Among the people deeply touched by Rodney's meetings at Karl Strader's church in early 1993 was an Episcopal priest, Bud Williams (Hugh E. Williams III), who had pioneered Christ the King Episcopal church in Lakeland, Florida as an outreach from another parish beginning in 1984. His church was not far from the Carpenter's Home Church, and his keyboardist played Sunday evenings at that Church. While Rodney was there, Bud's keyboardist called him up during an evening service and said, "turn on your radio, you've got to hear this!" He did so, and he heard people laughing. There was a lot of dead air time, which was very unusual, since this particular station would normally return to its regularly scheduled programming at the slightest indication of slack time.
Bud's wife, Fran, soon went to one of the meetings, but when he asked her about it, she said the Rodney made fun of "those who wear their collars backwards, and who wear those robes and call themselves father but look like mother." This was not particularly endearing to him as an Episcopal priest, but he was still curious as to why Rodney was having meetings almost every day of the week for several weeks running, so he decided to check into it further. He attended two 10:00 AM meetings, and left at about 12:00 or 12:30, while the meetings were still in progress. He had heard various small groups of people laughing, but other than that, he did not feel that there was anything particularly unusual about the meetings. But then, on a Sunday evening, Andrea, a young woman from Bud's church, came to his office at 7:15 and invited him to the revival. So he went, and there were 7,000 present. Hoping that he would not be recognized, he wore street clothes and sat in the back. Rodney Howard-Browne began walking around a bit, and would stop and stare at people for long periods of time. Then he would tell them to go out into the aisle, and he would said "filled," and they would fall down under the power of the Spirit.
Before long, Rodney began wandering toward him. Bud later said that at this point, he was undergoing a struggle, and his head was arguing with his heart. His head was saying to Rodney, "Surely you're not coming any further -- stay away from here," but in his heart he was saying, "I wish he'd pray for me." Then Rodney went over to the back and stared at him for a long time. Soon, he pointed to Bud and Andrea, and to two people in back of them, and said to the ushers, "Those four, bring them out here." He said, "filled," and they fell to the floor. Bud began laughing uncontrollably for twenty minutes, and eventually managed to crawl on his hands and knees back to his seat. Although he wasn't sure at the time what had happened, he later realized that God had opened up his shell.
The Lord soon changed the direction of his ministry from parish priest to evangelist, despite the fact that "there's not exactly a high demand for evangelists in the Episcopal church." Yet, within days he was he was asked to speak at churches he had never known by people whom he hadn't met, and almost immediately, he was spreading the revival throughout the world. According to Charisma (August, 1994, p. 23), within a year he had spoken before 100,000 people at 120 meetings in twenty different cities.