A modern-day tent revival, nine years in the making, is on the move across the nation, complete with reports of record salvations and baptisms. Organizers of the Jesus Tent Revival movement say it’s shifting the nation’s spiritual landscape.
It started back in 2019, during a powerful event in Kokomo, IN.
“People come in underneath that tent that walked in as atheists, walked in as Buddhists, walked in as Muslim,” Dr. Braden Andersen, founder of Jesus Tent Revival, told CBN News.
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Inspired by that first night in Kokomo and encouraged by a local pastor, Andersen, a primary care physician and evangelist, made the life-changing decision in 2022 to sell his medical practice and house to take the tent revival nationwide.
“The thought of being able to impact people with the gospel, even in that very moment, just seemed so much more important than the clinics that we had, the work that we did in the emergency room, or what have you,” Andersen explained. “While I’m thankful for that work, this makes a difference in eternity, and we felt like the time was right. And if America’s this hungry, let’s bring them Jesus.”
That unprecedented hunger has resulted in people driving for hours and staying in hotels for an encounter with God.
“There’s something about the simplicity and the power of that atmosphere that’s just resonating with America,” Andersen said. “America is hungry. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it this hungry.”
The ministry partners with local churches that host the revival to provide coordinated follow-ups after each service.
Pastor Tim Sullivan of The Pentecostal Church in Fort Smith, AR, has seen the hand of God at work in the tent revivals.
“I looked, and our neighbor had walked across from the neighborhood across the field, and he said, ‘I’ve not been to your building, but I wanted to come to this tent revival,'” Sullivan told CBN News. “And that night he was baptized and saved. And I thought that was so special that all the years that he had lived in close proximity to the church building, but he had not attended a church.”
Many who attend the tent meetings testify about receiving newfound freedom.
“He saved me from selling drugs, doing drugs, fornication,” explained Matthew Stewart.
An unnamed woman commented, “I was a girl who was just broken and lost. I was empty, and then I got into this atmosphere where the Lord filled me with the Spirit.”
A hallmark of the tent revival has been the record number of spontaneous baptisms, with lines so long they’re conducted before, during, and after the services.
Andersen said, “This actually has become quite an incredible problem for us. At this point, the crowds that will come for baptism are actually beginning before the service. There’s been some of these events in New Albany, Indiana, for example, over 300 people baptized in just a single weekend in Fort Smith, Arkansas; Little Rock, Arkansas; many of these Indiana events, some in Florida.”
When asked how rewarding it is to go from healing people physically as a medical doctor to now helping them heal spiritually, Andersen responded, “My wife and I, she was an ER nurse as well, so we kind of both lived in that same hospital world and we will reflect on this all the time. But when we go home at night now, the stories that you hear of lives that are changed is so much more significant and so much faster than we could have ever achieved through medicine. It is very fulfilling.”
Meanwhile, as demand continues to outpace capacity, the Jesus Tent Revival is expanding internationally with meetings planned for Canada.
“Jesus is hope, and Jesus is peace, and Jesus is power,” said Pastor Sullivan. “And I think that’s what our nation, our youth, our middle-aged, our elders, everybody’s looking for. With what’s going on in our world, everybody needs Jesus.”
