David G. Bromley

Millions Ripe for Revival in Pensacola

DAVID BRIGGS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

                      PENSACOLA - In one of the most spectacular revivals in modern
                      times, charismatic Christians have flocked to a Gulf Coast church four
                      nights a week for 20 months. Their goal: Bring about a spiritual
                      awakening in America before the third millennium.

                      More than 1.5 million people have attended the revivals at the
                      Brownsville Assembly of God since it began on Father's Day 1995.
                      People line up as early as 2:30 a.m. to get one of 2,000 seats for
                      evening services.

                      Relatively unnoticed by the mainstream secular and religious media, the
                      Brownsville Revival has shaken up Pentecostalism with its return to the
                      movement's roots in emotional worship. Hundreds of pastors visit each
                      week in hopes of learning how they, too, might fill their churches with
                      baby boomers.

                      This is hard-edged Christianity - the path to hell is paved with
                      pornography, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes - combined with a
                      contemporary worship style that allows participants the freedom to
                      cry, dance, sing or do whatever else the Holy Spirit tells them to do.

If it sounds a lot like the "Jesus Movement" of the '60s, it is.

                      Only this time, church leaders say, the church is not going to keep its
                      distance if people want to dress casually, listen to their kind of music
                      or pump their fists in the air if they get excited about their faith.

                      "People are hungry for a real move of God," said 55-year-old Jay
                      Smith. He had driven up from Talco, Texas, and got his lawn chair in
                      line at 4 a.m. for that day's revival service. "People are tired of going
                      to church . . . and leaving church the same as they went."

                      There is also something more: a shared sense America is in moral
                      decline, and a belief preached by other great revivalists through the
                      nation's history that God is going to set things right.

Pensacola is the place God has chosen.

"I believe America is ripe for revival," said evangelist Stephen Hill. "I
believe this is turning into an awakening."

                      America has seen two great moments of religious fervor, in the 18th
                      and 19th centuries. Hill, a 43-year-old former drug addict and leader
                      of the revival, says this "very well could be" the third.

Emotional worship

Hundreds of people lie prostrate, wailing.

                      "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy," the choir sings, each time lifting
                      their voices higher as Hill storms across his holy stage, holding out the
                      promise of eternal life for those who step to the altar and warning of
                      eternal damnation for those who hold back.

                      Heaven. Hell. Heaven. Hell. Two minutes left. Now people are
                      running down the aisles, stepping over the bodies of teen-age girls and
                      middle-age men already "slain in the Spirit."

"Get on your face before God. . . . You've got 40 seconds left, what
on Earth are you waiting for? . . . 11, 10, 9, hurry, hurry, hurry."

                      Hill and the Rev. John Kilpatrick - the church's pastor - like to say the
                      Holy Spirit runs things at Brownsville. No two services are alike, and
                      emotions are wrung to get the last sinner in the house to repent.

                      One night, a lone trumpeter plays "Reveille" to get people up to the
                      altar, then "Taps" for those who are "in the grave, and they're throwing
                      dirt on you, spiritually speaking."

                      Another night, children being cared for behind the sanctuary start to
                      sob uncontrollably. Microphones are turned on the kids until many
                      worshipers inside take up the wailing.

                      There is not a dull moment. An organist dressed in black with long
                      blond hair and the mannerisms of a rock musician gets the audience on
                      its feet with contemporary Christian music.

Troubled roots

                      Revivalists have long been accused of appealing to emotion rather than
                      reason to win converts. Hill explains the dancing, the tears, the prone
                      bodies on the floor, another way: "God is in this house, friends."

How else to explain how a one-day stop at Brownsville by the
traveling evangelist Hill grew into a spiritual colossus?

                      Hill had a troubled youth; at age 21, he was a morphine addict. He
                      was jailed and was sentenced to a religion-based drug rehabilitation
                      center. There, he gave his life to Christianity, and he became a
                      traveling preacher.

His work took him to Argentina and throughout the United States. But
nothing like Brownsville had ever happened before.

                      A thousand people responded to the altar call that first day in June
                      1995. Kilpatrick grabbed the pulpit and announced he felt a wind
                      blowing through the church and that the revival the church had been
                      praying for had come. He fell back on the marble floor and didn't
                      move for nearly four hours.

                      Each night they decided to go one more night. Word got around.
                      Suddenly, people were coming from throughout the city, and then from
                      around the world. Now, hundreds are turned away from the sanctuary
                      each night, and must watch the services on a monitor in the church
                      cafeteria.

                      "I know it's so big, it has to be of the devil or of God," said Shirley
                      Keltner, 66, who flew in with a church group from Washington state.
                      "If God gets the credit, it can't be of the devil, can it?"

It is so big the organized church is sitting up and taking notice.

                      The Assemblies of God, born in the fires of the Pentecostal movement,
                      had come under some criticism that it was becoming too institutional as
                      the denomination grew and entered the religious mainstream. So far,
                      the church's leaders in Springfield, Mo., have embraced Brownsville
                      as a sign of their commitment to Spirit-led worship.

                      On a recent Thursday night at Brownsville, a silver-haired pastor
                      gently tapped his fingers together as around him younger men and
                      women are dancing, throwing their hands in the air and stamping their
                      feet.

                      God has given the church a second chance at baby boomers who are
                      looking for something more than material success, said the Rev.
                      Tommy Smith, a Church of God of Prophecy minister from Alabama.

                      "A lot of the older ministers were afraid of the 'Jesus Movement' and
                      they missed out on revival," he said. "Now they have another chance,
                      and they're holding on to it."

Hard-line

                      A steady stream of people - from unshaven good ol' boys in plaid
                      shirts to clean-cut teens - dump condoms, drugs, magazines, cigarettes
                      and other stuff they think is unclean into two garbage cans.

                      Behind them, the congregation is smiling and dancing and singing
                      "Glory to God, He set me free." A middle-aged man grabs the revival
                      flag from the back of the church and waves it.

                      They are told strongholds of evil have been broken all over the world
                      tonight. No moment brings them greater ecstasy than when a young
                      man dressed in punk clothing takes off one earring, then another and
                      slams them into the garbage can.

                      "Kick the devil in the face tonight," says Hill, who has been jumping up
                      and down and pumping his fist in the air. "He's already down and all
                      beat up. Kick him one more time."

                      No one preaches a soft Gospel here. Witches and warlocks, smokers
                      and beer drinkers, pastors and regular churchgoers, all come under the
                      withering scrutiny of Hill, who expects the "saved" to follow an
                      exacting code of personal holiness.

                      "Those of you who are hung up on love stories need to hear the wrath
                      of God," says Hill, a diminutive evangelist with a booming voice that
                      has only two settings - loud and louder. "Don't live on Twinkies."

Here are some examples of the gospel according to Hill:

                      "Willful ignorance has been the death sentence of thousands of AIDS
                      victims." Still, he says, homosexuals go into gay bars, "lining up like
                      flesh wagons, picking out their partners for the night."

                      "Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and cult members" are particularly singled
                      out during altar calls. "The only thing that will save you, the only thing
                      that will set you free, is the blood of Jesus Christ."

                      "My God is loving, but he also has wrath. There is a time when it is
                      over, my friend," shouts the peripatetic Hill, continually wiping his
                      mouth with a handkerchief as he stokes the fire in a brimstone sermon.

"And America, I'm saying to you tonight, you ain't got a chance."

It is an effective message. So effective that in one recent service, a
man went to his car and burned his pornography in the church yard.

"We don't suggest that," Hill said, adding with the perfect timing of a
seasoned evangelist, "Burn it in your own yard."

Long-term change?

                      A screen is removed from the back wall of the sanctuary and the
                      baptistery is framed in white like a stage above the altar. Two men,
                      already soaked, stand on either side of the men and women coming
                      forward and dunk them in the water.

                      As a young woman from Mississippi hesitantly steps out to give her
                      testimony, her body shakes violently and she struggles to control her
                      voice. Her dad had been married six times, and her mother twice, the
                      last time to a man who abused her.

                      "A week ago Saturday, I came to this revival and I told him to take
                      away the pain," said the woman who gave her name as Kelly, sobbing
                      now. "Jesus said if you had faith and believe, you can move mountains.
                      And this mountain was years and years of abuse, and Jesus took it
                      away."

How many souls have been saved? Perhaps 100,000, say revival
organizers.

                      But in random interviews over a three-day period, no one said they
                      were "born again." Yes, they had rededicated their lives to Christ, they
                      said - but these were people who had previously accepted Jesus as
                      savior.

                      Studies indicate that many who promise to change their lives slide
                      back into old habits once they are away from the highly charged
                      revival.

                      And whether it is possible to overcome problems like alcoholism or
                      the effects of sexual abuse in a single experience also is open to
                      question.

But it is clear many attending the revival believe they have been
touched by God, and healed.

                      One by one, as they gave their testimonies during the baptismal
                      service, they spoke of reconciling with their families, of giving up
                      drugs, of no longer being slaves to pornography.

When they get home, the changes continue, some said.

                      Jim Owens of Marion, Ind., said that after his wife came to
                      Brownsville, she went home and taped over movies like "Sleepless in
                      Seattle" with tapes of the revival services.

                      Gayla Agnew, 38, said that when she goes back to Lawton, Okla.,
                      she will go through the belongings of her teen-age daughters to remove
                      any inappropriate music or other offensive material.

"I love my kids, but I love God more," she said. "When I go back, I'm
going to clean my house out."

The believers say the revival can change the world, one life at a time.

                      "This could usher in an awakening in this country, and in this world,"
                      said the Rev. Mike Brown, another evangelist who moved to
                      Brownsville to help with the revival. "When God's moving, move with
                      God."

And how long will God move in Brownsville?

"I don't know, friend," says Hill. "I don't know."