At the Catch The Fire Conference in Toronto on October 13, 1994, Randy Clark said that by 1986, a period of dryness, smugness, and self-sufficiency had begun in Vineyard Churches. Although there was a certain ritual, or liturgy, there was really no expectation that God would come into the midst of all of it. It was a time of discouragement and disillusionment. At his church, there had been only three healings of terminal illnesses over a period of eight years. He began taking courses from various institutes of church growth. In his head he knew that God could show up, but he didn't really expect that it would happen. He "felt empty, powerless and so little anointed.... Emotionally, spiritually and physically I knew I was burning out." By August of 1993, he was close to a breakdown. He would shake whenever there was criticism of his church, or of what he was doing.
While he was still undergoing this desert experience, Randy became discouraged and looked at the success of another pastor who was a friend of his, Steve Sjogren. He began to realize that he would have to do things differently. He went to his church leaders and said that he wanted to go back and start over, and make a sharp turn in how things were being done.
It was at this point that Randy received an unexpected phone call at midnight from a friend of his, Jeff McClusky, who had the gift of discernment. He asked him, "how are you doing?" and "how is your church doing?" To put up a good front, Randy said that things were fine, but Jeff began talking about some of his own problems. He had been on the verge of suicide. He had once known the glory of God, and it was gone. Then, he received a phone call from a friend named Donny who asked him, "Jeff, what happened to you at about 3:00 am?" He had been led to pray for him just as he was about ready to commit suicide. Soon afterward, Jeff's aunt, Mary Ellen Hutchins called, and said that she was getting tired of being awakened at 3:00 am to pray for him.
After Jeff recounted some of these things, Randy admitted that things really were not going well, and that he was pretty low. Then Jeff told Randy that he had just returned from a conference led by Rodney Howard-Browne. "You've got to go hear this guy." He talked to him for hours about how he had been spiritually revived at these meetings, and about how people were being refreshed and re-filled.
But to Randy's disappointment, the next set of meetings to be held by Rodney Howard-Browne would be among the Word of Faith people, at Kenneth Hagin Jr.'s Rhema Bible Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This was the one group that Randy opposed -- the name-it-claim-it people. He asked the Lord if he could wait a week before going to Rodney's meetings, but he said, "the Lord spoke to me immediately, and said, 'You have a denominational spirit. How badly do you want to be touched afresh?'"
In August of 1993, Randy and his associate pastor, Bill Mares, went to the meetings at Rhema. There, at one of the meetings, Randy heard a woman laughing. "She's in the flesh," he thought. But then, as if to answer his thoughts, Rodney said, "There are others of you, who, if you get upset, that's YOUR flesh!" Then, there was a blind three-year-old who fell down under the power of God. This convinced Randy that this was not the work of man, since it was clear that she was not imitating everyone else.
Bill was filled with the Spirit, and fell down under the power of God. Rodney was saying, "My job is to make you thirsty for God." At the third meeting that they attended, Randy fell under the power when Rodney prayed for him. In 1984 in the Baptist church and then in 1989 at the Vineyard, he had been filled, but with shaking. But this time, there was no shaking, and this caused Randy to doubt that the experience was real. He thought, "I'm weak minded. I'm just falling under suggestion." But when he tried to get up, he found that he was unable to do so. It was as though he was pinned to the floor. He had been in a line of people who had been filled, and "two bodies down from me, there was somebody oinking." This caused Randy to start laughing, and he couldn't stop. After he finally got up, he got more and more drunk in the Spirit. It was a one mile walk to his car, and he walked the whole way laughing.
At a later meeting that week, Rodney announced that on the following day he would pray individually for all 4500 people. On that day, Randy got in line. There was a very long wait, but finally Rodney came by, saying "filled, filled, filled," and Randy went down for twenty minutes. But then, Rodney was saying, "You don't get drunk on a sip." So Randy went to another part of the building, took his glasses off to disguise himself, and he went down again. Then he put his glasses back on, and went to another part of the building, bowing his head to avoid recognition. He went down a third time. But there was no shaking, and no feeling of electricity. He was afraid to get in line again, yet he felt a need to learn. Also, he was hungry, because he had been fasting for two weeks. He had said to God that he would not eat anything until He had received a touch from Him.
Rodney's brother, Basil, saw Randy watching, and asked him, "Do you want to get in line?" Randy answered, "I've already been up three times." Basil said, "That's all right, you look hungry," so Randy went yet again to be filled. When he later stood up, he realized that, suddenly, he was emotionally healthy for the first time. Because of this, he realized that God was working, even though he wasn't experiencing any shaking.
Bill then said to him, "I can't wait until we get home and this happens in our church!" Randy answered, "They're not ready." Bill said, "I can't wait that long." Randy pulled rank and said, "I'm the senior pastor." But then God pulled rank and said to Randy, "I'm God."
So, the first Sunday back at the church, Bill and Randy testified as to what happened. Now, in their church, they had never had a manifestation of falling out under the power of God. But a woman fell, and laughed all the way through 45 minutes of worship. At the end of the service, they asked if anybody would like to be prayed for, and may people rushed forward. At the front there was a line of people that stretched wall to wall. Every single person fell down as Randy touched them. There was one university student, Daryl, who was skeptical. He went up to take communion, and was unable to move. He was frozen, as though his feet were set in concrete. Randy was coming toward him to pray for him, but Daryl said, "I don't want you to pray for me. I don't think this is real." Randy asked, "They why are you up here?" He said, "I can't move." Randy said, "You don't think this is real, yet you can't move?" Randy prayed for him, and he was falling further and further backward. "Randy, I can't stand up." "Then why don't you lay down?" "Can I?" "Yes!" He lay down, and got stuck and couldn't get up, and was healed of the emotional wounds that had resulted from sexual molestation. From that time onward, phenomena of this type began happening every Sunday at Randy's church.
Then, after a meeting at a Regional Meeting where all except one person fell under the power of the Spirit, John Arnott called Randy and asked him to come to minister at the Toronto Airport Vineyard. He wanted Randy to preach four times, and Randy said that he was only prepared to preach twice, but that his assistant minister [Gary Shelton, Randy's worship leader] could preach at the other two meetings. "Do you think God will come?" "I hope so," Randy answered. This was the case even though a woman in Randy's church [Anni Shelton, Gary's wife] had had a vision [two weeks previously] of a map of Canada, and of the power of God going forth from there over a radius of 360 degrees. Randy's tentative feeling was due to the fact that his natural father had been unreliable. "You never knew whether or not he would show up due to [his] work." Without realizing that he was doing this, Randy had begun to project this behavior onto God. At the meetings that Randy was going to hold in Toronto, John Arnott wanted to introduce the prophetic, and Randy's reaction was "Oh God, no!" Randy did not like what was going on at places like Mike Bickle's church, and didn't know how to straighten out anything of this kind. But then, on January 19, a Baptist friend of Randy's, Richard Holcomb of Ingram, Texas, called him on the telephone with a clear word of the Lord: "Test me now. Test me now. Do not be afraid. I WILL back you up. Do not become anxious because when you become anxious you cannot receive me." Randy had trusted this fellow because he always seemed to know exactly when Randy was in financial need, and on two occasions, sent him exactly the amount he needed at the time that he needed it. Without this phone call, Randy would probably never have had a central role in the Toronto Revival.
In the past, Randy had been afraid at times to step out to minister, not knowing whether God would be with him. But from this time forward, Randy Clark has had confidence that God would work through him whenever he would minister.