Dean Emeritus, Regent University School of Divinity
Chairman, North American Renewal Service Committee
Former Superintendent, Pentecostal Holiness Church
Ph.D. & MA, University of Georgia
BA, University of Richmond
Married, Carol
Pastor, Community Church in Bowie, Maryland
Previously taught as Regent University and served as Faculty Chair of Religious Studies
Director of Urban Outreach, and Director of Field Education
More than 18 years as pastor, teacher and speaker
Ph.D. & MA, Regent University
BS, Columbia Bible College & Seminary
Married, April with Two Children
GUEST BIO
Dr. Vinson Synan & Dr. Charles Fox: The Spread of Pentecostalism
By
The 700 Club
CBN.com -AZUSA STREET REVIVALWilliam J. Seymour was born the son of freed slaves in Louisiana. He attended a Houston Bible school, but when the head of the school prayed for the students to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Seymour had to sit outside because he was black. Even though he missed the prayer meeting, he took the message of Pentecost to a small church in Los Angeles. After his first fiery sermon on healing and prayer languages, he was locked out of the church and told not to come back. So Seymour joined a small prayer group at 214 Bonnie Brae Street. As he preached the message there, the fire of the Holy Spirit came down. People spoke in tongues and were healed.
Over the next few days, huge crowds gathered for interracial services, in spite of segregation laws. Many received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, including Seymour himself. In fact, so many were drawn to the powerful meetings the front porch collapsed under the weight of all the people. So for $50 a month, they rented an old barn on Azusa Street. Services ran constantly for three years, from 1906 to 1909. As people from around the world came to hear Seymour’s messages, the modern Pentecostal movement quickly went global. Segregation had kept Seymour from receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Houston, but after he received the baptism at the LA sermons, Seymour took steps toward yet another kind of church reformation. At the time neither women nor black people had the right to vote. Segregation was the national norm. But the first directors of Seymour’s Apostolic Faith Mission included men and women, both black and white. William J. Seymour’s life and his ministry illustrate that we are all God’s children, adopted through faith in Jesus Christ. And he showed the world that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are still available to Christians.
THE PROJECT
While many people know Azusa Street as the revival that broke down racial boundaries, Fox and Synan explain how Seymour managed such a feat in a racially charged time. Fox says that the gift of tongues drew people to Azusa Street, but love kept them there. He credits the racial unity to Seymour’s message of love. “The color-line was washed away in the blood, in the love,” Fox says. “Seymour’s perception of love was summed up in the early months of the Azusa Revival in October of 1906: ‘Divine love to all, especially the church, the body of Christ, of which every justified soul is a member,” Fox says. He also attributes the success at Azusa Street to Seymour’s willingness to serve God
“God divinely brought his Spirit to move in that situation, but at same time, God had a yielded vessel who wanted God to use him,” he says.
By 1909, the Azusa Street mission fell on hard times, but Seymour still wanted to see his church thrive. Fox and Synan attribute the end of the glory days of Azusa to the rise in popularity of Pentecostal congregations across L.A. and all over the nation and world, but also to rifts involving doctrine. Ultimately half the church followed church-leader William Durham, and other half stayed with Seymour. This split seemed to once again divide the races, with mostly whites going with Durham and blacks staying with Seymour.
Synan and Fox examine the historical context and sources that shaped Seymour's theology by following his life from Louisiana to Azusa Street, and provide us with his original sermons, analyses of his teachings, and the complete and original version of Seymour's only book, Doctrine and Disciplines of the Apostolic Faith Mission of Los Angeles, originally published in 1915. Even the scholars were surprised to learn new things in that text. For example, although the Azusa revival brought races together, after the revival Seymour instructed that he didn’t want a white man to lead his congregation. “With apologies, he explained that whites couldn’t be ‘directors’ of the corporation and the racial separation that became necessary was only ‘for peace,’ and not because of racism,” Synan says. He further explains that Seymour had a few bad experiences with white men trying to steal his church and that this bylaw was probably his way of preserving his church. Another shocking fact was his stance on speaking in tongues. While speaking in tongues was one of the draws to Azusa Street, Seymour changed his stance on this spiritual gift when he wrote the guidelines for his denomination. “Some people to-day [sic] can’t believe they have the Holy Ghost with outward signs; that is Heathenism,” he writes. “The witness of the Holy Spirit inward is the greatest knowledge of knowing God, for he is invisible.” While Seymour still supported the use of spiritual gifts, he no longer believed that should be a determining factor for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Synan explains that Seymour wanted believers to focus on living a righteous and holy life, and that living a holy life would be the evidence of the Holy Spirit.
No matter what happened after Azusa Street, there is no question that Seymour was an effective leader, writer, teacher, and revivalist. His spiritual impact continues to be felt around the world today. His early work has opened the door to millions of people finding the fullness of the Holy Spirit since the Azusa Street Revival, which both "Life" magazine and "USA Today" have listed as being one of the top 100 nation-impacting events of the 20th century.
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