[Q:] Give us some background on your early life.
[A:] "I grew up in a Christian home in Kansas and had my first experience with the Lord when I was six years old. The service was actually over when I was drawn to the altar. There was no one else in the sanctuary but me, and I just began to cry. When the pastor and my dad came in, they asked me what was wrong-supposing that I had gotten my feelings hurt somehow. However, I just looked at them and said that 'I have been called to preach.' Afterward, my family moved to Missouri and I never felt that call again.

I went through school, pretty much dropping out of church entirely. I lived a fairly wild life, playing in a band in bars and night clubs every weekend to put myself through college. I met my wife Kathy in college, and tried to turn over to a new leaf after we were married in 1975. I cut back on my drinking, quit the band, and started teaching high school music. However within five months, the bottom fell out of our marriage very suddenly. We were living in northern Missouri and had come back to my home town, Sedalia, for a weekend where I partied with my old college friends. One night, Kathy told me that she want to have a time with just the two of us, but I wanted to party some more. A fight broke out between us which grew worse and worse. Eventually, at one o'clock in the morning sitting on the front steps of my mother's house, she told me that she hated me and wanted to leave me. I said that she could leave if she wanted, but she would have to take the bus back to her mom's the next day.

When we got up in the morning, we stayed in the same house but didn’t speak with one another. I was miserable and didn’t know what to think about my life. I had been noticing my sister who had been really sick walking around, smiling and her sense of peace was making me even more miserable that afternoon. I finally asked what happened. We spent the next two hours talking about Jesus, during which time Kathy and my mother also joined us. My sister asked whether I would like to give my life to the Lord. I turned to Kathy to see if she wanted to receive Jesus with me. She told me that she would, so we joined hands, prayed together, and were baptized in the Holy Spirit. I didn’t come from a Pentecostal/charismatic background at all and had never heard anybody speak in tongues. But I stood in the living room, singing in tongues, and was having a wonderful experience. Then, quite unexpectedly, I announced the same thing that I did at the altar when I was six, that I was called to preach."

[Q:] What Changes did that bring?
[A:] Kathy and I fulfilled our teaching contract which had one more year remaining on it and then moved back to Sedalia where our family was because we didn’t know what else to do. I was hired as an assistant by the Methodist church that I grew up in and worked there for a year. Then, we started traveling on the road singing and ministering to people, which we did for about six and a half years."

[Q:] When did you transition into a pastoral role?
[A:] "It was in the early 1980's. Everything was fine with our ministry at that point. We were seeing more and more people saved and filled with the Spirit. Our finances were up, some of our records were appearing on the gospel charts, and our music was being played on the radio. But I was given a tape series by Winkie Pratney on revival which I spent the next two weeks listening to. It was the first time I had ever heard of things like Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival. The things he was saying started to get down in me that revival was coming to America, and it was coming to the local church. That was significant to me back then because a lot of the things which were attracting the most attention were happening down at the civic arenas or convention centers and not in the local church. I began to envision a church where the local pastor and people were experiencing God at their own altar. That is still the dream I have today.

I didn’t want to miss out on what God was going to do because we were traveling all the time, so word got out that I received a number of offers, including one that came from eight hundred member church in Chicago. The pastor there was going to stay a couple of more years, and they wanted to groom me and take his place. It was a wonderful opportunity, and I accepted their invitation to come. We were living in Smithton Missouri, at the time-a town with a population of 532. We had moved there in 1979, and it was a nice place to come home to and relax when we wanted to rest from our travels.

Just as we were getting ready to move to Chicago some people in town contacted me and said that they would like to know if I was interested in being their pastor. There was a little church in Smithton which had sat empty for about four years. There were only six members left (who they said wouldn’t come if I took over the church), they had no money, and the one remaining trustee who mowed the grass couldn’t do it anymore. The church was going to be torn down, and they were really upset about it because it was an historic site, built in 1859. I told them I wasn’t interested. Then, they came to me a second time and asked if I would reconsider it. The last pastor had been run off and the doors locked when some people were baptized in the Holy Spirit. I told them that they really didn’t want me, so I said no again. But they came back to me a third time and said that they were desperate because no one wanted to take the church. They said that they knew I spoke in tongues, but were willing to deed the property and transfer everything over to my ministry if I would just make it a church. Finally I told them that I would pray about it, but it was really only something I said to get out the door.

As I was driving around town later, I became convicted that I should at least pray, even though what I should do seemed so obvious. So, I went through the motions when I came home. I didn’t even tell Kathy was I was doing. I knelt down in the living room and laid it out before the Lord. Here was the church in Chicago with lots of people and lots of future, and on the other hand, there was the church in Smithton which was as dead as could be. I said, 'Lord, what would you do?' And to my great surprise, I heard a voice from Heaven tell me, "I would raise the dead." I was absolutely stunned, but the thought occurred to me that I should have known that already. Anybody could have taken that other church, but only God could raise the dead. I told Kathy and we both agreed that if that what Jesus would do, then that was what we were going to do. So we had to call Chicago and cancel everything."

[Q:] What were the beginning days like at the church in Smithton?
[A:] "After making the decision to stay, our attention turned to this little old musty church that had no people. I wanted to make it as hard for God as I could, so we held our first meeting on a Thursday night. I didn’t think anyone would come, but thirteen people showed up. That very first night, I told everyone that I was there because revival was coming to America and the local church. Over the next few weeks, I told everyone that I wanted them to imagine people lined up to come into this place, not because of us, but because the glory of God had come down.

We started the church in 1984 and for the next ten years, basically stayed there and saw the church grow. By that time we had about 180 people in a town of 532, which was considered a success. We were having three services a week. The praise and worship was good, the finances were good, and everything seemed fine-but I still did not know or experience what Evan Roberts knew and experienced. They had a relationship where they were willing to lay down their lives, and I was still trying to get people to turn off their TV’s and show up for church. They were coming but that was the level we were on. I was hungering for and dreaming of another level where we could come and see God move."

[Q:] You experienced severe desperation at one point in your ministry there. Can you describe?
[A:] "We experienced trouble from some people in our church who were close friends of ours at one time I had gone to see Rodney Howard-Browne when he came to St. Louis and it made them nervous. I knew something was beginning to happen. But they weren’t going to go for revival, so the left the church. It really wasn’t a big deal- it happens all the time. But I felt like a failure in my relationship with people, and here I was stuck in this little town without a move of God. I was not sure I wanted to do what I was doing for the rest of my life and was at a very low point of despair. I was still preaching, but I was just a shell. I was giving the people information to cover up for not having the real anointing and depth I needed. I had really hit rock bottom, and Kathy started to plead with me to go away-but I didn’t know where to go. Kathy suggested that I go down to Florida and see what was happening in Pensacola- at least she could tell the church I was going to check out the revival and they wouldn’t have to know how messed up I was. Really, all I wanted was a place to get away. I didn’t care about the revival. So, on March 10, 1996, I preached a really short message. I told them that I was like the woman with the issue of blood. I had been there twelve years, spent all that I had, and was no better. With that, I walked out and drove down to Florida as miserable as could be."

[Q:] What happened to Pensacola that changed your life and ministry?
[A:] "I cried out to God all day long in my motel room, but it was a blessing to have somewhere to go in the evening where God was moving and people were happy. I didn’t dress like a pastor or tell anyone who I was because I just wanted to be part of the crowd. I didn’t go down for prayer like other people did. I wasn’t trying to get revival in my church I was trying to get my life back. One night I saw someone dressed in a really nice business suit over in a corner by a green plant crying uncontrollably. At that moment I knew that I had to get to the point-so broken that I was totally open to God. I was still felling miserable, sitting in the balcony during another service, when I heard God say that He wanted me to have a revival, I was at the lowest point of my life, and it sounded ridiculous to me at the time. So, I just put it our of my mind. However I heard the same thing again the next night, and I started to argue with God. But He corrected me saying, 'I didn’t say you had to be a revival, I said I want you to have a revival.' By this time I was doing much better-being in the atmosphere of a real move of God will make you better. I called Kathy and told her that I was coming home and that if nothing changed, I was not going back to ministry like we had before. I drove home and walked into church a few minutes after the Sunday evening service began. I was going to give Kathy a hug because I hadn’t seen her in two weeks, but before I could get to her, it was like a lightning bolt from Heaven hit me without warning. It took me completely by surprise. The people tell me that I started to jump with my arms up in the air, twirling around-I don’t even remember it all. But the whole church responded. For some reason, many of them kicked off their shoes and ran to the front. You could tell something was in the air. I was almost speechless. I would try to talk, then begin to stutter, almost like someone who had been electrocuted. We have never been the same since."

[Q:] How did you react to what you experienced that night?
[A;] “I told everyone that I didn’t know what this was, but I would be coming back the next night to find out. The next evening, the whole church showed up. We continued having services, Sunday through Wednesday, for a few weeks, and visitors started showing up. After awhile, we started realizing that maybe something was happening here. People would come and become instantly changed. Many would collapse under the Presence of God without anyone ever touching them- this was new to me. It touched those in our own church. People I couldn’t do anything with were suddenly transformed.

We outgrew out little sanctuary within seven weeks and had to move into the gymnasium we had constructed to play volleyball in. We started counting the cities, states, and countries which were coming to this small town in Missouri. We were visited by a quarter of a million people from every state and sixty nations. We held five services a week for over four years, and wonderful things continued to happen. Everyone had to be there to serve each night because we didn’t have enough people to rotate like bigger churches can do.

[Q:] How well did the people adapt to what was going on?
[A:] “At the timed, most everybody embraced revival. We trained them to do everything from parking cars to praying for people. Our worship leader, Eric Nuzum, had just started leading the two weeks I was away, (Eric was a forklift operator.) Prior to that, Kathy and I led worship together. I felt that I wasn’t supposed to lead worship anymore, but that God wanted me to concentrate on catching the spiritual temperature of what He was doing in order to lead the people. So Eric started leading worship every night. He has a powerful story, but it is the whole Smithton experience-a bunch of people in the middle of nowhere, struck by the power of God. Once God started coming to our church every service, everything changed. Our ministry became more effective and we had something to give the people. The people kept coming, and the word continued to spread.

A sense of destiny struck us-that we were born for this hour to be part of a move of God. Kids started saying that they maybe didn’t want to play soccer this year because they would rather be in church. It wasn’t just the pastor begging people to show up. There was a commitment, a dedication to what God was doing. People were showing up early in the afternoon, wanting jobs to do, and we were staying late into the evening. The revival really touched the entire church. We had our congregation there each service and there was a tremendous corporate anointing that we still experience to this day.”

[Q:] How did the people in the community respond to such an influx of visitors?
[A:] “It was good at first because there was a buzz going on around Smithton. But eventually, we kind of collided with the size of the town. Things became quite noisy-cars were honking, people were yelling and being carried out of the services, and traffic was backing up. Things were going on late into the night. Sometimes there were so many people there that they said you could hear us five miles away-not the amplified instruments, but the shouts of the people. If we could have minded our own business and had a big church with a big parking lot, things would have been better. There was a general acceptance that this was God, but after almost four years, it was getting kind of tough on people.”

[Q:]Did ministers start coming fairly quickly to Smithton to be refreshed?
[A:] “Yes, in fact it wasn’t very long until almost 50% of our ministry was to pastors and leaders who start to come, mostly because they were hurting and wanted a move of God. Many had already quit the ministry. We started holding conferences with them every few months, and they would come by the hundreds. Since then, we have started a world revival network of churches and ministers where the main focus is pastors and leaders who have been touched by revival coming together for fellowship and to talk about pastoring the move of God.”

[Q:]How did you come to the decision to move to Kansas City?
[A:] “We had outgrown our present facility and were wearing our both the building and our neighbors. At first we thought we were going to buy some land near the highway and had several locations picked out. However after three years, one or two people started complaining that they didn’t like it that their pastor wasn’t as accessible as before. They didn’t care about the growth and the visitors being touched by God. I have noticed that if you don’t really get the move of God down into your bones, there will come a time when you can’t keep up the pace-not physically, but spiritually. Certain people just didn’t have it as deep as we thought, and they couldn’t keep up that game any longer. The world started creeping back into there lifestyles. I remember coming back from a trip overseas, and when I walked into the church, I knew something was different. Although the anointing in the services was great, it was like the canopy above changed. I soon found out that there were a handful of people saying that they wished they had their old church back. Now, I think you can say a lot of things when you are a struggling church, praying for revival, and wanting more of God. But when you have the pillar of fire and the whole world standing in line week after week wanting to get in your building-I think it broke the heart of God. I know why they wanted to go back, because it was cozy. There were no visitors, and they had their pastor catering to their every need, and they didn’t have to be servants. I heard God say to me during this time that He wasn’t going to keep it here anymore. So I began to seek God where to go, and it turned out to be 30 minutes away in Kansas City. It was a major decision. I had been pastor here fore sixteen years. But God said it was time to leave. I announced to our church that I was going to transition and begin a new work there. I thought the church would stay together as a local congregation, the majority said that they were going with me. I never even asked them to do that. They said, ‘This is our life, and we are not going to become a regular church again.’ With in a few weeks, people were already selling their homes and finding new jobs.

We ran into a problem during the transition. W had leased and old church building that sat about 1,200 people which we were going to move into in January of this year. However, when some people in that denomination heard that we were going to be utilizing the facility, the rug was pulled out from under us in November. We had announced nationally that we were going to be in Kansas City on such and such a date, and over half of our people had already moved here. I still think that if was the right thing for both them and us because it is a beautiful brick building which sits empty to this day. But their theology and doctrines got in the way of God’s will. Some people suggested that we just keep meeting in Smithton, but I felt that we were also dealing with the honor of God-He said to get out. We looked for a different building, but there was nothing suitable. I continued to pray, and the Lord said to me, ‘Look, you have a lot of friends in the city who are crying out for revival. Why don’t’ you take your congregation to their churches.’ So, I got on the telephone and asked if they would like the Smithton Outpouring to come to their church on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for two weekends in a row. We would handle everything for two days and support them with what ever they wanted to do on the last day. We continued with this type of arrangement until May. By then we were able to purchase 62 acres of land on the interstate highway and announced that we would begin to hold services on our property in a tent on June 30th until we could get a building up in the fall.”

[Q:]What would you say the focus of your ministry has been?
[A:] “Initially, we thought we would be like Pensacola, more evangelistic. But we quickly realized that those who were dying on the inside. So, our focus has been to get the disable church back on its feet. We have been asked about how many people have been saved at our services, and we say that we are not really counting. Most of the people who come think they are saved already, so they are really coming to the rededication level. We don’t want to make it look like every one who comes to rededicate their life is experiencing a first-time conversation. I see hundreds of people oppressed, taking prescription drugs for depression, and these are tongue-talking handraising, church people. Christians all over are sitting in pews, hurting on the inside. Their kids are in trouble, their marriages are in trouble. Even suicide, at least the thought of it, has become very common. I had to wake up to the fact that God was dealing with the church. Everybody would like to see a massive move of God evangelize our nation, but we need to have a church where people can come and sit down next to someone who is on fire-not someone who is backslidden or lukewarm, who keeps looking at their watch saying, “I’ve seen it all and heard it all and want to go do something else. ‘We do injustice to people when we bring them into our churches, fired up because they have just been saved and filled with the Spirit, only to cool off because they sit next to us. I am so convicted about that, and I want to help change things. Jesus deserves better. We need to have a place to put people that is worthy of Jesus where there is a bride that is committed to Him. You are not a bride because you show up for the wedding. You are a bride when you are dressed and committed to the bride-groom. That’s the deception we have going ton today. People are being told that they are the bride because they are showing up, but they have not done anything about their garments or about preparation with the bridegroom. If you don’t have that in your heart, that complete love and commitment, you don’t have any qualities of a bride. Jesus was promised a bride, and I’m out to help Him get one. I think that a beautiful bride is going to be great at evangelism. The attitude in the world is changing, people are really reconsidering religion. If we can just get the church to change and be revived, I think we will be ready for massive evangelism. I think that I am more of a church health specialist than a church growth specialist because when you get real commitment going some people might leave, but it is much better in the long run.”

[Q:]Do you find that people readily embrace the idea that the church needs reviving?
[A:] “I have a fire burning in my soul every day to see the church revived. But the biggest difficulty is we want to say that we are okay and in need of nothing. So many preachers are prideful, arrogant, and apathetic. They like where the church is because they don’t have to work too hard. They put a little sermon together and smile-it pays the bills, so why mess anything up? It’s like Abraham asking, ‘What’s wrong with Ishmael? Why can’t he be the promised son?’ But God is saying, Ishmael may be your son, but he was born the ordinary way. I want to give you something that is born by the power of My Spirit.”’

[Q:]You see commitment and dedication then as fundamental issues in our day?
[A:] “The Kingdom of God is drawing near to us, we are having a visitation, but most people don’t have any room for Him in their lives. The biggest problem we face is that people are satisfied with how things are and they don’t want to make accommodations for what God wants to do in their life. We have invented other kinds of Christians, but there is no such thing as being anything but a faithful servant of God. Too many people just sit around and waste their life, wanting to be entertained all the time. They come to church and look at their watch, wondering when it will be over because they have better things to do with their time. God is looking for people who don’t have anything better to do, those that absolutely adore Him.”

[Q:]What is a key aspect of revival that you share with people?
[A:] “There are two things I usually emphasize. I tell people that we need the height of revival, which is where people are touched and healed by the power of God-they make shake or fall or experience a variety of different manifestations. The height of revival is God showing us who He is, and we need that. However, we also need the depth of revival. The dept of revival is where God shows us who we are. When you have the height of revival and the depth of revival, you get the length of revival. When I go to a church, I try to see where they are. Some have gone too far into depth, and all they talk about is how bad they are. On the other hand, other have only experienced the height of revival-it is like a party all the time. But that doesn’t last either. You need to have the right mixture of God revealing who He is and Him revealing who we are. That is the perfect balance for sustained revival.”

[Q:]Why do you think some are hesitant to embrace this outpouring of the Spirit?
[A:} “The reasons are varied, but you can usually narrow it down to either they have a wrong motives in the ministry or are fearful. One pastor came to me and said that he was afraid that his church would split if he had revival. I asked him if hi church had ever had a split before, and he said that it did. So I asked him what he had to lose-at least he could split with God this time.

When Jesus went to minister onto the country of the Gadarenes, he cast many demons out of a man there who ran around naked, screaming, and cutting himself with stones. The Bible says that when the people in the area came to see what happened, they became afraid when they saw him clothed and in his right mind. This is a good picture of where we are at today. How come a demonized, naked man doesn’t scare us, but a clothed man is his right mind does? We are afraid of the wrong thing in the church. We’ve adapted the pride, ego, self-centeredness, humanism, fighting, the love moneythey have become normal. (Pretty soon you can get used to a naked, demonized man.) Instead people are afraid of the power of God when He come to put us in our right minds, when we should be opening up to Him and allowing Him to move in our lives. The people are so afraid that whey asked Jesus to leave-and He left with out preaching one more sermon. IF we don’t respond when He comes to put us in our right minds, He goes to another place because there are so many people today begging for him to come.

I try to encourage pastors that they are going to pay eventually. IF you are afraid that people are going to leave your church, they are going to leave anyway for some stupid reason. You might as well let them do it because you stood up for the Kingdom of God and what’s right. You might as well go for God and pay the price now because you’ll get a church that glorifies God in the long run.”

[Q:]Do you have a concern about the way people are viewing revival?
[A:} “Most people have a wrong concept of revival. Revival is for believers who have lost life. We say that is vigorous life coming to the half-dead. A lot of pastors want tan evangelistic campaign. But revival needs to first start in the heart of the pastor and I the leaders, then it will spill over into the church. Then you can go out in the power of the Spirit and change the world.. Many ministers don’t know how to get revival because they are looking in the wrong direction. They are not looking at themselves and saying, ‘I’m the problem.’ Many come to me and ask for prayer because they say the church needs revival, but they are the ones that really need revival. Once you realize that you really need it, the others will come. The real why revival struck our church his because I need it. Sure there were problems in the church, but they weren’t my problem-I was my problem. I needed Jesus in my life more than ever before. We need to get away from the thinking that the problem with everything is always someone or something else and never ourselves. People say, ‘Well, the problem is HBO, Disney, movie theatres, video games, and rock music.’ But these things are not stronger than the power of God. We must realize that the problem is us-we don’t love Jesus with all our hearts. We love the world
too much.

In Matthew 22, the Pharisees asked Jesus whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar or not in an attempt to trick Him. The first thing He did was call them hypocrites, then He instructed them to show Him the tax money. The unique thing about that moment was they reached into there pocket and had some. This is where the Church is today. We rant and rave about how bad the world is, but we’ve got the coin in our pocket all along. We like what the world has to offer, yet we try to deceive ourselves. What we really want is a cleaner carnality. We want movies we can take our kids to. We want the world to be cleaner so we all participate. We must stop preaching a cleaner carnality and experience real Christianity-a real relationship. The people in the Bible gave up their lives, and we can’t get people to give up their remote controls. Revival is not going to fall out of the sky. It comes and pours out of us. That’s why we’ve been calling it the Smithton Outpouring, rather than revival. The world revival has a lot of connotations to it, but the word outpouring describes what is happening. It’s something that starts in you, and then pours out of you. People still have the misconception of revival that it is such a sovereign move of God that we have no say in it. But that is absolutely not true. Yes, it is sovereign because God has already chosen to do it. God is already reaching down. We need to start reaching up with all your might-not half-heatedly. We can’t be Christians that are playing around in our food, we’ve got be really hungry. If you can get a group of people hour are focused and sincerely reaching up for Him, you will find that His hand has been reaching down all the times. Revival can strike any palace, any where. Pastors say, ‘Well, I guess God likes you better’ or ‘you’ve got a lot favor and grace.’ But this is not the case. It’s not the reaching down, but he reaching up. I try to teach people to reach up. If they will create and atmosphere of Heaven on earth, the Holy Spirit will manifest Himself where He is welcome.

[Q:]Do you see the Body of Christ reaching up to Him in this way, or is there a problem in this area?
[A:] “There is a problem where people think that they have seen or heard it all, and that bothers me. Every true move of God has similarities and differences. There are things that God did in Smithton-and now in Kansas City-that you will not see anywhere else. We shouldn’t take it for granted that we have seen everything about revival because we have been to this place or that place. It is important for those who are seeking a move of God and are still not where they need to be to come and experience what God is doing.”

[Q:]Are there those who view what God has been doing as a fad or phase that we must move on from now?
[A:] “There is no place to go after revival. There is no alternative to repentance, commitment, retuning to our fist love, and serving God with all our hearts. There is no move after that. That is what Christianity is all about. If we do not embrace the visitation of God, it is usually the next generation that pays for it. I don’t want to see that happening and it doesn’t need to happen. The alternative to revival is unthinkable. God is our rescuing us. The move of God worldwide is the Noah’s Ark of our generation. We had better get on board.”

[Q:]What is our final thought about the days to come for the church?
[A:] “My heat breaks for the Christians who are struggling right now with what I struggled with. No church program or gimmick is going to fix that struggle. Instead, only the Kingdom of God that has drawn neat to me and changed me and my church is the answer.”