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Brownsville Revival

The Brownsville Revival (also known as The Pensacola Outpouring) was a widely-reported religious phenomenon that began within the Pentecostal movement on Father's Day June 18, 1995 at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida. Characteristics of the Brownsville Revival movement, as with other Christian religious revivals, included acts of repentance by parishioners and a call to holiness, said to be inspired by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Some of the occurrences in this revival fit the description of moments of religious ecstasy. More than three million people from nearly every continent are reported to have attended the meetings since their inception.

Events

In 1993, two years before the revival began, Brownsville's pastor, John Kilpatrick, began directing his congregation to pray for revival. Supporters of the revival would also cite prophecies by Dr. David Yonggi Cho, pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, as evidence that the revival was inspired by God. According to Dr. Cho, God told him he was "going to send revival to the seaside city of Pensacola, and it will spread like a fire until all of America has been consumed by it".

On the Sunday the revival began, Evangelist Steve Hill was the guest speaker, having been invited by Pastor Kilpatrick. It was claimed that hundreds of those who attended services that day were moved to renew their faith during Hill's sermon. In time, the church opened its doors for Wednesday-through-Saturday evening revival services to accommodate the thousands of people who arrived and waited in the church parking lot before dawn for a chance to enter the packed sanctuary.

By 1997, it was common to have lengthy and rapturous periods of singing and dancing and altars packed with hundreds of writhing or dead-still bodies of every age, race and socioeconomic condition. As the revival progressed the testimonies of people receiving salvation were joined by claims of supernatural healings. In Steve Hill's words, "We're seeing miraculous healings, cancerous tumors disappear and drug addicts immediately delivered." However, the church told local news reporters that it did not keep records of the healings. In 1997, leaders of the revival such as Hill, Kilpatrick, and Lindell Cooley, at the time the worship director at Brownsville, traveled to cities such as Anaheim, California; Dallas, Texas; St. Louis, Missouri; Toledo, Ohio; and Birmingham, Alabama naming it Awake America.

Decline

The primary part of the revival ended in 2000 when Hill moved on to pursue other works. In 2003, Hill founded a church in the Dallas area where he now serves as senior pastor. Cooley left in October of 2003. Kilpatrick resigned as Brownsville Assembly of God's senior pastor in 2003 to form an evangelistic association of his own. Until 2006, the church continued to hold special Friday-night services that were a continuation of the event.

In the years after the revival peaked, attendance at Brownsville Assembly would decrease amidst members dissatisfaction and allegations that the leadership had "carelessly fumbled away the precious spiritual gifts God bestowed on Brownsville." Before the revival began, Sunday morning attendance averaged 1,500, then grew to nearly double that during the peak years, but as of 2005 fewer than 1,000 people attend Sunday morning services.

Criticism

The meetings were criticized by some Christians and by the local news media. The Pensacola News Journal ran a series of investigative articles which focused on the donations raised during the meetings and where those funds went, as well as the claims of miraculous healings at the services and the spontaneity of the revival's beginnings.

For example, the News Journal revealed that a videotape of the Father's Day service that sparked the revival showed the service went rather badly for Hill. The paper also revealed Kilpatrick had been talking "revival" for several months, and had even threatened to leave the church if it didn't "accept" it. He'd also gotten word that Hill had wanted to lead a big revival.

The News Journal had initially written glowing reports about the revival from the time it began, but began a four-month investigation after former members told reporters that all was not as it appeared at the church. The series won George Polk awards from such groups as National Headliner, Scripps-Howard Foundation, and Society of Professional Journalists. Brownsville Assembly of God answered the paper's allegations by publishing a two-page spread in the News Journal entitled, "The Facts of The Brownsville Revival."

Impact

During the years of the revival, nearly 200,000 people claimed they gave their lives to Jesus, and by fall 2000 more than 1,000 people who had been touched by the revival were taking classes at the Brownsville Revival School of Ministry (BRSM).

Thousands of pastors visited Brownsville and after they went back to their home congregations, the spiritual refreshment and renewal they had experienced in Pensacola inspired an outbreak of mini-revivals that helped the Assemblies of God recover from a denominational dry spell.