God Stories & the Tent of Meeting

It began as all chance encounters do, with no warning, just two men passing in a tight church passageway.

“Oh hi,” this divine appointment began, followed by, “Remember me, we met at the tent in Moravian Falls?”

Fifteen years had passed since Wilmington storyteller Buckley Hubbard and businessman Neil Blake had spoken.

Blake was in the process of receiving shipment of a custom-built revival tent, complete with red edged canopy border. Not new to revival meetings, he had tried to get a tent up in the Wilmington area in time for Easter but encountered roadblocks.

Both men were at the church the first week of August 2021 for the celebration of life service for Mike Blanchard. Failing to speak wasn’t really an option.

Sharing details of the upcoming tent meeting, Blake began talking to him about camera work. Hubbard replied he’d “probably not be the guy you want. My passion is telling stories, with pictures.” Blake’s response? “That’s perfect.”

Hubbard, a filmmaker was just coming off a hiatus. He had walked away from film three years before to take a lucrative sales gig in business coaching. He says “God was calling me back to creative work.”

In March he had set up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. With his wife’s support, he was ready to take a leap of faith and step away from sales to live on God’s provision.

A feature film internship before graduation and a clever Tarboro, North Carolina grandmother had steered him to Wilmington near cousin Pem Nash, rather than the more exciting West Coast. He learned the trade over 25 years working for studios including NBC, Universal, Paramount, Disney and Hallmark. He worked on big television shows, movies, and commercials doing many jobs including driver, props, set dresser, storyboard artist and acting. In between, he created his own body of work. 

Many of his films have been included in the Cucalorus Film Festival. Every film was a steppingstone to becoming a better director.

With a green light from Global River Church, by September Blake had a permit from the county to erect his 100- by 60-foot tent between the administration and children’s buildings. Partnering with Senior Pastor Tom Hauser and his daughter, senior worship leader Sara Hauser-Bonnett, things were humming along for Blake, including a desire to capture the tent revival in film.

“I said, ‘What’s this look like to you?’” Hubbard says. 

Blake had not put up a revival tent since Fulfillment Fest 2012 in Magnolia, North Carolina. His first one was erected in 2006 in a pasture on his 60-acre Moravian Falls horse farm.

“Back in the ’90s, the Lord said I want you to get a tent for the celebration times — the feasts — three times a year. He said they needed to be restored to the Christian church, that the church had lost their Christian perspective of where they came from and why we do what we do as Christians,” he says. “I try to always put up a tent to celebrate Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles. They are not just Jewish — they are God’s appointed times.” 

The first Fulfillment Fest went 24/7 for 21 days. 

Two years later, Blake’s 4,000-5,000 people tent went up in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives during Pentecost. The following year (2009) three Fulfillment Fest tents went up, including on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

One definition of revival is an improvement in the condition or strength of something. Another says Christian revivalism is increased spiritual interest or a renewal in the life of a church congregation or society with a local, national or global effect. Christian author and evangelist Robert Coleman says revival is “The awakening or quickening of God’s people to their true nature and purpose.” For Blake, revival has been times of pouring out of the Holy Spirit. 

The term revival is also used to describe an evangelistic meeting or series of meetings.

One month into the ongoing meeting in Wilmington, Blake saw it as a cleaning out of wells and a cultural shift. 

“What we are doing here now, we are clearing out a spiritual well,” he says. “The church is clogged up, it’s filled up. We’re here releasing God’s Spirit. I think it will come to a tipping point, a reset of the church for the nation in general. I call it a return to what the early church was like.” 

Blake and his nondenominational One in Christ Ministries had previously always made use of neutral ground for the events he hosted.

“I have never set up a tent on church grounds until now,” he says. 

He felt Global River had the structure and the people to speak or take leadership roles. And they did step forward, from volunteers hauling away the trash or setting out parking cones, to speaking and drawing a revivalist to preach who has 25,000 Instagram followers.

Global River was no stranger to tent revivals, having partnered with Ignite Ministry for the 10-day Wilmington Jesus Tent in September 2015. Five more in other cities followed in the next two years.

The tent in September 2021 was modeled after the tents of the Feast of Tabernacles, which begins five days after the Jewish Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement. Once a year the people of Israel would leave their homes to set up huts or booths and meet with God.

With the Biblical King David’s Tabernacle in mind, Hauser-Bonnett lined up worship teams. The formula was to offer up Davidic worship around the clock 24/7 for nine straight days and nights, interspersed with a speaker three or four times throughout the day and night.

Hauser-Bonnett and Blake invited local and eastern North Carolina pastors, and prophets and evangelists including such internationally known ministers as Kirk Bennett, Kansas City’s International House of Prayer senior leader, missionary to America from Cameroon, Africa, Edward Akwa, as well as revivalist Jessi Green, who had just relocated to the north Wilmington area with her family. Green was the final scheduled speaker of the initial nine-day Tent of Meeting.

“I cultivated wonderful relationships and connections in the spirit over the last 15 years. I envisioned everyone coming together again, it would be part of the goal of unity in the community, those from the north, south, east and west,” says Hauser-Bonnett.

As the tent went up, a feeling of holy awe descended on the church grounds, especially under the tent.

“I loved what happened with the tent,” Tom Hauser says. “I’ve loved all the tents we have ever done. It’s always been remarkable what happens. At first there is a breaking away of the expectation, religiosity, controls. There is a freedom, an informality that comes in the midst of that, you’re out there and you’re open. People that won’t come to a denominational or religious setting, they will come to a tent. That’s why I love it and why we have done so many of them.”

The opening days were not without challenges. The city experienced nine inches of rain in a matter of 24 hours, creating puddles throughout the grounds and the tent. Everything moved indoors to the church’s main sanctuary for the first three days and nights.

Despite the wetness, those present were not disappointed. God was in the house. There were open expressions of the moving of the Holy Spirit and lives beautifully changed.

On the fourth day the tent was dry enough to move back outside. Those present knew something big was happening.

“I got a word I really needed about my kids, my mom,” says Karen Pray. “It made me reflect on my walk and relationship with the Lord. I was working that out in the tent the times the Lord allowed me to get there.” 

At all hours of the day and night, people dropped in for worship, prayer or reflection or just to sit in the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

“I felt so close to God there. Even though there were so many people around, you felt alone with God,” says Ginny Hauser, Tom Hauser’s wife.

Hubbard with his camera was always in view, capturing exquisite moments. For him it even became a family affair including his 14-year-old son, also named Buckley.

“There are some nights I really want to go to the tent. The atmosphere … I never really liked to go to church, this is different,” his son says. 

Hubbard discovered the Lord was leading the focus of the camera.

“He was leading me; I was being led by Him; it was not just me operating the camera. I wanted to let the Holy Spirit guide the camera,” he says.

Not only that, he became a participant.

“Focusing the camera lens on a person receiving prayer, all of a sudden, I’d realize I was also praying in the Spirit for that person,” he says.

Salvations, deliverance and healings were occurring. One young man showed up early, small son in tow. His wife had asked him to check out the church’s farm and when he did, his attention was drawn to the Tent of Meeting signs. Later, face beaming, he told of his desperation, marriage in trouble, years as a warlock, and how he had gotten peeled, one piece of baggage at a time. The change was dramatic. He became full of hope, joy and love, his marriage restored. As his wife cheered with the crowd, he was one of the first tent baptisms.  

Early into the initially scheduled nine days, Tom Hauser realized this could go longer. Speakers like Bennett commented, if you are still here in December, I will be back.

On the ninth night, Green delivered a simple message of the revelation of Jesus Christ. A great deal of those present, including many leaders, were baptized or rebaptized. Setting aside his camera, Hubbard, his wife and son were among them. (The next morning his daughter and mother who had been watching live in Vermont were also rebaptized.)

That night, a continuation of the Tent of Meeting was announced with a reduced worship and speaker schedule of 6-9 nightly, with a goal of maintaining a schedule of around the clock prayer and worship.

“There’s a lot more to come, we have only just begun,” Hauser-Bonnett says. “Revival is happening, it is here, it starts with us, it’s like this little wildfire that started ramping up, bringing people together. Covid really tried to break that. We just needed to press in.”

It’s hard to estimate over the course of the tent’s first 41 days how many lives were touched.

Daniel Christian, the church’s technical administrator and one of the worship leaders, saw the continuous days of worship change others. 

“It normalized daily worship as a lifestyle of worship,” he says. “It showed people they could maintain this lifestyle and still be able to accomplish their tasks, work, family and a lifestyle of worship at the same time.”

Many wondered out loud, will this turn out to be the long-awaited fulfillment of the Eastern Carolina Phenomenon?

“I think it’s a seed for what God’s about to do. Something big is coming and it’s time to get ready,” says Nick Thornhill.

At L.O. Sanders’ Deliverance Evangelistic Tabernacle in Jacksonville in 1975, international prophecy teacher Derek Prince foresaw a great revival in the region, greater than the 1904-1905 Welsh Revival, which saw 100,000 people come to the Lord in the first year. Prince prophesied the Lord would personally visit the region and declared “There will be kings and leaders from the north, south, east, and west that will come and study the Eastern North Carolina phenomena.”

What’s next? Hubbard is editing his hundreds of hours of footage, and collecting stories of Jesus, healings and miracles. He has been fundraising to produce self contained mini movies of God Stories he’s collected.

“I think we’ve done a lot more than we think we’ve done,” Blake says.

The late fall temperatures dipped into the 40s at night. Pending addition of heat, the church has moved back into the main sanctuary and tent services are on pause. However, each day was livestreamed and archived on the church’s YouTube channel.

And the tent? Sides are on, it’s waiting, and anyone can still go and seek God. 

“We left it up … people can go there. Just pull in and go in and find a place of respite,” Hauser says. “I am already trying to set my sights maybe on spring, there are the spring feasts. We’ll see. The tent is rated for 90 miles an hour. The fire marshal gave us a six-month permit. I am just waiting to see what the Lord does in the future with it.”

Expectations remain high.

“If God can bring one Son or Daughter into repentance and back in the kingdom, it was all worth it, “says Brenton Irving.