Hey, I'm Steve Hall.
Welcome to the Empower You podcast.
I'm here and blessed to be with Pastor Todd Hudson at Radiant Church
here in Colorado Springs. You've been friends for a long time.
And, he and I were in a conversation the other day on the phone about revival.
Reformation, revolution.
Kingdom of God. Revolution.
And it was just a fascinating conversation, Todd I thought it was.
And I thought, let's just do a podcast on it.
So this is going to be kind of a freewheeling, just discussion.
no notes by either one of us.
Don't even have our Bibles here.
Can you two pastors without our Bibles?
we're going to talk about what I think we see historically with revival,
what we see historically with Reformation, I'm calling it the Kingdom of God.
Revolution. I came up with it.
I was I was just with a really good friend of mine who's a noted speaker
around the country.
He was here for a worship conference that we did, and I mentioned Dominion,
and I mentioned, the idea of a Kingdom of God revolution.
And he's like, oh, those are two bad words.
And I said, what kingdom of God?
And he goes, no revelation and dominion.
And I okay, there is some baggage to the term
sometimes like that, you know, but I think there's, there's baggage with anything.
And so a lot of people are always focused on revival.
I think we call them revivalist, you know.
And I think a lot of that has come out, some different movements
that have happened in the, in the course of the, the last 50 years.
And I've had young people come to the road who call it they literally
call themselves revivalist, like, we'll be having coffee or something.
So what do you want to do with your life?
They're 21, 22 and they've come from particular ministry.
There's several ministries.
I'm not going to name them, but they they're doing they're doing good work.
All of them are.
But they kind of have have framed their occupation
or they're calling to be a revivalist.
So then I asked, what does that mean?
And then they give me their definition is different every time.
But when you and I were talking, you shared that year
church in Texas years ago experienced a legitimate revival.
And so why don't you define from your perspective?
Because I like your perspective. Todd.
what is a revival?
How have you experienced?
And then kind of what happened at your church in Texas?
Well, revival, to me is what the psalmist said.
Lord, will you not revive us again, Come on.
People
again.
Yeah, tendency in the church that we go through
seasons of abundance, where God is moving God's hands on us,
and then we turn away and God has to revive us again.
And that is the pattern you see throughout the Scripture.
And I've noticed and probably you've seen this too, Steve.
Most revivals that they define usually last around
three years, and then there's, there's like a into them.
I mean they just diminish.
And one I'm most familiar with was the Brownsville revival
that happened in Pensacola, Florida.
And what had happened to me, Steve, to give you some background on it.
I was at a conference and the Holy Spirit spoke to me,
and I don't usually say that because
I rarely have that kind of experience where I just know God spoke to me,
and he said, I've called you to bring revival to East Texas.
Wow, dude, that's like, incredible.
So I went back and started fasting, and it was the worst fast I'd ever been on.
It was terrible.
And I thought, well, this isn't how God's going to bring this to pass.
But what started developing me was such a hunger and what had happened.
I'd gotten, wrapped up in a lot of the things that Bill Hybels
and Rick Warren were doing at the time, and
I felt like our ministry had become a bit of a machine.
we were growing and it wasn't extraordinary growth,
but 15% a year for like 5 or 6 years in a row.
And the church was strong and everything looked good, but I was not pleased.
I mean, I felt
I signed up for more than this, that God's got more than what we're seeing
because the lives of people were not being impacted the way I know
they needed to be.
things weren't happening in people's lives like they should be.
There wasn't the passion for Christ I thought they should have.
And so I just had this desperate hunger.
what ended up happening is, God began to move in our church.
We started to see some things.
And I actually was at a pastor's conference in Austin, Texas,
and they asked me to receive the offering.
And this was Assemblies of God pastors.
So I get up and the Spirit of God just comes on me and I start weeping, Well,
and the
was,
And then,
we now that's
before anything that's happened at your church,
but it's after the fasting and prayer time.
Well, I'll tell you, I never did really do extensive fasting.
but you, you you said you came back hungry and in prayer.
Yeah. Okay.
So this is this is something that was sort of getting burst.
It was embryonic in your spirit.
And you go to this conference in this thing happened
and you didn't expect that to happen?
No, not at all.
Not at all.
That was totally unsuspecting So did you experience that like
immediately when you got up on the platform?
No. As I'm up there, it just comes on me like this Yes.
That's me talking about offering.
And then the Spirit of God comes on you and you started
to prevail in front of the whole group.
and it I'm not saying it was uncontrollable, but yeah.
Yeah, overwhelming for sure.
and then you fell to the floor,
Now does this have anything to do with Brownsville?
Had you been to Brownsville? Okay. All right.
know if it it started yet.
Okay. So are we talking about in the 90s?
All right.
So anyway, I go back home and I think a good definition
even of revival is more because I just do more.
Ooh, that's a great definition.
Come on.
wow. So we go to
that came down.
And then I went there and God was moving, but it didn't impact me.
And so we go to Pensacola and I am,
I don't know, unsure what I'm going to experience there.
So I go into the service, I go in with a migraine headache, I'm I'm in pain,
and I take a couple of, Excedrin or something,
and I'm feeling a little bit better.
The music starts and the Spirit of God falls on me.
I have no other way to explain it.
He just fell on me.
And it was a little bit like an Austin.
I could not quit crying.
And I'm not a weepy. No, you're not.
I'm not a weepy. No you're not.
Holy.
What were you feeling?
What were you crying about?
presence of God, the love of God.
It was just overwhelming.
It's like he loves me so much.
He is so deeply in love with me and with every person.
And I thought everybody was experiencing that.
And and I looked around. Nobody but me.
It seemed like was experiencing that.
But then Steve Hill was the and hugely it.
So I went to the altar after that and just every night
said, God, we got to see this, we've got to see this.
So I go back home and Sunday morning
I get up and I explain what I experienced, what I saw,
and I said to our congregation, we're canceling every activity.
And I said, word is going to come into this auditorium and pray.
24 seven and I said, whoever wants to join me can,
but we're going to have the building open.
We're just going to seek God until something happens.
I said, we've got to see this.
And so I share it and I say, who's with me?
And nobody responds. ooh.
Are you serious?
That's like pastoral death, man. Wow.
Because your church day is going fine. Yeah.
I mean, you got you got your ducks in a row.
It's not like you came because you're desperate for God to move.
God was moving, but you wanted more.
and at the time, we were in a small auditorium,
we had two services, and we were building a new auditorium.
So I get up and I.
I share this one guy finally starts walking from the back
and there's a tear running down his cheek.
He grabs of hold of me, and when he does,
the presence of God falls in the auditorium.
And it was like Austin, Texas again.
People are on the floors.
It's like a bomb went off weeping, true veiling,
crying out to God, asking God to forgive.
It was awesome.
So we we the next service starts and all these people
are still laying on the floor, you know, and and
so we have to say, can you please get up so other people can come in?
And, we started just having meetings
every night because the presence of God was just.
Well, Duncan Campbell
and that's what it was.
I'm so good. Yeah.
And so we, had meeting night after night.
We did this for maybe three weeks,
and it turned into kind of a bless me club where people were coming
just to experience God's presence and be prayed for.
And so I was exhausted and I said, Lord,
this is not what I was anticipating.
I wanted to see your presence, and I'm grateful,
but I'm going to quit these meetings because we're not reaching the Lord's.
We're not doing what a church should do.
We're not discipling people. We're just having meetings.
And I said, if you don't start, bringing people to Christ
through this, we're going to shut it down the next Sunday.
A dozen people respond at the altar call, receive Christ.
And then it was on Come on. Every week
are you still meeting every night?
Got it.
So you are you are in the midst of all this.
And if I'm hearing you correctly, the first part was sort of a
a deeper work in people in your church.
Then it started to overflow into those who didn't know the Lord to give you
a, you know, a thought into this, it didn't get your mind around.
We were seeing about 100 people
a year make commitments to Christ that we documented.
Suddenly it was a thousand that next year made 1700 the next year.
Wow. Christ.
And it started to spread to some other churches and even outside of the area.
And so,
you know, other churches picked up on this, took it home, saw the same thing.
And just like we kind of picked it up from Pensacola, they picked it up from us.
And it was a mighty move of God.
When we left the city some years later, the, person who was over a lot of the
I think he was a city manager, he said that he credited
our church for lowering the crime rate in the city. Yes.
Wow. That
Wow. Power.
So? So it began.
And then it did. It sort of had an AB.
It sort of ebbed out after.
Ron, how did you know or how did you sense that?
Was that just the numbers weren't what they were
or what the same again, The church was changed.
It was marked, however, one thing that I think we did right
was we said, this is to empower the church to fulfill its mission.
we're
Good.
First, I was thinking, I know that's what Brownsville did.
I know a revival.
That's right.
Toronto did the same thing.
That's right.
So good.
Todd.
so your church didn't completely fall apart? No.
Because then I mean, that happens, right?
You know, we could I could name a few here,
but I'm not going to that where I was a part of it from a distance.
I wasn't the pastor of it or the leader of it at all
was more or less an observation as kind of a student of revival.
And how many divisive things begin to happen after a few years
related to so many things, but you were able to disciple your people?
Well, is that church still flourishing today?
numerically.
It's probably a third larger than it was then. man.
Yeah, it's
Of course.
I don't know that you got on, though.
You can sustain that forever. Very, very well.
That's amazing.
So then you said more?
Okay, so you gave the definition of more.
You gave Duncan Campbell talking about the the energized people,
the empowered people with more of God within their lives and stuff.
And Duncan Campbell's a case in point.
kind of similar, if I'm correct.
I think Duncan Campbell heard from God to go to New Hebrides.
Right.
he had a plan.
He was already going, I think he was speaking
at another location, and he heard God telling him to go.
He went and revival broke out.
You heard from God.
So I wonder if there's an element here of the man that that there's a man
that God wants to use, or a woman that God wants to use
that speaks to them, making them hungry,
maybe making them hungry for more.
And they become sort of the sparkplug of that work of God.
And you are called by God to do that.
I feel like we were I think that's yeah, yeah.
He saw God man.
Yo. Yeah. He was just. Yeah. Up.
That's right.
At the same time, Steve Hill, God was doing a deep work.
He started being Disciple by Leonard Ravenhill.
Man that's going to be if you stay around that you're going to get scorched
literally.
Now the story Steve was praying like 3 or 4 hours a day for revival.
And Leonard Ravenhill comes into his life
and Leonard calls Steve at four in the morning.
Steve answers the phone, says hello.
He goes, This is Leonard.
And he said, what are you doing?
He said, while I'm sleeping.
He said, I thought you wanted revival.
Hung up on him,
Oh man.
After about three mornings of that, Steve started getting up at four
to pray every morning.
Wow. That's amazing.
When you told me that story, I was like, I'd never heard that before,
but that that that so completes
the whole legacy of Leonard Ravenhill.
But Steve Hill, so he was a he was crying out for it.
And was he and I mean, because I saw, I saw some,
some clips of that first, Mother's Day, right.
Or Father's Day.
Okay. Father's day.
was he just a visiting speaker? Yes. Okay.
And what's so funny?
They didn't come there for revival.
Did he just come there to. Okay. All right.
And the funny thing is, Kilpatrick's on the platform,
and he's speaking, and he's calling people up to pray.
And Kilpatrick says, I'm tired.
I want to go home and eat.
I do not want this.
And he's like, I wish Steve wasn't calling people up to pray for him.
Right now, I just want to go home.
That was his mindset.
that you love the honesty, man.
how many times that we've been there, right, for people himself and God
hits him.
He falls out on the platform under the power of God, just trembling.
It was amazing.
So I was with John Wimber, in 1994,
getting ready to leave to go plant Mountain Springs here.
there's a vineyard and John is up there and he's speaking.
It's just a regular service.
And then he just begins to shake, and then he falls.
And, you know, he's kind of a big guy.
He rolls down like
ten flights of steps from the stage
and then starts laughing and laughing and laughing,
and then everybody in the whole congregation starts laughing.
But it wasn't laughter at someone.
It was laughter with the Holy Spirit working in it.
And that ignited, a mighty
work of God that I would associate with Toronto.
Yeah, because back then, Toronto was the thing.
So then what?
What's your take away?
You mean you mentioned a few things, but what's your takeaway about revival
from your experience and from the word of God?
Well, one thing is it wrecks you because you're you're not satisfied
then with business as usual.
believe that, sometimes God
doesn't allow revival to come until you're hungry enough.
I mean, I think it increases your hunger.
And, I mean, that would be the number one thing I think that ignited it.
Where we were was just the desperation.
And we've got to see God.
And I felt with the circumstances going on in our country
some of the events that have occurred, I think it's God using it to bring
a desperation and a hunger that we need if we're going to see revival,
if we're going to see God move in a powerful way in our churches.
And to me, it's it's seen God move
and do things that can be explained only by God.
Because I look across this church landscape, Steve,
and I think we all appreciate good leadership and wisdom.
But what I see a lot of in the church is a lot of good mechanics,
a lot of good, most appalling systems.
Yeah, but a lack of really pursuing God and the presence of God
and being able to really say, well, that's that's truly God at work.
Instead, it feels like a lot of good machinery
and a lot of good techniques that work well.
And some smart people, but I don't I don't see God in a lot of it.
And as I've talked to some high profile church leaders,
it doesn't seem they have much of a prayer life.
A lot of times it doesn't seem like their emphasis has any of that.
It's all system and mechanics and leadership principles
and connecting with the right people and raising money.
Do You.
Oh gosh. Yes, absolutely.
And I and I just have never liked the professionalism of the clergy.
It just does not turn me on. Never has.
I think seeing, so many that have made, like,
being a pastor more of an occupation, than a calling,
and they're just so professional and everything is, you know, get these
this schooling in, you know, get the right salary, get the package.
And I think that's why for me, Todd, I planted two churches
because I just don't I don't have any desire to be in a system.
I don't care about the systems.
I don't like denominational ism.
I mean, I, I appreciate denominations, I do understand
the history of denominations.
And, and oftentimes that came out of revival.
I mean, Nazarene came out of revival.
You could argue that Methodism under Wesley came out of revival in London,
and we could go on and on with all the denominations like that.
But as a denominational ism that I don't like.
And so there's systems, there's manuals in there, strategies that go with that.
And so I know there are.
And you and you just don't go you don't go to places
that that denomination is not okay with you going with.
So I just have never wanted to be limited that way.
I wouldn't say though, for me personally and all the years,
ten years missionary, 30 years a pastor, I don't know that
I've ever really experienced the kind of revival
even close to the kind of revival you're talking about.
A matter of fact, I know I have it.
I think what I've experienced has been more the slow
progression of strong ministry,
that when you look back in hindsight, you go, that's
pretty signif again, I don't know, it might be small are revival.
I think what you experienced is capital revival because of you.
Yeah, because when I was it when I was at Georgia University of Georgia,
I got saved there and saw what God did with the Athletic department.
But God did throw in gymnastics team, which I was with and all.
And then Campus Crusade, it was dude, it was like smaller revival
because we saw so many kids getting saved every week.
Meetings were huge.
We just saw a lot happen, but we didn't call it revival.
I like the smaller I think about church up the road at Chapel Hill.
I mean, there's churches seen renewal.
This church has seen revival, but not in the way I had That's exactly right.
Yeah.
There's no question. Yeah, well, so are you.
I mean, I look at you and I told you that on the phone
the other day, and I think it's true.
I think you're the most healthy, growing church in the city of Colorado Springs.
I really believe that.
And to see, you know, how you've navigated the, the
the counting, the central campus three satellite is amazing.
Really amazing.
And that I just, you know, listening to you on the radio,
we've talked about different,
aspects of your ministry, it doesn't feel mechanized to me.
I know there's systems in place, and I think you're a very good
manager of systems, but you're
you're a revival, like preacher.
That's that's your style. And so is Kelly.
you haven't lost it.
It's all in your blood.
It's your DNA is. Yeah.
And you long for that.
I mean, you want so much more. So do I, man.
I want so much more than what we're experienced.
And, you go back and you look at what happened in the Hebrides
that you were referring to, what happened in the Welsh revival,
of the track, what happened under Finney?
well.
Yeah. It's
holy.
That's right.
You've got to have God rend the heavens and come down.
It's exactly right.
we have the vision statement of the road as a keynote of God's revelation.
So I know that revolution maybe has negative connotations
in certain contexts because it's seen almost like it's a war or something.
And it even it's even part of the definition.
You'll see, first definition is a war or something.
I see it though, is the second definition.
And with the Merriam-Webster dictionary it talks about a rather.
Evolution doesn't use to a revolution better evolving as it were, a change.
And I think the word is a dramatic change
that affects all of society.
So the means of that,
the means of that has to be revival.
So I think it begins with revival.
And I think encased within revival is repentance.
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, that Second Chronicles 714 to me,
me, second Chronicles 714 is explaining that.
My people call my name humble themselves.
It requires radical humility
repent, Turn
So to me
that that's the revival that comes through a praying people.
People are calling out to God that then begins
to heal the entire land.
So I threes and I like Kingdom of God revolution.
So you know right, right now there's a lot of talk
about Christian nationalism and things like that.
And people are using that term in a derogatory term from the mainstream media.
so I was being interviewed by a reporter, I'm going to say two years ago
because I was having an event here.
He was kind of on the cusp of, Covid and all that.
And I said, they said, are you into Christian nationalism?
And then I just looked at her
and I said, no, I'm in the kingdom of God, a revolution.
And she goes, what's that?
And I said, wouldn't you like to know?
And so then I had say, I told her what it was.
but it came okay.
I think Christian nationalism can be defined in so many different ways.
I think the way it's being used today is the idea of America
being a Christian nation,
that because of our heritage, and I think you can't really go back
to the Declaration of Independence
or the Constitution or even the Founding Fathers. To me.
You go back to the Mayflower Compact, you go back to the pilgrims.
Okay. 1611 I think so.
Right. In that period, they came.
They didn't set foot on our shores until they had put the compact together,
which was for the glory of God.
And the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ is what it says,
to a kingdom of God.
Revolution, to me is a
a work of the spirit starting in a locale.
So it's gotta start somewhere.
And I think that, again, is encapsulated with, first of all, a revival,
but then it's taking the revival a little bit more.
It's challenging.
Let's say we're in a revival challenge, urging people to now
take the gospel into their occupation, into their workforce, into their faith.
And of course, we preach that all the time.
But it actually, when it happens, okay.
So when it happens, it's men and women who feel called to be involved in
government is people who feel called to be involved in business.
It's people who feel called to be in media.
And so then they go out and there's enough.
There becomes enough of a groundswell that it actually affects the entire culture.
So I think what the Pilgrim did was
created an environment that caused a people,
by this point in the 18th century, to deal with the taxes and the economics.
It was coming from England,
which led to the Revolutionary War, and we became a nation.
So I think a kingdom of God Revolution is sort of like a reformation,
a work of reformation that affects all aspects of the culture.
Right?
for example, I think you could say the Protestant Reformation with Luther
was a ecclesial, logical
and a theological reformation, but I would call that
almost like a kingdom of God revolution, because it
then affected everything.
That's what we call it, the Protestant Reformation.
Because when you think process of reformation, what I think historians
declare that to me was the rise of nation states
in Europe from tribal to nation state.
It it was, it was an affirmation that as an artisan,
that you are a priest, you are a priest of God.
Priesthood of all believers is what Luther called, you know, from Scripture.
obviously it was a, ecclesial logical work, a breaking away
from some of the trappings,
the negative trappings that went with the Roman Catholic Church.
and then we could go on and on.
So that's it wasn't for all. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
You wouldn't have the pilgrims without the hundred years before,
within 95 theses being, you know, nailed to the to the Wittenberg door.
I think God wants to do it again.
And I and so that's my prayer.
And I think for for us, Todd, you and I both have been involved
in the political arena.
We both been involved in, all aspects really, of Colorado Springs culture.
that's my prayer.
Every day is a Kingdom of God revolution.
So that so that I can't affect
and you can't affect Washington.
So I found myself since Covid
probably probably since about 2022,
backing off with the national issues.
and really zeroing in on local issues.
And so even I was in a meeting yesterday and we were talking about missions,
and I said, I don't even think we should make that plural.
It's mission, not missions. It's mission.
And the mission is local because we kept having these conflicts
as it relates to everybody wanting to go overseas
and in our department, like give them money.
And I and I have said from day one that our main focus in mission
is the mission of El Paso County and Colorado Springs in state of Colorado,
not Uganda, not Kenya, not these other place.
Great. I mean, like, I mean, somebody needs to do that.
And I'm glad most churches are doing that.
But my presupposition would be
if more of us in our local area zeroed in and focus
on a move of God here, we would actually have more impact.
That might even be nationally because it was spread.
It will spread out from there.
Happens, right?
It's always local in the beginning.
well what you're talking about is really being salt and Yeah.
I mean, it's right there in the gospel, right.
Sermon on the Mount. And I think
is it's all
about revival and it's all about us very very easily.
They wouldn't say that. Probably.
But it doesn't go out to impact the greater culture.
That's right. Revival
That's right.
Yeah.
We do, we do.
And I think, you know, you just had the movie come out, Jesus Revolution.
I like that they chose revolution.
I was shocked to see that they didn't call it the Jesus movement,
which is the way I've classified it in the past.
But Jesus revolution was so good and the reality is it did flow just from,
you know, really, I think you could argue that it began in northern,
northern, California with a group of hippies there.
They kind of they kind of migrated down with Lonnie Frisby
and others, and then bam, that's where it hit a local church,
you know, at the Costa mesa Calvary Chapel, and went out from there.
Where did you start then?
Did it start in Berkeley?
No, I think it would be Haight-Ashbury.
so that's where there was already some, like if there's a really good book.
Oh, what's the name of that book?
The book was God's Forever Family.
Very interesting book.
You, Todd, you got to get that is really interesting.
I read it twice, but God's forever family is about that thick and it's all on.
It's the history of the Jesus People movement.
I think that's the subtitle.
Pretty interesting because a lot of characters I didn't know
anything about, I never heard of them, didn't know anything about Adam.
and there was a lot of little movements
that were sort of coalescing with the idea of Christian communes.
Okay. that really, I think, if I recall.
Right, that's really more Oregon, Washington state and Northern California,
kind of these wooded areas, they would do these things and, and, and all.
so then Lonnie Frisbee gets blasted by God up there, and then he comes down,
he gets hitchhiking, and that's where he meets Chuck Smith and everything.
And that that gets all the play right down there.
And I think rightly so, because that's where it jumped ended.
Not just hundreds but tens of thousands of kids landed.
That's right, that's right.
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
so I got a interesting story.
So, from 72 to 76, I'm at Clarkston
High School in, in Clarkston, Georgia.
Okay.
And I'm a gymnast, and the guy, one of my teammates is Mike Stabler.
And Mike is a year older than me.
He wins the state All-Around title.
My junior year, his senior year, he gets a full ride scholarship.
University Georgia gymnastics team.
big partier, drug guy doing everything bad you could do, but a great gymnast.
Okay.
and so then I says, in 76, I become the state All-Around champion
for Georgia, and I follow in his footsteps and I get a full ride scholarship.
University of Georgia.
And I'm thinking it's going to be fun to be see Mike again, everything.
And I think we'll party together.
Now I'm going to really party now
that, you know, I'm away from my family because my dad's a pastor.
I couldn't do it right.
So, I get there and then I get I get saved.
Okay, so there you go. And Mike's gone.
So I get there and coach says it a year about Stabler.
And I said, why? And he says he just took off.
What do you mean he just took off?
He just he just laughed. And I mean, he was
he was doing everything, you know, with drugs and all that.
So I went, okay, well whatever.
Anyway, so I go through my freshman year
and I don't know anything about Mike or anything.
Well, here's what happened.
Mike was just so messed up.
He just said, I'm fed up with life.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to go become a hippie in California.
It was something like that.
I may not have the story totally straight, but then Mike just gets in a VW van,
of course, goes out there, he's got long hair and everything,
and he was telling me later,
that I think he actually ended up at BYU
and tried out for and they offered him the scholarship
to Arizona State and they offered an escort.
I mean, this guy was good.
He was way better. He's way better than me.
So he gets out of California
and he hooks up with this other guy who had gotten radically saved.
And so they get in a Christian commune,
they get involved in a commune, he gets radically saved himself.
And then they just they migrate back to Georgia.
And when he came back, to now begin his sophomore
year and me to begin my sophomore year, he's fired up.
I mean, it's front page news there in Athens, Georgia, that Mike Stabler's back.
And so then Mike and I hooked up.
I'm newly saved. He's newly saved on the.
So he's back on the gymnastics team, got a scholarship just like any
this is one of the best in the SEC.
And we just had a fabulous two years together.
And led almost everybody on the team to the Lord.
But see that?
See that?
That's the implications of this, right?
The way in which the tentacles of revival go out and individuals
like, like for you, Brownsville.
Then taking it back to I was at East Texas and all of that.
We were in the others.
What was the city you were in is a little town called Lufkin, Lufkin,
Texas, And how big?
Wow. That's amazing.
Yeah. So then it spread out, right?
So then I was affected by Mike story.
I don't know at the time anything about a Christian commune.
I don't know anything about the Jesus people.
I don't know anything because I'm just barely a Christian myself.
Like six months maybe, but we just link up.
And so then that, to be honest, is probably what then was a
not just us, but there were others,
but it was a part
of what happened to University of Georgia there for like 4 or 5 years.
And so there's another guy, Jeff, Paul.
Jeff was, the quarterback for the football team at University of Georgia.
We won the national championship in 1980.
He was on the team and everything.
And, Herschel Walker was there.
But anyway, Jeff gets radically saved,
and then he leads tons of guys on the football team to the Lord.
He becomes the leader of the FCA Fellowship of Christian Athletes
at Georgia.
And I remember going to that meeting as like 500 people there.
So that's that's, you know, that's what happens even with the locale
of being in Southern California and the implications of that coming forward.
And when you hear about revival so often, when people hear about them
somewhere, it builds a hunger in them to see the same
Yeah.
Oh yeah. in the Welch revival.
I, Bartman and others were writing,
back to, Wales to find out what was going on.
And they were so that affected Seymour.
That made Seymour like hungry.
Well, it it affected the people around it.
Another one of the churches that was seeing revival there, you know,
they they were talking with
with the Welsh revival people and, that's
as much as anything, what helped birth what happened in Jesus history?
None of the Evan Roberts ever come to the United States.
Did he ever visit or do anything?
Because, I mean, he he was the key to the Welsh revival.
Right.
And kind of interesting guy.
Right? Sorta.
Sorta just sequestered himself away. Yeah.
For the last, what, 25 years of his life or something.
He had some, I think poor influences late in his life.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was highly sought after, wasn't he.
And and a little bit, a little bit. I've read about him.
It sounds like he was kind of an introvert.
And he just got pushed into this thing.
Funny story about him at one of the, meetings that they had.
He's. He's there.
The place is packed, and he says, doesn't
the Scripture say there were 2 or 3 are gathered together in my name?
I'm in the midst and nobody goes, yes.
And he said, well, then you don't need me.
And he just left.
He goes, well, it began, didn't it?
Began with him just like up at the pulpit, like, didn't
he, like, kneel down or something and just stood in prayer.
Right. almost all revivals do.
But he was visited by God at night, and he would have nightly prayer meetings
from something like ten in the evening to four in the morning, week
after week after week.
And and they became so radical and he became so loud, his,
the person that was, he was running the room from where he was
staying, kicked him out, said, this guy's nuts, got to get rid of him.
But he he came, at, this meeting
that he had been invited back to from the church he originally came from.
And, at Moriah, they just started
having this meeting for young people, primarily.
God began to move in that meeting.
And the meetings were primarily characterized by laughter and singing.
There wasn't actually a lot of preaching in those meetings.
And, their big phrase was, you know, Ben
Milhaud initially they were saying, Lord have mercy on us.
That was their cry, you know, Lord have mercy.
And God's Spirit just intensified and intensified in the room,
and it burst out from there and went everywhere Well, the,
the interesting thing, too, about, when you look back at like, say,
Brownsville and then even at Toronto,
you had these intense times
where the leadership was hungry, just like you were in your story.
And just like we're saying with, and then Seymour, Seymour, it is, is the street,
I think, put like a bucket on his head or something like that.
Yeah.
Because he did he did not want to be noticed.
And that does seem to be a key characteristic to revival
is leaders who are not in it for sensationalism.
They're not trying to make a name for themselves.
Man, I've seen the other part.
Oh, man, I could tell some stories, over the years of people
trying to copy Toronto or copy Brownsville
and just didn't go anywhere, and you could sense it,
but you kind of wanted to just say to the leader, bro,
go get out, go home and have a dinner with your family
and sleep good at night because it ain't happening, man.
It's just not happening.
But they want it and they want it.
I think sometimes with different motives.
Maybe not the kingdom of God being their main focus, but growing their church.
It's not the way to grow your church.
It is not the way to grow your church. right
now. Well, I, I know,
it is not a good way.
It'll blow things up.
Well when I went there in the late 90s it was kind of on the tail end.
I'm going to say within a year Steve Hale had moved on.
But remember how they were you there when they had built that auxiliary
building for the crowds?
Okay. So that was there and that was empty.
And there was it was pretty packed.
It was pretty packed in the main sanctuary, which was pretty sizable
balcony, all that, you know, could get in there.
And there was still the tent with all the books in it.
All the books and tapes were in there,
but nobody was going over to the other building.
So I felt I remember feeling like I kind of missed the zenith of this thing.
And, I had the privilege of
going out to dinner with David Ravenhill.
So Leonard Raymond Hill's son, and he was a vineyard pastor.
And so we spent some time together.
So he kind of gave me the the lowdown on how it had happened.
And because we didn't have we didn't have the internet.
We we didn't.
You had to really you had to get books and read about it and study it to know
what the background was. Right?
Yeah.
Well, one of the, I think one of the best things that came out of it,
in addition to all the churches and pastors who were revived Yeah. And
we're still talking about it here today.
Yeah,
that, what
Yeah.
this is the way I, this if I was thinking of almost like a formula,
it feels like to me it there's, there's some kind of repentance,
there's some kind of a visitation on a group of people.
Could be a key leader that even precedes that.
But there's repentance.
Plus a revival happens almost like the spark plug the fire.
acts two Pentecost. You've got.
So you got the repentance, the the seeking of the Lord part,
which is acts one, you know, then you got acts two, which is, revival.
Then I think there's some kind of usually, always some kind of reformation,
some kind of a reforming nature to it.
Not just individually, but I think if it's true revival,
not just a a lot of people getting saved, like,
I don't know that I would consider Billy Graham Crusades revival.
I would say those are moves of God that happened through a crusade.
And I know that the Hollywood, the one that really put Billy
Graham on the map would be 1949, the Hollywood Crusade,
because it went on for weeks and weeks and a lot of people got saved.
I don't know that it really brought
that much reformation to LA, but but there's a place
I know
does have their place for sure, and they can.
I think there can be people who come out of it
that are mightily used of God.
So I think when I think of revival, I think of something
like a reformation being a part of it, that that.
Now this is just my opinion. Okay?
Because I haven't studied this from anybody else,
but I think the local church.
Becomes crucial.
Oh and so I had church in there.
So I see repentance I see revival I see reformation, I see church.
That's a kingdom of God revelation when it all comes together.
That's my prayer for America.
If, if, if there was a Steve Hall prayer it would be that,
that if we don't have something somewhere on that spectrum.
But if we don't see those things, I don't know.
I don't know if our country, with all
the divisiveness is within it, can survive for the next 100 years,
unless there's a mighty move of God I don't think it can.
I think we're in a place where it's.
It's awakening or bust.
I mean, we have to have it.
It's not optional anymore.
It's not something that it'd be nice if we could see it.
That's where I think the desperation comes in.
We've got to, Steve.
We've got to see a mighty move of God where
God runs the heavens and comes down.
And I think what you were talking about,
you saw in the First Great Awakening, where all these churches were birthed
and all these churches were filled and became prevailing again.
All right.
right?
Yeah, yeah.
not just a, social activity of saying, you're a Christian.
And the second great awaking out of that, and we were talking about
With Yeah.
and trans
Some of these causes.
was incredible.
So those are kingdom those are examples to me of keen and real revelation.
They're called awakenings. And that's fine.
I think that's a great term and I love that term.
I think the first Great Awakening again we go back to two guys really
I think there's two key
people, maybe Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts.
And then it would be Whitfield George with
for coming down and moving down the coast with all the stuff that he was doing.
And that's so fascinating to me
now, Finney is a lawyer.
Yeah. Used by God.
and he
formulated he formulated his lectures on revival.
Right. He formulated about how you do it.
And I think what he saw, he then kind of defined.
Right.
And I don't you guys
correct me if I'm wrong because I could be wrong on this,
but I get the sense in my study of church history
that Finney was almost like a key factor in D.L.
Moody.
So Dr.
Moody comes in because we didn't have evangelistic crusades after that.
I mean, Whitfield came, Whitfield came, he was more reformed theologically.
So he came and preached a and and Wesley on top of that.
Definitely.
He preached a fiery message, but with with the with the beginnings of D.L.
Moody, it was get the choir
have the choir director sing some songs,
get the people in a lot of signage, all that these guys did new signs.
Yeah.
I mean, Wesley, you can use any signs he just went out to the coal miners.
And as they're walking out to get to the coal mines
and sees the streaks coming down of the tears
because they're getting slain in the spirit
and met by God, then Whitfield, who's a really close friend
until they had a theological break, does the same thing.
And it was like conviction of sin.
Whereas I feel like with Dr.
Moody it was more like, get the gospel message out, have all the have
all the workers
up at the front to hand out the Bibles and everything and help them grow.
Which then led to Billy Sunday?
Yeah, Billy Sunday,
in a sense, we could skip a few years, but then we come to Billy Graham.
So we in the West, which are so good
at this, we systematized
the Spirit's work and then wonder why the spirit didn't come anymore.
And Finney definitely did that.
I mean, he was the first one to systematize it, I think. So
Yeah, yeah.
if you do this, if you do this, this.
Right. That was always my problem with Finney.
But here's what I like about Finney that made him different than D.L.
Moody.
Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, Billy Graham a little bit.
But he, Finney had, as you were already alluding to,
he had a social conscience. Yes.
So he was very anti-slavery.
He was he was for the poor.
He was.
I mean, he he kinda dabbled a lot.
And, laws and the government.
I mean, problem with that, Yeah.
Biblical justice.
That's exactly right.
And Finney I mean, I like you and you said biblical doesn't the not social dash
is the the Finney revival was so based in prayer.
Yeah. Was one
nots.
Right.
That's correct.
before he came, before he got there.
And what's fascinating is after
Nash died, Finney went off the field.
What?
died.
What do you mean, off the field?
Okay. Yeah, I knew that.
Okay. That was the reason that that was the.
You know, it's interesting of
Well,
Yeah.
And elements.
Absolutely. have to have.
And it's that desperate cry calling out, God, we must have you.
We have to have you.
You know, what we can do isn't enough.
You've got to run the heavens and come down.
So systems are good Todd we need systems.
And I think that if you're I mean some would argue
if, if revival hasn't come we're lost.
And yes, I hear that I understand the cry of that.
That's a desperate cry.
Good cry good desperate cry.
But in the meantime, there's still work to be done.
Because I look at the ministry of Jesus and I see one who prayed.
I see one going out proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom of God.
So where? Where I get my kingdom of God?
Emphasis is the Synoptic Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, John two.
But Matthew, Mark and Luke really zero in on this idea of the kingdom.
Exactly. So with the kingdom of God.
Message of the proclamation, demonstration of the kingdom.
To me it's it's just right there.
I mean, the the model of how to do church,
the model of what we want happening every Sunday.
And in your case, maybe Wednesday night, things like that.
Don't you have a Wednesday night service?
You're waiting some Wednesday night.
Okay. All right.
So you're like me.
Then we do the same thing.
So. if we're equipping the saints
in the proclamation demonstration, the kingdom, that's biblical stuff.
That's doing the stuff right?
But I think it's an acceleration.
It's a fire hits that on a whole nother level.
And that's what that's when revival comes.
So we need both. Yeah.
So I don't want anybody to hear us saying anything against systems
or anything like that. I believe systems are good.
And I think 90% of the time, or maybe even 99%
time, that's how you have to do it, because it's all spelled out in Scripture.
And the epistles, especially pastoral epistles, equip you and me
as senior pastors on how to run our churches.
So that's really good. Yeah.
But I think the word more such a good word,
man, is such a good word that your the Spirit of God comes upon
what you're already doing, that Jesus said we should do.
And we've got that in place. But
I think it was Watchmen who said,
when a Christian starts living a normal Christian life,
everybody thinks he has a fever because they're not used to that.
And I think that's what we're talking about.
Yeah.
it's doing
the things Jesus told us to do as a church because there's things you to do.
You know, you're there's a disciple, people you're to care for, people.
There's a whole list of things we could talk about
that all that our churches are doing.
But it's God coming up on that and anointing
and empowering that in a way that we've not seen before.
Okay.
You said something that has been a big
theme in my life, and you said I might, somebody said it.
Yeah.
You didn't become a revival center, right?
You were a local church.
You had a job to do as a local church.
So break that down for us.
Well, what we said at the time, at first
I was thinking Revival Center because we came from Brownsville, right?
It's a revival center, man.
see, I just love that.
the idea of a revival center, in my opinion,
is what you're saying in that you are
you are centered on revival, right?
Versus a church that's experiencing revival.
It's the churches first.
So being church, being there for the people, equipping the saints there
every week.
So how did you navigate that in the sense that it would be natural for people to
they would rather come to of, the desert.
Okay.
The desert is the special meetings
that are happening Sunday through Wednesday.
Powerful work of God. God showing up.
Presence of God is there.
Worship is definitely accelerated.
Ministry time accelerated, probably when you taught
there is a special anointing on it.
It was different than before.
Just really, really fun time.
Okay, but who else to do a small group?
I mean, who asked to go to a Bible study?
So then you're going to have you can't do this all the time.
You got kids to take to baseball practice and you got ballet lessons
and all these thing.
So how did you pastor that?
Well, intentionality.
We were being very intentional.
We've got to do these things.
So we pulled back from the four nights a week after
not that long of the period of time, but we still had a service
we normally didn't have where we really saw people come from all over the place
because we took it off Sunday morning where they had their own local churches
because we wanted we didn't want it to be all about us.
We wanted people to take the fire and take it back out with them.
So we had Sunday services for a long time
where people from all over came and then took it back to their churches.
And so there was the revival center, aspect to it.
for sure.
primary, a local church that we're going to do
all the things that church was supposed to do and impact our community.
So even on Sunday morning, you just did regular church.
We did. Yeah.
And then you you did Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
That was really where and when.
What was what was different about that?
The difference between Monday through Wednesday and Sunday morning?
Well, Sunday morning we conducted services as you normally would.
But then Sunday night the emphasis was really praying for people
and allowing the Holy Spirit to move in a way
that we had an expectation of, but not that we didn't on Sunday morning.
But there was more time to wait on God.
Extended worship, extended
times in the Did you teach from the word we did?
Yeah,
And that's a difference.
Honestly, bro, that was a different name.
Brownsville and Toronto.
There was a lot of that.
That's where I thought, man, this dog that night
when I was experiencing some stuff in the vineyard movement
where they were saying, oh, we spirit was so thick, we didn't even
we don't even need to teach the word because the word's happening.
Okay, that sounds really sexy and everything,
but in reality, man, I, I didn't I didn't dig that.
But always felt like with Brownsville and yeah, Brownsville
in particular really kept they open the word all the time.
Steve. He'll always talk from the word.
And you did that too.
We did too.
And what's interesting, the revival in Argentina,
my wife and I went down for some services
at a church during that time, and it was extraordinary.
it was extraordinary.
The power and the presence of God was amazing.
but Claudio Franzen, who was one of the leaders
of that revival, said his biggest regret
was not preaching the word more, Yeah, not making the word more.
Yeah.
he wouldn't do that again.
Yeah.
And I think that was, that came out of really Anaconda.
I mean he was so key and all that.
Again interesting thing a businessman not even vocationally a pastor.
That's interesting to the authority.
You know Satan get behind me.
That was like one of thing things Satan get behind me Satan.
Yeah. And then they had all the tents man.
For all the deliverance and everything.
And we were there, he was one of the speakers.
And where, where
Oh, that's at the thing you went to.
Okay.
Cast demons out of them.
then what an extraordinary experience you had.
How long were you there? we were just there for a week.
Wow. it was. It was a wonderful time.
Yeah, yeah.
we want to see such
a move of God in El Paso County daily.
And we want to see, I think your phrases is very good.
Kingdom of God.
Revolution.
Yeah.
That's right, that's right.
I feel so excited because I think the
the worst of times is often where God does his best work.
So I feel like that people are hopefully getting more and more desperate.
So interesting.
Todd, I was yesterday, I came home from stuff I was doing here
and I
and I was just thinking about
I probably should work on my blog for next week
because I'm going to be going to my son's wedding at LAN.
I'm not going to any time. So she work on this week.
and so immediately when I thought that, it occurred to me
how much is happening within the
YouTube, social media influences world
because I listen to a lot of podcasts, everything from exercise stuff
to political stuff to spiritual stuff you know, Jordan Peterson,
who's not even a Christian, at least he doesn't proclaim to be a Christian.
His his work on the Bible has really affected a lot of people.
So I just did some research and found that his lectures on the Bible,
from a psychological perspective, have had over 65 million views.
Well, then that's affected guys like Russell Brand, who's
just kind of I been kind of a hedonistic
artistic recently baptized.
And then Jordan Peterson's wife, recently
baptized, and then the influence with, with Reuben
and with so many others out there was phenomenal.
So I won't go through all the details, but here's my point
that there is something happening on the landscape.
So you have, on the one hand, you've heard the phrase,
the adage familiarity breeds contempt.
So you have
you have a whole group of Christian artists
and authors who are deconstructing their faith.
Right.
And so you got this thing and they're, they're the they're the goldfish
that have always been in the ball and they've always been in the water.
They don't even appreciate what they've got.
But then on the other hand, you got these guys that are completely
into drugs and mysticism
and, Buddhism, some into Islam, all that.
They've tried it all. Yeah.
And they come to the end, everything goes.
There's nothing there, there's nothing there.
And it's like what Viktor Frankl said in his Man's
Search for meaning, his great book, you know, out of the Holocaust.
And as a psychologist, he said that that's ultimately man is searching for meaning.
and, Agustin, you know, who said that?
there's this God shaped vacuum in our hearts
that we try to fill with created things, but can only be filled by our creator God.
I think that that's what's going on here.
I think that as baby boomers,
we tended to find our search for meaning and outward things.
But we're really in a psychological time period right now.
A lot of psychology going on.
kind of the psychological, the psycho psychological man
would probably be, you know, a rubric to put over the search
for meaning that's within this generation right now.
you say you go inward instead of outward, or when you go inward,
a lot of these guys are searching for truth.
They don't know their search.
They're not even searching for God.
They're searching for truth.
And then they find God, and then they find Jesus, and then they find the Bible.
And it's very exciting.
So there's something going on, man.
It's very, very encouraging.
I'm very encouraged by that.
It's it's it is exciting Yeah.
Think about what you just shared. Yeah.
These are some of your top intellectuals, best communicators in the world.
I mean, they were they were state of the art communicators
who have millions of followers.
The change and transformation in their lives is going to be felt by millions
like that, which in, in generations past would not have happened
because now we have the internet, now
we have this, this way of communication.
It goes worldwide and, and suddenly starts to impact whole countries.
And, you know,
tens of thousands of miles away, they're they're affected by something.
They heard that linguistically, they could never heard.
And even in book form would have never been available in Israel today.
So I, I think a work of God, a kingdom of God, revelation
could happen very, very quickly and could affect the whole world.
But I think our focus is local and and that's our prayer.
And so I just thank you, Todd, for this time
talking because it was really fun.
I love talking with you. You're so much fun.
And I think that that's our prayer, right?
That we just keep going after it in Colorado Springs.
Absolutely. Yeah.
God's up to some good things I know it's very encouraging.
So thanks, bro and thanks for being here.
Appreciate it so much.
And hope you guys enjoyed this message.
it's really not something that we had any script on.
So we were just moving along with what's on our hearts and our story.
So thanks for listening. God bless you guys.