Pentecostal Church Shakes Things Up Along Gulf Coast

PENSACOLA, Fla. —  In one of the most spectacular revivals in modern times, charismatic Christians have flocked to a Gulf Coast church. Their goal: to 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. Little noticed 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.

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 that 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--known as “the gay Riviera” for its openness to homosexual tourists, and more recently as the city where two abortion doctors were murdered--is the chosen location.

“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, believes this “very well could be” the third.

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 few 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.

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 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.

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. The church’s leaders in Springfield, Mo., have embraced Brownsville as a sign of their own commitment to spirit-led worship.

God has given the church a second chance in 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.”