Few preachers unsettled the church’s comfort as much as Leonard Ravenhill. Born in Leeds, England, he spent his life asking why so many Christians prayed so little and settled for so little of God. The question, asked with tears more than with anger, still echoes in those who read his books.
Ravenhill was born on June 18, 1907, into a working-class Methodist family. While still young he was converted, and later studied at Cliff College under the influence of the preacher Samuel Chadwick, who shaped his evangelistic zeal and his love for the history of revivals.
He became an itinerant evangelist in Britain, preaching in squares and streets for decades, often amid opposition. In 1939 he married Martha, an Irish nurse, with whom he had three children. The spiritual discipline of the Ravenhill home sustained the long absences of the husband on preaching trips.
In 1950 the family moved to the United States, where Ravenhill continued preaching on prayer and repentance in churches and camp meetings. In 1959 he published Why Revival Tarries, with a foreword by A. W. Tozer, a work that would go on to sell more than a million copies.
His preaching compared the contemporary church, satisfied and busy, to the church of the book of Acts, marked by prayer and power. For some, this standard was liberating; for others, excessively demanding. Critics noted that his tone could sound legalistic, demanding of ordinary Christians a fervor difficult to sustain amid work and family, and even within his own home the rigid discipline of the spiritual routine was seen by some as too severe.
In the 1970s he became a mentor to the young singer and evangelist Keith Green, who sought in him the same spiritual seriousness he preached. The friendship between the two, of different generations and temperaments, was bound by the same hunger for genuine revival.
Ravenhill died on November 27, 1994, in Garden Valley, Texas, and was buried near the grave of Keith Green. His books continue to be read by those who seek to revive their life of prayer, a call he repeated until the end: without prayer, there is no revival.
