What Is a Church Revival?

The History of the Church Revival

1734 - Church revivals (also called awakenings) have a long history in the Protestant church, starting with the Great Awakening. The first recorded revival occurred in December 1734 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards, the town’s Congregational pastor, preached a sermon series on justification by faith alone. The townspeople responded in favor, and within six months, Edwards noted that he had converted three hundred people.

1739 - Building on Edwards’ success, revivals began breaking out in nearby towns and by 1739, George Whitfield set out on a preaching tour of the American colonies. He made Philadelphia his first stop, and thousands came to see him. Every stop be he made on his tour was marked by record audiences who came to hear of the “divine things” Whitfield was preaching. It is estimated that nearly 80 percent of America’s 900,000 colonists heard Whitfield preach.

1800s - A renewed enthusiasm for revivals occurred in the Second Great Awakening, a Protestant religious revival in America that ran from about 1800-1835. The Second Great Awakening was marked by camp meetings, outdoor revival meetings held on the American frontier. Those attending these camp meetings came from as far as 40 miles away and camped out for three to four days for religious worship. As many as 20,000 people would attend a camp meeting, gathering for preaching, prayer meetings, singing, baptisms, and weddings. Thanks to these gatherings, the Methodist and Baptist churches experienced significant increases in membership.

1831 - The second phase of the Great Awakening was marked by Congregational theologians like Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher, Nathaniel W. Taylor, and Asahel Nettleton, and Charles Finney. Finney is largely credited with spurring the crusades for anti-slavery, women’s rights, prison reform, temperance, and more. He was known for his informal, fiery preaching style that attracted large congregations and an increasing number of converts in the largest cities across the U.S. It is estimated that Finney converted 500,000 to Christ in his time. In Rochester, New York, alone, an estimated 100,000 people were converted after his 1831 revival.

1835 - In Lectures on Revival of Religion (1835), which contains 23 of his lectures, Finney wrote that a revival is necessary when the following occurs: “First, when the providence of God indicates that a revival is at hand... Second, where the wickedness of the wicked grieves, humbles, and distresses Christians... Third, when Christians have a spirit of prayer for revival... And lastly, when believers have a desire and anxiety to a call of repentance and to a new or fresh obedience to God.”

1857 - Other revivals followed, including the Great Prayer Meeting Revival in 1857, which added an estimated one million converts, and the Civil War Revival which, by 1862, added about 300,000 solider converts.

1906 - The Azusa Street Revival of 1906 was brought about when William J. Seymour, an African-American Holiness pastor, began prayer meetings in Los Angeles that drew massive interracial crowds so large that they soon acquired a Methodist church on Azusa Street and conducted daily meetings there for three years. This revival movement was characterized by miracles, speaking in tongues, and spirited worship services. It is also considered to be the catalyst for the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in the 20^th century.

1949 - The Post-World War II Awakening was actual two Pentecostal awakenings: the Latter Rain Revival and the Healing Revival. By 1949, Billy Graham became a major voice in the evangelical Christian movement. It is estimated that more than 180 million people attended his 400+ crusades, many of which were televised.

1960s -1970s - The 1960s and early 1970s saw the Charismatic Renewal and Jesus Movement, both of which reached beyond just the Pentecostal and Holiness churches and to college campuses and mainline denominations. In 1976, America elected Jimmy Carter, a born again president.

1990s - More recently, church revivals included the Toronto Blessing in 1994, the Melbourne Revival, the Modesto Revival, and the Brownsville Revival in 1995 that recorded about 100,000 conversions in just two years. College revivals soon followed, inspired by the revival at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas.

The Promise Keepers Revival of 1991, which involved a group of more than 4,000 men who came to the University of Colorado to be challenged to live up to their faith, became a global movement, and on 1997, an estimated 1 million men gathered on the National Mall in Washington DC to take a stand for Christ. The Promise Keepers evangelical movement continues today with the goal of bringing about “revival through a global movement that calls men back to courageous, bold leadership.”