The Azusa Street Revival with Jack Hayford

100 years ago there was a spiritual awakening that lead to what is now called Pentecostalism or the Charismatic Movement. As close to 100,000 people gather in LA to remember that event. I’m Charles Morris inviting you to join me with Pastor Jack Hayford. It’s a program called, “The Azusa Street Revival”

Song: Majesty
Performed by:

This is Haven Today and I’m Charles Morris and I’m sitting in a studio at Church on the Way in Los Angeles, California with someone many, many people know, Pastor Jack Hayford. We’re going to talk about revival, and first Pastor Jack, welcome to Haven Today.
JH: Thank you Charles, it’s nice to be with you on the broadcast again.
CM: We’re going to talk in a minute about a specific revival, but let’s go back a little bit in the history of revival. A lot’s been written about revival, there was the Great Awakening in the United States and it was in England as well too. And Jonathan Edwards wrote about that in his “Religious Affections”. What kind of events happen in a revival that moves through a geographical place and time?
JH: You know, probably the simplest way to picture revival is by the word breakthrough. Very much in the way that the sun breaks through the sky when there’s been overcast or when there’s been fog, or a storm, whatever the case may be. And just as those different dimensions of opaqueness of the sky from outright black to just a dim mist that still obstructs the fullness of the sun. I think revival is the love of God and the truth and power of God burning through things that otherwise obstruct the clarity and the vision of his purpose for his people.
CM: As I think back through church history, there have been a lot of instances where revivals are accompanied by things that people later look at and have some doubts about and they wonder could it have been genuine, could it have been true, but if you also read about revival through history there was a sense of holiness wasn’t there?
JH: Mmmhmmm
CM: Holiness of God and a repentance of sin too.
JH: Well you know, sin is of course what deprives humanity, people, individuals, as the case may be, of the fullness of God’s best for their life. Holiness is not, as you know, a religious formality you need to adopt, but it is the wholeness of God answering to that deficiency and defectiveness that our own self-will produces in us. And so the inflow of God’s life does bring that, the holiness. And that is, really what God is up to. The human reactions to when God comes and moves on them individually I believe those often get featured – and by the way Charles, as you know that there’s never been a revival there have not been extraordinary signs, human reactions,
CM: Yes.
JH: sometimes things that seem humorous or become mocked or criticized. I think the mockers or the critics are usually not the people that are experiencing what God is breaking through. They’re people looking for a way to exempt themselves from letting God move in them by saying, “Well I don’t want that to happen to me,” when God wasn’t probably going to do that to them anyway.
CM: Well, God doesn’t always work in the most rational ways when he moves over someone and says, “You’re mine and I’m calling you to me.” Let’s talk about something that happened in Los Angeles 100 years ago. And you are the founder of Church on the Way. You are also the president of your denomination, the Four Square denomination. Something happened 100 years ago, just about where we’re sitting right now and it was revival. Tell us about that.
JH: Azusa Street Revival is one of 4 or 5 outbreaks or breakthroughs as I said, of the grace of God in different places of the world, another being the Welsh Revival at the turn of the 20th century. And that breakthrough of divine grace that manifested in many ways was recently written up in Elmer Town’s book, “History’s Greatest Revival, 10 Greatest Revivals of History”. Having written on those 10 revivals which we don’t have time for recitation now, Elmer sent his manuscript to several representatives of all parts of the Evangelical community. I was one of the recipients. I think there were 15 of us. Names you would all, everyone would know, the broad spectrum. As, I remember for example there were representatives at Moody, there was I think John McArthur was one, there were leaders from the Free Church tradition, Pentecostal representations,
CM: Yes, yes.
JH: And he asked them to prioritize this group, say which of the 10 greatest revivals in history would you say is the foremost. It was striking to me, and I was surprised at the report that the one surrounding the Azusa season of revival, that group together as our consensus was our greatest revival. Probably because of what’s happened the last century, because it was not an event in a vacuum that it happened then it was over.
CM: Well, and if you look at what came out of that, your own denomination, the Foursquare denomination, the Assemblies of God, the Nazarene Church, but other things as well, too.
JH: Well there’s 600 million believers in the world today who draw their roots directly back to the revival at Azusa street which is one of the reasons it is seen as such an enormous impacting revival, 600 million believers today in the world.
CM: And this is Haven Today and we don’t and have never in 70 plus years taken a stand on the Charismatic or the non-Charismatic side of Christendom, but if you look around the growth of the world today that Azusa Street is where that word Pentecostal first kind of started.
JH: And it wasn’t a sect. Pentecostal was to hark back to the breakthrough that took place at the birth of the church. And simply saying, we want the 1st century in our lives again. And I remember Billy Graham going to bring revival meetings in Britain several years ago and a group of people protested his being there, some of the theologians of the Church of England.
CM: Yes.
JH: He met with them. He said, “Now what can I do that will make you feel better about my coming? What, what don’t you like that I’m doing?” And they said, “Well you’re setting the church back 100 years.” He said, “Well I’m sorry about that. I was hoping to set it back 2000.” So Pentecost goes back to the beginning.
CM: Well and you’ve got a long association with Billy Graham. You were one of the co-chairs of
JH: That’s right, yes.
CM: his last crusade in Los Angeles.
JH: Tremendous privilege.
CM: And I might add as well, if you wanted to look at other events within what, maybe 5,6 miles of where the Azusa Street Revival started, that’s where Billy Graham began his first crusade,
JH: Bill Bright and Campus Crusade.
CM: Campus Crusade for Christ, Fuller Seminary, the Old Fashioned “Gospel Hour” with Charles Fuller, Haven of Rest that this program is part of.
JH: Right.
CM: Let me ask you this. Speaking, going back 2000 years, think about the book of Acts with me Jack. If someone who were alive and a participant of the time of revival that happened just after Christ ascended into Heaven and Pentecost, Peter’s sermon and then the church grew like wildfire, if they could be transported in a time machine to our North American world where we are today and they saw the church today, what do you think their response might be?
JH: Well, I don’t have any question that to some degree there would be a sense of gratification, but to be very frank Charles, without seeming condescending toward that part of the church closest to my heart, and that’s of course North America, I think they would say, “Do you have any other examples? Transport us.”
CM: There has to be something better than this?
JH: Well I think that if they were transported to Latin America, if they were transported to Africa, if they were transported to Asia, they would feel far more that they were encountering the kind of life that they did. The blessing and the move of God in the church in those continents, the underground church in China, the church throughout Africa and all expressions of it throughout Latin America probably more closely approximate the freedom and openness to the Lord and the focus on the Word as you said earlier, the holiness, evangelism, letting Christ function like, well it’s basically book of Acts life. And North America and Europe we have a tendency to theorize and theologize, which is not to argue against intellect or good theology, but to say that it does not supplant the simplicity that is in Christ that we’re called to.
CM: And somebody who’s listening right now who perhaps is not out of a Charismatic persuasion, you’re not really talking about revival in the sense that somebody just has to speak in tongues are you?
JH: oh my goodness, you know, tongues, as a Pentecostal, tongues is a benefit to my prayer life. It is, it’s not a shtick, it’s not something that is my identity, and it’s not something that’s a standard by which I measure other Christians. And I don’t know any sensible Charismatic or Pentecostal who thinks any differently than I do. Sometimes people will make a caricature of a Charismatic or Pentecostal and claim that that’s the whole, the whole ball of wax and they usually pick the looniest of the bunch to stereotype.
CM: Right.
JH: But no, revival is not measured by speaking with tongues. Revival is measured by an openness however to the Spirit of God and the truth of his Word and then what the Word by the Spirit works in us.
CM: It’s interesting, you travel the world a lot and you actually see where revival is going on right now. Any one place in the world that you are seeing God move in a mighty way to call people to him?
JH: Well, I think the most exciting place I’ve been lately has been in Africa. I was just in Nigeria about 2 ½ months ago and the proliferation of churches in that part of the world is a reminder. And when by I say churches I mean multitudes of Christians who are finding homes
CM: Sure.
JH: Because the churches don’t fit in the buildings they had before. And some of these churches handle 15 to 30,000, the buildings, it’s amazing. What is so moving about it however is we’re all aware of how the AIDS epidemic has swept through Africa. And it’s a case where I think, where sin has abounded grace is abounding. And there is multitude literally millions of people coming to Christ in Africa right now.
CM: Pastor Jack Hayford is our guest. We’re talking about revival, in particular the 100th anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival which was right here in Los Angeles where we’re broadcasting from. I know we’ve got some pastors listening right now. They’ve probably been to some seminars. They’ve read a lot of books on how they can grow a church. You founded what is today one of the largest church in America. You have a seminary and a Bible College that you’ve started as well. You’re president of your denomination. We’re in North America Jack and there are a lot of people that want to know “Tell me 7 simple steps on how I can do it.” Can you tie that in with our talking about revival? If there’s someone listening that says, “I want to do what you’ve done. Tell me how you do it.”
JH: you know Charles, as we speak I’m engaged in a week with a group of 45 pastors. 9 months a year, one week of each of those months, that’s what I do, I meet with those pastors. We talk about the very thing you just said. The key, ultimately to, and it is, you said it, everybody’s looking for 7 keys, you know can you tell me. I’m just thankful you didn’t ask me for that, because the answer isn’t in a list of methods, it is fundamentally in a resetting – you know that button you push and it resets –
CM: Yes
JH: So the power works –
CM: Yes.
JH: We need to reset the, our focus on the power source. And it is basically leaders who will pray; open to a genuine transparency before God. Let the Spirit of God bring them, alert and alive in a depth that is not defined by some new theological insight, but by a new simplicity and openness to God. And as that simplicity of soul then begins to read into the ministry of the Word that transmits to people. They recognize they’re not talking to a textbook or just a clever or capable communicator, but life begins to flow. And I’m persuaded that the nurturing of our roots – I call it the school of pastoral nurture – the nurturing of the roots of a leader’s life, in his walk with God, how he thinks about those he leads, how he thinks about his priorities and how he thinks about the gatherings he conducts. So gatherings are moved from events to a quest for an encounter with God. My priorities are focused first on the root systems of my soul rather than, than even my own study, which is not to neglect study, because I am a serious student of the Word.
CM: Yes, you are.
JH: How I think about the people as not an end product that grows a church, but people that God can facilitate through what I have to give them that will make them the salt and light in the darkness of the community. The turnaround of those viewpoints as I think at the car of where it would bring a freshness in, at least the congregation of that leader and throughout the church wherever those principles are applied.
CM: Well, as things happen, of course, we don’t always have enough time and we certainly don’t on this program today, but Jack would you mind praying for Haven Today listeners for revival? Because I know there are many people listening that want revival. And would you just lead us in prayer in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit?
JH: Well, Charles as I do let me first say how thankful I am for your ministry and Haven’s. As you’ve heard me say before, and I think on one of the milestone anniversary’s I affirmed that from my childhood Haven has been a blessing to my life and I’m now in the 70th year of my life. So we come in prayer, Father God, doing so in Jesus name and making our heart cry that you would let there be such an openness, a fearlessness to say “Yes, living God move upon us.” And as the old hymn says, “Spirit of the Living God fall afresh on us. Mold us and make us.” Rekindle in us, as Paul said to Timothy, stirring up the gift that is distinct in each of us that ignited will make the church be the church. Lord, bless Haven and bless Charles and the team here at Haven, that there come the full advance of all you would use of them as an instrument to advance your grace and power in your church and we pray for that, Father God, by your power, Lord Jesus in your name and Holy Spirit by your quickening assistance and ignition of the fire from Heaven, amen.
CM: Amen.

Song: O Breath of God
Performed by:

We opened our time together with one of the most well known Christian songs of the last 100 years, “Majesty” written by our guest on this program Pastor Jack Hayford. And we just heard a song of revival. Whether you’re a Charismatic or not a Charismatic, that song, “O Breath of God” has meaning to all Christians. This is Haven Today and the program is called, “The Azusa Street Revival”. Thanks for joining Jack Hayford and me as we talked about this 100th anniversary that’s being celebrated in Los Angeles this week by people from a wide variety of denominations. Sometimes we have a program that people want to get a copy of and that may be the case today and if so, we have it available on CD or cassette for you. We ask for a modest gift, but I need to tell you we’re listener supported. And so it really helps when someone orders a copy of the program or more than one copy and then sends us an extra $10, $50, $100 or even $500. If you want a copy of the program to keep or to pass on I just ask you to pray that God lay on your heart the right amount of a gift to send to help Haven Today keep telling the great story. You can give online at haventoday.org or you can call us at 1-800-65-HAVEN, that’s 1-800-65-HAVEN. Ask for a copy of “The Azusa Street Revival” on either CD or cassette and please let us know the station where you’re listening when you get in touch. If you give by internet at haventoday.org, you might want to take note of some other things on the right side of our home page. There’s information under a banner that says, “Going Deeper” covering things like archeology and the Bible, the just translated Gospel of Judas that we were talking about last week, The Da Vinci Code the book that’s been out a few years but the movie is coming out soon. We have past programs, special articles and video clips. Now if you would like you can also write to us so I want to give you our mailing address, here it is:
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