But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
1 Corinthians 1:27
God often moves in unexpected ways through the most unlikely of people. Such was the case for Simon Peter, the Bethsaidan fisherman whose mundane life crossed paths with the life-altering Jesus one day on the Sea of Galilee. This single interaction shifted Peter’s pursuit from fish to men and, as a result, altered the history of the world. God would go on to infuse His Church, built on the “rock” that was the Apostle Peter, with His Holy Spirit and the world would never be the same. Following Jesus oftentimes results in this unexplainable reality; God often moves in unexpected ways through the most unlikely of people.
Such was the case for William J. Seymour. Born May 2, 1870 in Centerville, Louisiana. Seymour was a Black minister and evangelist whose ministry, like the Apostle Peter’s, changed the world. This is no overstatement. The spiritual lineage of 650+ million Christians on the planet today can be traced back to the Azusa Street Revival, an awakening in Los Angeles, California, shepherded by the young pastor William Seymour.
Well before the revival that set in motion over a century of incessant evangelism, missions, and worship, Simon and Phillis Seymour, a few years after gaining their freedom from slavery in 1865, brought William J. Seymour into the world. Though emancipated, the couple welcomed their beloved child into a life of hardship. Slavery was abolished in a legislative sense, but the fires of racism were being kindled; the Klu Klux Klan approached its most violent condition, schools were segregated with Black schools underfunded, and Jim Crow laws were demeaningly restrictive, especially in the South. Seymour was born into a ruthless trial.
After his father passed away unexpectedly, Seymour, at twenty-one years of age, became the sole provider for his family. As if growing up in post-antebellum Louisiana was not difficult enough for a Black man, his family was also desperately poor. In 1896, the entirety of the Seymour Family’s possessions were listed: “One old bedstead, one old chair, and one old mattress.” All of his mother’s property was valued at fifty-five cents.
Their belongings were old, but their God was doing something new.
His experience in Louisiana at the turn of the twentieth century is not documented in detail, but it is evident from his pursuits that the young Seymour sought a better life in the North. Seymour moved to Indianapolis and then Cincinnati to work in the hotel and railroad industries in order to provide a living, and it was in these two cities that God captivated Seymour’s heart and called him into ministry. Seymour attended the desegregated God’s Bible School and Training Home in Ohio and sensed a call from God to carry the message of Jesus to the world. Unfortunately, at the same time, he contracted smallpox and lost the ability to see out of his left eye. Seymour continued in his calling and moved to Houston, where he sat under the instruction of Charles Fox Parham, an evangelist and pastor who is attributed alongside Seymour with the launch and spread of Pentecostalism, a branch of the Protestant church emphasizing the work and manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the life and activity of the believer (Acts 2:1-4).
Parham taught at a Bible school founded in hopes of equipping evangelists and ministers to share the Gospel. Due to the school’s segregated learning structure, Seymour was forced to listen to lectures on the Bible from outside the classroom while Parham taught White students inside. Seymour’s experience was humiliating, but it did not deter the fervency with which he studied the Word of God. After his time in Bible school under Parham, Seymour moved to California alongside Lucy F. Farrow, an emboldened fellow Black student and niece to the renowned Frederick Douglas, to minister in Los Angeles.
While in Los Angeles, Seymour was removed from a preaching position due to his controversial stance on the practice of speaking in tongues as confirmation of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Seymour was expelled from his congregation and left without a place to live. Relying on the generosity of a local janitor who invited Seymour to live in his home, Seymour did not cease in the ministry he sensed God had called him to and began gathering people for prayer in another family’s home, the Asbery household. These worship gatherings and Bible studies were the spark that ignited the Pentecostal movement.
Countless people joined Seymour in prayer in the Asbery Family home until the house became overcrowded, with zealous Christians refusing to leave the premises. Eyewitnesses reported numerous healings, exuberant worship, and speaking in foreign tongues. The home increased to such overcapacity that the porch on the front of the house collapsed, and Seymour was forced to conduct his preaching outside, with listeners embracing his words from the street. Something unthinkable was happening through the previously rejected Seymour.
The group of Christians, desperate for revival, were long overdue in their need for a fitting place of worship when Seymour found 312 Azusa Street, a property home to a forsaken Methodist church. The building on Azusa Street was worse than abandoned. It was dilapidated and deteriorating, yet Seymour embraced the space with unabated gratitude, and it quickly turned into a sanctuary of powerful worship for multitudes.
Word spread that a revival was taking place in Los Angeles, and inquirers visited to assess the spiritual climate. From 1906 to 1915, Hispanic, Black, White, and Asian Christians from all over the country and world poured into the formerly abandoned Azusa Street church to find committed, expressive, evangelizing Christians, worshiping ten to twelve hours at a time and oftentimes through the night. The site was incredible, and yet it was just the beginning of a massive shift in the global Christian landscape. Hundreds of thousands of people joined Seymour’s congregation to worship, and the Azusa Street church became a catalyst not only for missionary efforts but also for the growth and maturation of the Pentecostal branch of the Christian faith.
It has been over 100 years since his death in 1922, and over half a million Pentecostals point to Azusa Street and William Seymour’s ministry to celebrate the movement’s origin and the extraordinary work of God in the world by the power of His Spirit.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Acts 2:1-4
“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”
Joel 2:28-29
The result of Pentecost was the Early Church’s unprecedented missiological endeavor. Christians on every continent, of every tribe, tongue, and nation, trace their spiritual lineage to this seismic event, identified by the Apostle Peter as the great outpouring of God’s Spirit on mankind, the fulfillment of ancient prophecy (Acts 2:14).
When God moves in power, the world hears the reverberations. Such was the case for the infamous disciple Peter and, more recently, for William J. Seymour.
Undaunted by racism and the pervasive activity of the Klu Klux Klan in Louisiana, unabated by smallpox and the loss of vision in his left eye, undeterred despite the segregating laws of his Bible school, and unremitting in ministry in the face of opposition and rejection, William Seymour stewarded a remarkable call on his life; to initiate a revival that would affect hundreds of millions of people for the fame and renown of Jesus. The world has yet to witness the complete effect of God’s work through this unlikely man’s faithfulness. It is an unexplainable reality:
God often moves in unexpected ways through the most unlikely of people.
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