espoused
when I interviewed him twenty-four years after the outpouring at Rock
City Church.
If revival is a state of openness to the Holy Spirit, enthusiasm for
worship, and a focus on living out the gospel, it should be the normal
state of the church. This is what Scott McDermott meant when he told
me The Crossing is still in revival after two decades.
The difference is obviously a matter of definition. The question I
want to look at here is this: if there is something you are doing during
revival, such as holding additional services, that is not a sustainable part
of your normal church activities, how do you know when to stop? And
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when you do stop, how do you keep your church from sinking back to
its pre-revival state?
The simple answer to the first question is, God will tell you when
to stop any special revival activities. He may speak directly to your
heart, as he did with Bart Pierce; he may speak through circumstances,
as when key participants in First Corinthians Fellowship moved away;
he may speak through your church governing board in your normal
decision-making process; or he may speak in some other way. One
of the main results of revival should be to make you and your people
more open and receptive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Trust his
leadership in this decision.
The second question has a simple answer as well. You keep your
church from sinking back to its pre-revival state by being a good pastor.
Preach the gospel. Pray. Love the people. Model holiness. Administer
wisely. Keep growing your spirit. These are all things you should already
know. Just faithfully do them, and God will take care of the rest.

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Don’t Water the Spark: Avoiding Revival

Killers

The story is told of a prayer meeting in a little country church. A deacon

stood up and prayed fervently, “Oh Lord, send us a spark of revival. Just
a little spark is all we need, Lord. Send us a spark!” A farmer chimed in,
“Yes, Lord, and water that spark!”
I’m sure God knew the farmer wasn’t asking for revival to be doused,
but unfortunately, that can be the result of some well-intentioned
pastoral actions.
Revivals can be and often are cut short, ending well before they
have accomplished God’s full intention for them. That’s not always
the pastor’s fault, but sometimes it can be.

• Y ou can kill revival by quenching it, dampening people’s faith and

enthusiasm through over-caution and over-analysis
• You can kill revival by starving it, failing to provide the teaching and
support it needs
• You can kill revival by claiming it, trying to use it for your own glory
• You can kill revival by over-controlling it, usurping God’s role in
deciding what should happen when and how
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When I first started talking about this book, several people advised me
not to write it because previous revivals had been “pastored to death.”
Trying too much to control everything can quench or grieve the Holy
Spirit.
On the other hand, Rick Joyner writes in his study of the Welsh revival
of 1904-5 that in their determination not to allow that to happen,

Evan Roberts and his colleagues allowed the enemy to push them
too far, so that they actually prohibited the organization that was
needed to help preserve the great advances that were made. Because
of this, just a couple of years after the revival, evidence of it was
scarce, and the whole nation quickly drifted back to its former
depravity.

Pat Kaveny, a veteran revival pastor and international conference

speaker, says the problem is not that revivals are pastored, but that
they are pastored by the wrong people. Some believe their experience
with previous moves of God qualifies them to direct the next one. Often
those in the next move humbly accept those claims and abdicate their
leadership. The result can be a poor imitation of what God did last time
instead of the power of what God is doing now.
Baptist pastor Paul Wellinghoff adds another reason revivals may end
too soon.

Many discussions and books have been written about why par-
ticular revivals died, stopped, or gradually dissipated over time.
I believe the answer, in a nutshell, is that those revivals became
about the revival and not about discipleship. Many revivals have,
in turn, led schools of revival when we need schools of discipleship
instead. The Apostles didn’t spread the fire of Pentecost; they
spread the gospel and made disciples. Love the move of the Spirit
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and remember the Spirit was given to us to help make disciples.

When revival breaks out in your church, you can be tempted to

concentrate so much on the needs of the revival that you fail to meet
the ongoing needs of your congregation. This can cause your members
to rebel against the revival to the point of snuffing it out.
Conversely, you can spend so much effort on the existing members
of the congregation, perhaps especially those who oppose the revival
for one reason or another, that the revival dies of neglect.
No one with a true pastor’s heart can be content to sit and enjoy
revival within the church while ignoring the needs of those all around.
An inward focus on the needs of the congregation to the exclusion of
those outside is a sure way to short-circuit any move of God. John
Wimber, founder of the Vineyard churches, wrote,

God [is] pouring out his blessing. But if we don’t dig the channels,
if we don’t go out into the highways and by-ways, if we don’t put
evangelism forward, if we don’t do the things God calls us to do,
then revival won’t spread.

Rick Joyner uses the analogy of pioneers versus settlers.

The spiritual pioneers usually do not like or understand the spiri-

tual settlers, but both are needed for lasting spiritual advancement.
. . . If the settlers do not allow the exploration of new places,
the corruption of stagnation will settle in. If the explorers do not
tolerate the settlers, no one will ever benefit from all of the new
places they find.

The River revival lasted longest in churches where pastors struck a

proper scriptural and Spirit-led balance in these areas. Some did it
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by relying on guest preachers to conduct revival services, leaving the

pastor free to focus on the needs of the congregation. Other leaders
moved from emphasizing physical manifestations, which could be off-
putting to some church members, to accepting them without focusing
on them, instead stressing an intimate love relationship with God—
“seeking his face and not his hand.” Pastors and revival leaders all over
the world used the then-new internet communications technology to
share accounts of what God was doing so that, if something unusual
happened, the pastor could know if it had happened elsewhere and
move forward with more discernment.
John Arnott, John Kilpatrick, and Melinda Fish, all leaders in the
River revival, have written from experience about the things that can
make it hard to keep revival alive. Taken together, their lists include
apathy, disappointment, discouragement, distractions, doubt, fear,
public denunciation, and pride.
These hindrances to revival can arise from within a congregation,
even one experiencing a move of God, at least as often as they come
from outside. John Kilpatrick observes,

Satan not only blinds the minds of unbelievers, but he especially

tries to distort and destroy God’s work in the heart of sincere
followers (2 Corinthians 4:4; John 8:44).

In his classic book, Revivals of Religion, Charles Finney listed twenty-

four “Things Which May Stop a Revival.” Almost two hundred years
later, only number eighteen no longer applies. (I have my own opinion
as to what should replace it, but without data relating it to revival, I
won’t name it here.) I’ve included just Finney’s headings; he adds at
least one paragraph of explanation to each.

1. A revival will stop whenever the Church believes it is going to

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cease.
2. A revival will cease when Christians consent that it should
cease.
3. A revival will cease whenever Christians become mechanical
in their attempts to promote it.
4. The revival will cease, whenever Christians get the idea that
the work will go on without their aid.
5. The work will cease when the Church prefers to attend to
selfish concerns rather than God’s business.
6. When Christians get proud of their “great revival,” it will
cease.
7. The revival will stop when the Church gets exhausted by
labour.
8. A revival will cease when the Church begins to speculate about
abstract doctrines, which have nothing to do with practice.
9. When Christians begin to proselytize.
10. When Christians refuse to render to the Lord according to
the benefits received.
11. When the Church, in any way, grieves the Holy Spirit.
a. When Christians do not feel their dependence on the Spirit.
b. The Spirit may be grieved by a spirit of boasting of the revival.
c. So, too, the Spirit is grieved by saying or publishing things
that are calculated to undervalue the work of God.
12. A revival may be expected to cease, when Christians lose the
spirit of brotherly love.
13. A revival will decline and cease, unless Christians are
frequently re-converted.
14. A revival cannot continue when Christians will not practice
self-denial.
15. A revival will be stopped by controversies about new
measures.
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16. Revivals can be put down by the continued opposition of the

Old School, combined with a bad spirit in the New School.
17. Any diversion of the public mind will hinder a revival.
18. Resistance to the Temperance reformation will put a stop to
revivals in a Church.
19. Revivals are hindered when ministers and Churches take
wrong ground in regard to any question involving human rights.
20. Another thing that hinders revivals is, neglecting the claims
of Missions.
21. When a Church rejects the calls of God upon it for educating
young [people] for the ministry, it will hinder and destroy a revival.
22. Slandering revivals will often put them down.
23. Ecclesiastical difficulties are calculated to grieve away the
Spirit, and destroy revivals.
24. Another thing by which revivals may be hindered is
censoriousness, on either side, and especially in those who have
been engaged in carrying forward a revival.

Many of these problems manifest themselves in the lack of good

leadership. In his journal entry for June 12, 1774, John Wesley analyzed
the demise of revival in Weardale after only two years. He wrote:

1. Not one of the Preachers that succeeded was capable of being a

nursing-father to the new-born children:
2. Jane Salkeld, one great instrument of the work, marrying, was
debarred from meeting the young ones; and there being none left
who so naturally cared for them, they fell heaps upon heaps:
3. Most of the liveliest in the society were the single men and
women; and several of these in a little time contracted an inordinate
affection for each other; whereby they so grieved the Holy Spirit of
God, that he in great measure departed from them:
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4. Men arose among ourselves, who undervalued the work of

God, and called the great work of sanctification a delusion. By this
they grieved some, and angered others; so that both the one and the
other were much weakened.
Hence, the love of many waxing cold, the Preachers were
discouraged; and jealousies, heart-burnings, evil-surmisings, were
multiplied more and more.

The pressures of ongoing revival can expose cracks and weaknesses in

character which can bring down a pastor and choke the movement. Ron
McIntosh traces the pattern in the life of 19th-century evangelist John
Alexander Dowie, who started well but fell into financial improprieties:

Success gave way to pride, pride led to self-sufficiency, and that

made him “too big” for consultation with his peers. Lack of a
fraternal fellowship left him too open to criticism, and his reaction
to criticism in the later years was bitterness. . . . He also no longer
simply proclaimed the Gospel, but spent an inordinate amount of
time defending himself.

McIntosh lists other traits of fallen ministries, including pride and glory-
seeking, which lead to manipulation and exaggeration of results, and
“diversion of funds to purposes other than those for which they had
been solicited”. He expands on the latter:

Money tied up in things not ordained by God is a scheme of the

enemy to destroy ministries. Money poured into ministry is for
influence, not affluence.

Finally, McIntosh states, “The number one killer of revival is lack of

rest.” This was point seven in the list above from Charles Finney, who
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went on to comment,

Revival will stop when the Church gets exhausted through its labor.
Multitudes of Christians make a mistake here in times of revival.
They are so thoughtless and have so little judgment that they break
up all their habits of living, neglect to eat and sleep at proper hours,
and let the excitement run away with them, so that they overdo
their bodies, and are so imprudent that they soon become exhausted,
and it is impossible for them to continue in the work. Revivals
often cease from negligence and imprudence, in this respect, on the
part of those engaged in carrying them on, and declensions follow.

McIntosh sums up: “Overwork leads to exhaustion, exhaustion leads to

impropriety, and impropriety leads to a fall.”
Bart Pierce intentionally alerted himself and his staff to all these
dangers. He distributed Finney’s list to his staff and led them in a
study of it, so they could work together to avoid these obstacles. His
division of labor with Tommy Tenney allowed him to concentrate on
church matters without getting exhausted by also preaching the revival
meetings.
Scott McDermott did not take such explicit steps to avoid revival
killers, but his leadership style emphasized the kind of attitudes and
actions that keep revival going. In particular, he periodically took
members of his staff and key laypeople to visit the revival at the
Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, where apathy, doubt, and other
destructive forces were replaced by renewed enthusiasm.
An outpouring that does not spread to nearby churches can be a birth
pang of a revival whose full time has not yet come, but it can also be the
fault of neighboring pastors who water the spark and put out the fire.
Ignoring what God is doing, or responding with doubt, fear, envy, or
criticism, will certainly keep revival from spreading to their church. If
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these attitudes become pervasive in the community they can even seep
in to quench revival in the church where it started.

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 11

Putting It All Together

What follows is based on thirty-eight years of pastoral experience as

well as the case studies and literature reviewed in this book. Of course,
most of these conclusions are not absolutes. Ask God to give you the
proper balance for what he is doing in your situation.

Leadership
Does pastoring revival require different skills than pastoring a church
not in revival? Does it require different skills than pastoring a church
to bring it to revival? Given the short duration of local church revivals
in the past, the answer to both these questions is probably yes. Seeking
revival may require special skills in preaching and teaching. Sustaining
revival calls for additional skills in pastoral care and administration.
Fortunately, these are all things that can be learned, and every pastor
should continually be learning them.
While Bart Pierce and Scott McDermott are different in many ways,
they share certain characteristics with other successful pastors of
revived churches. Many of these are the same characteristics which
contribute to pastoral success in general: good leadership qualities,
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prayerfulness, and a desire to seek and follow God’s will. These are
particularly important given the difficulty of pastoring different groups
in a church which respond to revival in different ways.
Two pastoral traits stand out as crucial to keeping a revival going.
The first seems obvious: a view of revival as a desirable, even normative,
state for the church. The second necessary trait is the willingness and
ability to take actions specifically designed to maintain revival. Here
are some ways these traits reveal themselves in practice.

• Recognize that while a revival is a sovereign move of God, the

people and church experiencing it still need to be pastored.

• Be confident of your vision as a leader. Put in whatever time it takes

in prayer and study to justify that confidence, then continually cast
and recast the vision to keep it before your people.

• Lead by example in prayer, gentleness, encouragement, vulnerabil-

ity, and openness to God.

• Recognize that pastoring a church in revival can be more difficult

than pastoring at other times. Make this a subject of study, and seek
help with pastoral and leadership skills as needed.

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• Lovingly and non-judgmentally continue to pastor those who are

not receptive to the revival.

• Be sure to keep preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God,

with Christ at the center and fruitful Christian lives as the goal.

• Watch for or create opportunities for the revival to be expressed

beyond the church walls, especially in acts of mercy and justice for
the poor.

• Work closely with your music team and any pastoral staff, keeping
the vision of revival before them.

• Be prepared to pay the price for revival. This may include

disruption of normal routines, changes in perhaps long-standing
traditions, increased workload for you and others, and misunder-
standing and opposition from within and without the church.

• Prayerfully consider staffing and administrative changes that may

be needed to meet the new and continuing needs of the church.

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• Don’t allow the revival to become institutionalized. Resist the

temptation to think of it as a means to build up your own reputation
or your church’s finances or statistics.

• Be open to whatever God wants to do. Don’t restrict God’s work

by seeking some particular form of revival.

• Study and teach the things that can hinder revival, and take steps
to avoid them.

Revival Meetings
A subtle form of “putting God in a box” is seeking to make God’s move
in one place conform to the shape of God’s move somewhere else. This
is one of the great temptations of pastoring, especially when one church
is receiving public acclaim for its success.
Certainly, there are general principles for effectively pastoring revival,
and pastors should seek to learn and apply them. In fact, that is the
motivation behind this book. But it is probably safe to say that one of
the soundest of those principles is never to try to copy in entirety and
detail what another pastor is doing.
Applying principles is important; borrowing certain specific methods
may be effective; but seeking to replicate an entire move of God removes
the focus from God to what he has created in some other place.

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• If the revival began as one extended 24-hour-a-day meeting,

recognize that such a schedule is not sustainable without careful
planning and that God may not want it to continue that way.
Prayerfully consider whether and how to transition to a schedule
that will meet the physical needs and secular obligations of those
involved, and the ongoing other needs of your church and its
members.

• Prayerfully consider whether revival meetings should normally be

preached by you as pastor, by someone else, or by a team that may
include you.

• When someone other than you as pastor preaches the revival

meetings, be sure there is mutual understanding as to the respective
roles and boundaries.

• Do not expect any revival to be exactly like any other revival, even in
areas such as the amount of emphasis on intercession, repentance,
or worship.

• Recognize cultural differences in how revival is manifested, and

avoid unnecessary affronts to your congregation’s sensitivities.

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• Neither discourage nor unduly emphasize physical manifestations.

Recognize that they often accompany revival but do not produce
or validate it.

• When physical manifestations or prophetic utterances occur, exer-

cise scripturally informed prayerful discernment.

• Prayerfully strike a balance between unquestioningly accepting

everything that is claimed to be of God and accepting only what
fits your preconceived notions or prior experience.

Personal Considerations
• Avoid the temptation to start doing for God rather than receiving
from God.

• Jealously guard your personal spiritual life from increased time

demands. Don’t assume that merely being present in the revival
meetings will meet all your spiritual needs.

• Be aware of the legitimate needs of your body, mind, and emotions

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for rest and recreation outside the revival context. Teach the same to
your family and your church workers, and give them opportunities
to meet those needs.

• Be aware if your hunger for revival begins to wane. Renew it

through prayer, retreat, and reading about or visiting other revivals.

• Be aware that revival often brings increased opportunities for

improprieties or accusations of them. Take steps to safeguard
against such things, especially those involving money or sex.

Beyond the Local Church

• Publicly support what God is doing in other churches and move-
ments. If you have reservations about another ministry, privately
express them to the leader in a spirit of love (Matthew 18:15-17).

• Determine that you will deal with critics of the revival with
forgiveness and prayer. Don’t allow them to distract too much
of your time and attention.

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A Personal Request
Thank you for reading this book. If you have friends who might be
interested in it, please mention it to them or post about it. The best way
to help others find it is to leave an honest review. Just a sentence or two
is all it takes.
Thank you!

Final Thoughts
While God uses and indeed inspires many different specific revival
practices in many different places, the principles that bring sustained
spiritual health and growth are precious few and very basic. In fact, they
may all be boiled down into one, a life principle first stated almost two
thousand years ago: Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:33 ESV).
Prayer, openness, and obedience, all in pursuit of God’s will no matter
where it may lead: these are the keys to successfully pastoring revival.

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 Appendix: Foundational Principles

Many authors who have written about revival included a list of

principles they believed are foundational. Here are some of those lists.

John Arnott
Taken from The Father’s Blessing.

• Stay hungry for more of God

• Count the cost then pay the price
• Step out in God’s strength
• Ask God for answers then run with them
• Go for the kingdom!

Arnott adds,

If we want God to continue moving as He has, and if we want to

allow Him to take us further, we must love to see God do things
His way and not attempt to steady the ark (1 Chronicles 13:9).

Steve Beard
Taken from Thunderstruck: John Wesley and the Toronto Blessing.

• We should be supportive of movements of the Spirit, even if they

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are different from what we are accustomed to experiencing.

• We should check out what is happening outside our circles.
• We should become flexible enough to allow God to work however
he may choose in a given situation.
• We should be careful to not grieve the Holy Spirit by incorrectly
or prematurely attributing what may be a move of God to either
human nature or the devil.
• We should diligently test every spirit.
• We should spread the good news of what God is doing in the lives
of men and women.
• We should be gentle with those who may be tempted to extremism,
especially with the spiritually immature who are touched in the
midst of powerful moves of God.

Wesley Campbell
Taken from Welcoming a Visitation of the Holy Spirit.

• Spreading the renewal of loving God

• Unity in the faith
• The spiritual disciplines of prayer and intercession
• Prophecy
• Praying for the sick

Roger Helland
Taken from Let the River Flow.

• Teach and preach on the biblical, historical, and current experiences

regarding renewal and revival.
• Help people to experience and learn firsthand and to overcome fear
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 and wrong perceptions.
• Work with your key leaders and those being touched in key ways.
• Seek after and emphasize the fruit.
• Establish boundaries and protocols for meetings and ministry
times.
• Continue to preach and practice the whole counsel of God with
Christ at the center.
• Pastor the flock of God in and beyond renewal.
• Continue to provide outlets for ministry and encourage an outward
versus an inward focus.
• Be prepared for resistance, criticism, opposition, and “the cost.”
• Train your prayer people and prophetic people.
• Do not model or promote an anti-intellectual spirit.
• Above all, lead by example. Be proactive and preventive. Pastor the
church as elders and shepherds of God’s flock.

John Kilpatrick
Taken from When the Heavens Are Brass.

• Persistent prayer
• Building a proper foundation
• Expecting God to move
• Yielding to His Spirit
• Learning to pastor the outpouring
• Continuing to pray for the harvest

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