William McDowell clutches a report from a local doctor certifying that an active church member’s lupus has been completely healed. The healing is the 200th medical miracle Deeper Fellowship Church has witnessed in 18 months.
Musician, songwriter, worship leader and now pastor, McDowell nearly doubles over in laughter, beams a smile and shouts, “There is nothing too hard for the Lord!” In response, a young, diverse crowd screams in worship. Packed tight in a standing-room-only warehouse, they sing and dance to music so loud it can be felt. This is the next generation of revival, and it’s happening in Orlando, Florida, known more for amusement than for awakening.
McDowell has had his prayers answered. Standing onstage wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Fearless,” he is lead pastor at Deeper Fellowship Church, which has grown from 15 to 1,000 people in three years. For seven years, he and his church have been begging God for a new revival, one that would permeate the entire earth. But they didn’t expect it to start in their congregation.
“It’s such an honor to see how people are standing outside just to come in the church,” says volunteer Thamar Blaise. “Normally people would say, ‘Hey, I’ve never seen this happen at a church.’ They’ve seen people stand in line to come walk in the club, but this is church. People are standing one or two hours just to step foot in the church because of something amazing God is doing.”
Volunteers at Deeper Fellowship wear T-shirts that say “Pray Like Lives Depend on It.” For most members, that’s not just a catchy slogan—it’s a lifestyle.
When Deeper Fellowship began in 2011, it was a group of only 15 meeting in McDowell’s living room. He describes it as basically a monthly “small group” where they gathered to pray for their city. “For three and a half years, the main thing we did is build community and pray every day for the city of Orlando,” McDowell says. “We prayed for a move of God in the city and that, from this city, there’d be a move of God that permeates the earth.”
When Deeper Fellowship finally moved into a church building, it was still those same 15 people that first week. The church’s mission had not changed: praying for a move of God to permeate its city and the earth. Then on Sunday, May 22, 2016, the first service had ended and McDowell was preparing for the second service when he felt a deep unease in his spirit. He asked one of the other pastors to handle the service introduction so he could press in deeper. He kept praying, trying to discern what God was saying.
As worship ended, he got his response. He rose for his sermon, but all he could do was weep. Choking through the tears, he told the congregation what he felt—and how it linked to a decades-old discussion about revival. One of the pastors suddenly shouted, “It’s happening!” Without prompting, churchgoers rushed the altar, literally sprinting to the front. They fell on their faces, weeping with McDowell. They all stayed there, wordless, for hours.
“I had multiple thoughts at that moment,” McDowell laughs. “The person who had been crying out to God all these years for a move of God is like, Oh my, I can’t believe I’m experiencing this! The pastor, pragmatic side is thinking, The guests are never ever going to come back.”
Hours in, McDowell guessed the guests felt awkward and sheepishly told them they could leave. He says he felt an immediate rebuke from the Holy Spirit. As people walked to the doors, he started yelling, “Wait! Wait! Please don’t leave!”
Normally so eloquent in his gospel presentation, McDowell didn’t know what to tell them. So he said, “If you have sat there through this and you don’t know the Lord, it’s because you want Him. If you want Him … ”
He never finished that sentence. Nonbelievers rushed the stage and gave their lives to the Lord. That’s how the outpouring began. Now two years later, it’s still happening. It doesn’t always look the same. Some nights are full of weeping and repentance. Others are joyful and worshipful. Sometimes he still gives a sermon. At other times, participants do nothing but pray. For Deeper Fellowship, true revival is unpredictable and continually morphing—and almost never fits in the box of what we think revival should look like.
“To say, ‘Hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen one hour from now’ is a different paradigm that makes a lot of people uncomfortable,” McDowell says. “Revival cannot happen on our terms, and it doesn’t happen by our direction. That’s why not everyone is experiencing it. Everybody needs it, but not everybody wants it.”
“We have seen more than 200 miracles of physical healing in addition to deliverances, supernatural breakthroughs and salvations,” McDowell says. Miracles have been reported at many other revivals, but Deeper Fellowship has gone a different direction. The church never hosts healing nights or calls what is happening a “healing revival.” Occasionally someone calls out a specific sickness God wants to heal—but not “back pain,” McDowell says, which along with other vague symptoms doesn’t count toward their list of 200-plus healings. Most people are healed simply by entering the room. Others find private spaces or wait until a service’s waning hours, when much of the crowd has left.
One woman was healed of stage 4 lung cancer. The cancer had spread from her lungs to her neck and spine, nearing her brain stem. She was given only six months to live. McDowell prayed for her, and later, her doctors gave her the good news: She’s cancer-free, and she has the medical records to prove it. That verification matters to McDowell: “We are very intentional not to sensationalize what the Lord is doing, so we don’t make declarations that are not provable,” he says.
Deaf ears open. Blind eyes see. Strokes are reversed. Surgeries are cancelled. Wheelchairs are emptied. The testimonies don’t stop, but McDowell says the miracles are not the main story. “The miracles are just a sign that it’s happening,” McDowell says. “It’s not the happening. But really, it’s the presence of God, the outpouring of the Spirit of God, which is literally stirring the passion of people in a way that’s transforming their lives. The bigger story of what’s happening is actually the seeds of revival. The fruit of this revival is our kids being in love with Jesus. … They’re growing up in a culture where they’re like, ‘Come to my church. God heals people.’”
People often see revival as an event, but McDowell says it’s “something happening inside” of the believer. McDowell hopes God is using Deeper Fellowship to awaken righteous envy in a generation. “It makes you jealous enough to cry out for it yourself,” he says of the revival at his church. In other words, don’t go jump on a plane to visit the Great Orlando Revival.
“If people read this and say, ‘I need to get to Orlando,’ then we failed,” McDowell says. “If they read this and say, ‘I’ve got to get to God,’ it’s been a success.”