Seeking a third great awakening during the semiquincentennial

A tall figure stuck out amid a shifting crowd at the kickoff of the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C., in late June. Dressed in neutral shades among a sea of red, white, and blue, a young man named Skyler Gillick quietly asked passersby for conversation.

“Usually at fairs I just love hanging out with my friends and having a good time, but I’m here just to evangelize, that’s it,” Gillick told me.

The White House’s Freedom 250 Task Force organized celebrations to commemorate 250 years of American independence, including the 16-day fair on the National Mall with its Ferris wheel, state showcases, and events ranging from Air Force flybys to live rodeo shows. During the fair and other semiquincentennial celebrations in Washington, D.C., Christian organizations have held a forefront role, sharing religious messages and expanding their ministries’ reach—despite criticism from those who say the event has improperly mixed religion and politics. One group, the Florida organization Revival Ministries International, mobilized hundreds of people to preach the gospel on the streets of D.C. and at the fairground.

Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne and his wife, Adonica, founded River at Tampa Bay Church in 1996 after leaving South Africa to pursue missions in the United States. The church, which Gillick attends, has since grown into a wide-reaching charismatic organization that includes Revival Ministries International and River University based in Tampa, Fla. Rodney Howard-Browne was also one of the first pastors in the United States to be arrested for holding church services that defied COVID-19 health orders.

The ministry hosts a booth at the Great American State Fair’s Faith and Family Pavilion. Last week, Howard-Browne sat in front of the booth’s portrait of the English preacher George Whitefield, famous for his role in the 18th century’s Great Awakening, and gold and blue signs that read, “America Shall Be Saved” and, “The Great Awakening.”

With cameras from Revival Ministries International trained on him, Howard-Browne talked about his visit to D.C. and his partnership with local ministries. He said the ministry evangelizes in obedience to the Great Commission, Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 28. “America was founded in an awakening,” he said.

Pastor Eric Gonyon, who serves as crusade director for Revival Ministries International, said the organization wants to fuel similar revival today. “That’s why our booth is called the Great Awakening,” he said. “There’ve been two great spiritual awakenings that founded this nation. And we need a third great spiritual awakening.”

Howard-Browne said he personally funded the team’s travel to and stay in D.C. “So they didn’t have to worry about anything. All they had to do was win souls,” he said. When asked how he finds the funds, Howard-Browne said, “We pray, we give, we bless, and the Lord does the rest.”

Freedom 250, the organization behind the Great American State Fair, did not fund the booths in the Faith and Family Pavilion. Instead, the groups represented there supported themselves, including the River at Tampa Bay Church, Moms for America, Hillsdale College, Focus on the Family, Museum of the Bible, and more.

Despite no explicit monetary ties between the Trump administration and the religious exhibitions at the fair, critics still question the fair’s religious messaging. Last week, House Democrats published a report charging Freedom 250 with violating Congress’ guidelines intended to keep programming focused on “broad civic participation.” The report claimed, for example, that a Freedom 250 “Events Toolkit” fuses “religious content with explicitly partisan political organizing.”

Mandy Katz, a D.C. resident attending the fair’s kickoff, seconded this opinion. “I think that religious liberty is very threatened under MAGA because I think we are stronger when we celebrate our religious diversity, including the nonreligious, but that’s what makes our country strong,” she said. Katz sharply criticized “this business of making the government religious.”

All the booths in the Faith and Family Pavilion represented either Christian-affiliated organizations or government agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts. Freedom 250 did not respond to questions regarding whether it invited non-Christian religious groups to the pavilion.

Gonyon said that the fair could have used an even greater Christian representation. “There’s like, five or six booths here,” said Gonyon. “We really feel there should have been more ministries here, and other people that had a voice, about the Great Spiritual Awakening and the foundation of this nation, and faith, and freedom. We would have wanted more people representing Jesus here, personally, and more representation on the stages and stuff.”

Howard-Browne has vocally supported President Donald Trump in the past. He led the opening prayer for a Trump rally at the Florida State Fair Grounds in Tampa in 2016 and visited the Oval Office in 2017. His participation in the National Day of Prayer in May 2025 was his first reported return to the White House since 2017.

But Gonyon said that Howard-Browne and his group participated in the semiquincentennial for religious reasons, not political ones. “The gospel is bipartisan, we’re bipartisan. We didn’t come here to talk about President Donald Trump, or Republican, or Democrat, or independent, at all, because that’s what everybody does,” he said. “We know the only hope for America is Jesus, and it’s one changed heart at a time.
It’s only Jesus that can change a nation.”

Gonyon said some of his ministry’s team members arrived a week prior to the fair to start evangelizing and working with a handful of local churches in the D.C. region. He said they started out with a team of 1,000 evangelizers and aimed for 250,000 conversions for America’s 250th. By July 7, Gonyon told WORLD that the team had witnessed closer to 270,000 people come to Christ.

The ministry calls its evangelizers “soul-winners” and sends them out in groups, both for safety and in accordance with Jesus’ commission in Luke 10:1-2 to send out disciples two by two. To keep track of their evangelizers and conversions, Gonyon said Revival Ministries developed an internal tracking application.

“When people say the prayer, ‘Dear Lord Jesus, forgive me of my sins, come into my heart, be my Lord and savior’—when people pray that prayer, then we, in our app, every person keeps track of their souls,” said Gonyon.

After each evangelizing interaction, Gonyon said the team members hand the person a card with information about River University and a QR code that asks for a person’s name and gives links to free downloads to two of Howard-Browne’s books.

Allen Hawes, a youth pastor at the River at Tampa Bay Church, said that when tracking interactions, there are bound to be missed connections. “When you pray with this many people, there’s just no way to get every name. But that’s where we trust the Lord,” he said.

“I mean, read the Bible. In Acts Chapter 2, the Bible says 3,000 were saved on the day of Pentecost. Well, who got all that information? … We don’t know. So all we know is God added to the church daily those that would be saved,” said Hawes. “But you can try to connect them, bring them to David’s Tent or to this pastor or to that pastor.”

Howard-Browne said he’s known Jason Hershey, the director of David’s Tent DC, for several years. During the Great American State Fair, David’s Tent has provided Howard-Browne’s ministry space to facilitate evangelization training sessions. “It’s super fun,” said Hershey.

Gonyon said the ministry extends beyond evangelizing at fair exhibits. “The fair could be one of the smallest of what we’ve done. If we had depended on just the fair we never would have had all those souls saved, no way.”

The ministry has been spreading out around the D.C. region, attending multiple parades, events, concerts, and more, to share its message.

“Let the devil pay to bring all the crowd together, and then we’re gonna evangelize,” said Gonyon.

The Great American State Fair will close on Friday. Visitors will trickle out of Washington, D.C., with memories of the festivities tucked away in carry-ons and camera rolls.

Members of River at Tampa Bay Church will also return home. When asked if he would have added anything to his state’s showcase at the fair kickoff, Gillick, the young evangelist, said, “Me personally, I’d just be bringing the gospel of God. That’s my whole identity, that’s my whole goal. I’m all for God.”