Azusa Street Revival

The Azusa Street Revival from 1906 to 1909 has been credited with spawning the worldwide movement of Pentecostalism (Pope-Levison, 2007). It began with Pentecostal preacher William Seymour, a son of freed slaves, who was discovered preaching in Houston, Texas, by a Californian woman visiting his holiness church. He was invited to preach at her church in California and duly accepted. However, because he had not received the Holy Spirit personally, people at the church in California barred the doors against him. Others in the holiness community felt his message and preaching were good and they took him in. He preached to a small group of followers at Bonnie Brae Street in 1906. The group prayed for the Holy Spirit to come to them and it was there that follower Edward S. Lee began to speak in tongues. Jennie Moore (later Seymours wife) and Seymour himself soon began speaking in tongues thereafter as well. The news spread like wildfire among the diverse community of blacks, Latinos and whites. The entire city seemed transfixed by what was happening at Bonnie Brae Street. The crowds were so big that no one could even get to the house itself. So the group migrated to the abandoned property at 312 Azusa Street in the industrial sector of downtown L.A. The building was 2400 square feet, and it would serve as the launch pad for Pentecostalism and as the start of the three cycles of three-year revivals (Synan, 2001).

The barn-like building at Azusa Street had once been used for church services but it had since become a storehouse, lumberyard and served other purposes. The congregants had some work to do to fix the building up and restore it for working conditions so that the group could meet inside. The first floor of the building had 8 foot ceilings, so there was not even room for a platform. Makeshift benches were set up on the floor and it was a very meager type of churchbut these people were not interested in stained-glass windows or in fine linens. They were interested in receiving the Holy Spirit. And the preaching of Seymour and the zeal of the holiness group was more than enough to make up for the apparent deprivations.

Seymour and a white woman named Clara Lum began producing a newspaper called Apostolic Faith. This allowed them to spread the word about what was happening at Azusa Street. Thousands of ministers received the newsletter free of charge: 5,000 copies of the first edition (September 1906) were printed, and by 1907 the press run reached 40,000 (Pope-Levison, 2007). However, Seymour and Lum soon fell out over different perspectives on evidential teaching as well as race relations and by 1912 Seymour fell out of favor in the movement altogether (Pope-Levison, 2007). The movement kept going all the same without...

At its height, services went all day and all night. There was a fervor for the Holy Spirit;...…Revival so popular in its beginnings was its utter uniqueness and the frenzy with which so many preachers and congregants took to it and took it spread in their own homes and nations. The act of speaking in tongues was seen as the ultimate expression of religious faith, and it was seen as the Holy Spirit coming down to people with faith.

It may have started out in a make-shirt building with low ceilings and no room for a platform but this simplicity facilitated the simple message of the movement. This was not about things, or money, or even a church: it was about praying to the Holy Spirit and waiting for the Spirit to fill them the way the Spirit filled the Apostles in the Bible. That the movement then left Azusa Street and spread its wings, taking on a life of its own, is a testament to power of the message communicated by the Pentecostal preachers. It was a religious experience that emphasized the experiential.

In the end, the movement quieted down in Azusa Street, even though it picked up steam in other places, such as Memphis. The experience of speaking in tongues was novel enough in the beginning to attract attentionbut after a while it was seen that people needed more in their religious lives than the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Thus, emphasis on teaching and practical application of the Word of God in ones life all returned. Seymour focused his attention on these aspects of Pentecostalism as did other preachers the world over in their own ways as well. Thus, Azusa Street Revival launched…