What happened at Azusa Street, and how important was it to the growth of Pentecostalism?
The Azusa Street revival has a special place in the collective memory of world Pentecostalism, because something unusual happened here. You’ll notice the interracial makeup of the pictures of Azusa leaders. The revival at Azusa Street was inspired by earlier Pentecostal revivals right after the turn of the century and also the revival in Wales that had tremendous success. William Seymour was an African-American Black Holiness preacher, originally from Louisiana, who had come into awareness of the Pentecostal movement, had studied under Pentecostal pioneer Charles Parham in Houston, Texas, and then he was invited to go to Los Angeles and pastor a Black Holiness mission. The Holiness leaders there rejected his Pentecostal message that when you are baptized in the Spirit you would speak in tongues, which they understood to be the languages of the world. So God might give you the Bengali language of India, and that would be a signal to what your calling might be, so you would go to India a
