What was the Brownsville Revival?

Question 4157.

The Brownsville Revival was a sustained season of intense meetings that began on Father’s Day in 1995 at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida, and continued for several years. It drew enormous crowds, with people queuing for hours and travelling great distances, and it became one of the most talked-about religious events of its decade.

As with similar movements, the Brownsville Revival raises a question that deserves a careful answer rather than a quick verdict. Was this a genuine work of God, a fleshly imitation, or some mixture of the two? I want to describe what happened and then weigh it, as I always try to, by the standard of Scripture.

What happened at Pensacola

The meetings at Brownsville were marked by powerful preaching on repentance, long altar calls, and a great deal of emotional and physical response. Thousands professed conversion or recommitment. There was also shaking, falling, weeping and the kind of manifestations that had become familiar through the earlier Toronto phenomena, which I describe in my answer on the Toronto Blessing.

Unlike some movements of the period, the Brownsville Revival placed a strong emphasis on repentance from sin and on holiness of life. The preaching was direct, sometimes severe, calling people to turn from sin and to get right with God. That emphasis is one reason the movement deserves a more careful weighing than a simple dismissal.

For several years the meetings ran night after night, with a settled team of preachers and musicians, and a steady stream of visitors came from around the world to see what was happening. Whatever one concludes about it, the scale and the duration were remarkable, and it left a deep mark on a generation of churchgoers who passed through those doors.

What was commendable in the Brownsville Revival

I want to begin with what was good, because honesty requires it. A movement that calls people to repent of sin and to pursue holiness is preaching something the New Testament unmistakably commands. If great numbers of people genuinely turned from sin to Christ, that is cause for thanksgiving, whatever else may have been mixed in. The Spirit’s work is to convict of sin, and any meeting where real conviction led to real repentance was, in that respect, doing the Spirit’s proper business.

So I do not approach the Brownsville Revival looking only for faults. Where the gospel was preached and sinners were genuinely converted, God was at work, and I will not call that anything other than grace.

This is an important point of fairness. It would be lazy to lump every stirring of the period together and dismiss them all in one breath. A movement that sends people home hating their sin and loving their Saviour has something in it that the more emotional outpourings did not, and that something deserves to be acknowledged honestly before any criticism is offered.

Testing by the Word

That said, the same standard applies here as everywhere. ‘Test everything; hold fast what is good’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The physical manifestations that accompanied the Brownsville Revival raise the same questions I raise about similar movements. Uncontrolled shaking and falling, and the pressure on people to manifest something, sit awkwardly beside Paul’s insistence that the Spirit produces self-control and that everything in the gathering be done decently and in order.

There were also concerns about the methods used to sustain the meetings over years, the strong personalities at the centre, and the danger of measuring spiritual life by intensity of experience. None of this cancels the genuine conversions, but it does mean the movement as a whole cannot simply be stamped as a pure outpouring without qualification.

To hold fast what is good, as Paul commands, you must first be willing to let go of what is not. That is the discipline a movement like this requires of us. We keep the repentance and the genuine conversions with gratitude, and we quietly set aside the manifestations that owe more to atmosphere and expectation than to anything Scripture describes.

What counts as revival?

Part of the difficulty is the word revival itself. In Scripture and in church history, true revival is a season in which the ordinary work of the Spirit, convicting of sin, exalting Christ and renewing holiness, is intensified across a community, with lasting fruit in changed lives and reformed churches. It is known by its fruit over time, not by the drama of its meetings. I unpack this further in my answer on what revival is.

By that measure the Brownsville Revival is a mixed picture. Some lives were genuinely and lastingly changed. Yet much of the heat dissipated, and the movement left behind real questions about manipulation and emotionalism. A truly God-given revival leaves a community more in love with Christ and more conformed to Scripture, and that is the fruit by which any movement is finally judged.

It is worth remembering that the great revivals recorded in history were known less for their meetings than for what they left behind, churches reformed, drunkards sobered, families restored, whole communities changed for a generation. When we measure any modern movement, that is the yardstick to reach for, rather than the excitement of the moment, which tells us very little on its own.

The danger of chasing the next wave

One pattern troubles me across all these movements, including the Brownsville Revival. There grows up a class of believers who travel from outpouring to outpouring, always seeking the next powerful experience, never settling into the patient work of discipleship in a local church. The appetite for the dramatic can quietly starve the ordinary means by which the Spirit usually feeds us.

The Spirit’s normal habit is to work through the steady preaching of the Word, faithful prayer and the fellowship of the saints. A Christian who learns to crave only the mountaintop will find the valley, where most of life is lived, increasingly hard to bear. That is not a healthy spirituality, however thrilling the meetings may be.

I have watched this happen to good people. They come back from a great meeting on fire, and for a while everything ordinary feels flat by comparison. Then the glow fades, as glows do, and instead of settling into faithful service they go looking for the next event to top up the feeling. That is no way to grow, and it is not the way the Spirit means to mature his people.

Let me put the positive side plainly, because I do not want to leave only caution hanging in the air. The Brownsville Revival, whatever its faults, kept calling people to repent and to pursue holiness, and that emphasis is a great deal healthier than the bare pursuit of experiences for their own sake. Where it pointed people to the cross and to a changed life, it pointed them in the right direction, and I thank God for every soul that truly found him there. A movement is not all of a piece, and we are free to receive the wheat while quietly leaving the chaff.

Discernment, not cynicism

I want to guard against two errors at once. One is the naive acceptance of anything that calls itself revival simply because it is exciting and large. The other is a sour cynicism that dismisses every stirring as fleshly and refuses to believe God might be at work. Neither honours the Lord. The biblical path is discernment, which tests everything and holds fast what is good while letting go of the rest.

Applied to the Brownsville Revival, that means giving thanks for every soul genuinely saved, while declining to endorse the manifestations and methods that Scripture does not warrant. We can be glad and careful at the same time. Indeed we must be.

Cynicism is the lazier of the two errors, and it can masquerade as discernment, but it is not the same thing. True discernment keeps its heart warm toward God while keeping its eyes open, ready to give thanks where thanks is due and ready to sound a caution where caution is needed. That is harder work than blanket approval or blanket scorn, and it is the work the Lord asks of us.

So, now what?

If you are drawn to stories of revival, that is a good instinct, because it means you long to see God move in power. Hold on to that longing, but feed it on the right diet. Pray for genuine revival, the kind that exalts Christ and produces lasting holiness, and test every claimed outpouring by the Word rather than by the size of the crowd.

And if you have grown weary of chasing experiences that never quite satisfy, perhaps the Lord is gently calling you back to the ordinary means he has always used. Settle into a faithful church, sit under the preaching of the Word, give yourself to prayer, and watch what the Spirit does over the long, unglamorous years. Is that not where most of the real work of God has always been done?

Test everything; hold fast what is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21, ESV)