Rodney Howard-Browne is a Charismatic Christian preacher and evangelist. He is pastor of The River at Tampa Bay, a church which he and his wife, Adonica Howard-Browne, founded in 1996, and heads Revival Ministries International.
Biography
Rodney Morgan Howard-Browne was born June 12, 1961. He is an American evangelist and conspiracy theorist of South African descent. Mervyn, Bazil, and Gil, Howard-three Browne’s brothers, were brought up in a Pentecostal home in the South African cities of Port Elizabeth and East London. Frank Mervyn Derric Howard-Browne, his father (1924–2005), was a clergyman. At the age of five, Howard-Browne accepted Christianity. He did volunteer work for Youth for Christ in the 1980s before working as a teacher at Rhema Bible School in Johannesburg.
Since the middle of the 1990s, he has lived in Tampa, Florida, where he serves as pastor of The River Church in Tampa Bay. The River is regarded as both Pentecostal and Charismatic, and its revival meetings, led by Howard Brown, are well-known for causing audience members to laugh “in the name of the Lord” and for other phenomena akin to the Great Awakenings and the Azusa Street Revival. The organization he and other leaders founded, Revival Ministries International, is led by Howard-Browne. He refers to himself as “God’s bartender” and the “holy ghost bartender”.
Age
Rodney Morgan Howard-Browne was born June 12, 1961.
Family Life
Adonica (née Weyers), whom he married in 1981, is his wife . The family moved to the US from South Africa in December 1989, and in April 1989, Howard-Browne established his first American church in Clifton Park, New York.
On Christmas Day 2002, Kelly Browne, Howard Browne’s daughter, passed away at the age of 18 from cystic fibrosis. Then he made a promise that the “devil will pay with one hundred million souls and one billion dollars into world missions since he has taken their daughter with this dread disease.”
Ministry
The Rodney Howard-Browne Evangelistic Association was incorporated in November 1993, and the family moved to the Tampa Bay, Florida, area in 1994. Rodney’s eldest brother Gil went on to operate Times of Refreshing Ministries, an online evangelical ministry.
Likewise, on January 1, 1994, his youngest brother Bazil founded the eponymous evangelical ministry with the stated goal of assisting people in achieving financial freedom through God’s unique anointing. He had previously worked with his brother Rodney for a full year.
At Tampa Bay Church in Tampa, Florida, Howard Browne founded a congregation he called “The River” in 1996. He has been the church’s pastor ever since. In addition to the River Bible Institute and the Revival Ministries International, Howard-Browne and his wife established the
During a string of revival services with Karl Strader in 1993, Howard-Browne is credited with introducing holy laughter to Carpenter’s Home Church in Lakeland, Florida. Churches in the nearby Florida cities of Melbourne, Titusville, Stuart, and Vero Beach eventually experienced the holy laughter revivals.
At the “Toronto Blessing” revival in Toronto, Canada, in 1994, he is also credited with bringing holy laughter to the charismatic Toronto Airport Vineyard Church (shortly after it was expelled by its parent Vineyard Church), as well as, a year later, to the Assemblies of God (AOG) Brownsville Church in Pensacola, Florida, with evangelist Steve Hill. In Christian communities, the incident became known as the Brownsville Revival.
Controversies
When Howard-Revival Browne’s Ministries organization leased Madison Square Garden for six weeks in New York City in 1999, he first attained widespread recognition in the US. According to reports, the Good News New York event was “derided in local media as a giant flop” and was “an attempt to achieve a Billy Graham-style faith uprising.” Although attendance at the 19,000-seat arena was only 3,000, the estimated cost of the event was up to $10 million.
In 2012, it was revealed that Howard-River Browne’s Church had hosted political gatherings for the Florida Republican Party over the two years prior, including one for Newt Gingrich, who was running for president at the time. At the event, Howard-Browne called for a national “rising” of Christian Americans “that will not be silenced.”
To raise money for the River School of Government, a degree-granting program run by Howard-Browne and his wife under the auspices of Revival Ministries, which provides training for those wishing to run for public office, Howard-Browne published The Killing of Uncle Sam: The Demise of the United States of America, which was slated for release in May 2018.
Net Worth
Rodney Howard-Browne is estimated to have a net worth of $1 – $5 Million USD.
Social Media
You can follow Howard-Browne on the following social media platforms:
Instagram: @rodneyhowardbrowne
Facebook: @Rodney & Adonica Howard-Browne
Twitter: @rhowardbrowne
YouTube: @rodneyhowardbrowne