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Yet Charles Fox Parham based his life on the exceptions rather than the rules. The status quo, he believed, was rarely in touch with the Spirit. He left the Methodist church, calling it predictable and staid. He searched for the missing element he believed would lead Christians back to the true, nondenominational New Testament church. He decided the missing element was speaking in tongues.

At his Bible school, Parham assigned his students to search the Bible for demonstrable evidence that a believer had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Their conclusion matched Parham's: the Holy Spirit is manifested through tongues.

Speaking in tongues was not a new occurrence, but popped up occasionally in both Christian and heretical groups throughout history. In 1896, W. F. Bryant and his followers had spoken in tongues (this group became the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) ). But Charles Parham was the first to consider it the initial evidence of "the baptism of the Holy Spirit."

Convinced of their findings, Parham and his students conducted a Watch Night service on New Year's Eve to ring in 1901. One of the students, a 30-year-old evangelist named Agnes Ozman, asked (in Parham's words) "that hands be laid on her to receive the Holy Spirit as she hoped to go to foreign fields." As he prayed for her, "a glory fell upon her, a halo seemed to surround her head and face," and she is reported to have spoken in Chinese. Though many people believed Ozman's experience proved Parham's teachings, it is unclear if she actually spoke in Chinese or simply a "heavenly language." In any event, within the next few days, about half of the school's 34 members, including Parham, spoke in tongues.

Meanwhile, the press was giving Parham's Apostolic Faith band and its critics front-page coverage. The publicity gained the "Parhamites" more notoriety than fame. Parham closed the school to spread the news of revival with his more devoted students (several students dubious of the recent events had left the school). Their message was met with less than overwhelming success. Though crowds did not show up to see the tongues-speech, reporters did.

Following several scathing articles and the death of one of Parham's sons, the pioneer struggled. He continued to preach here and there, witnessing healings and glossolalia but without great success. Not until a Galena, Kansas, revival in late 1903 did Parham begin to see the results for which he had prayed. Newspapers as far away as Cincinnati gave these meetings favorable publicity as Parham gained several thousand converts.

Crowds in Galena and other Midwestern towns soon learned that Parham was not your usual Sunday morning preacher. Often dressed in Palestinian costume, he warned his listeners that "God will hold them responsible if they do not join in this great crusade with our captain, Jesus, against sin and Satan." He viewed himself as the "projector" of the Apostolic Faith (also called Pentecostal or Latter Rain) movement, though he opposed officially organizing the group.

While Parham preached throughout the Midwest, Texas, the East Coast, and into Canada, claiming a following of 13,000 to 25,000, an even larger Pentecostal movement was happening in Wales, at New Quay on Cardigan Bay. American Holiness publisher S. B. Shaw stirred worldwide interest in that awakening with his 1905 book The Great Revival in Wales. For many believers, the Welsh Revival became a rallying cry for God to do it again. And it prompted many of them to conduct prayer meetings that went on for years.

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