Randy G. Keyes

Randy G. Keyes was born October 7, 1950, in Fresno, California, and raised in nearby Kerman. His father, Isaac Keyes, was a barber and a veteran of World War II, and his mother, Bonnie, was a homemaker. Both were devout Oneness Pentecostals.

Brother Keyes recalls that his parents were prayer warriors and soul winners. As an infant, young Randy could not keep food down. Doctors were baffled because he was slowly dying of starvation. His parents prayed, and Randy was miraculously healed.

Every week, Isaac and Bonnie Keyes brought a carload of local kids to Sunday School, including future UPCI General Secretary Jerry Jones. The couple taught their children the importance of spiritual disciplines, and Randy and his older brother, Rick, were baptized at an early age in the San Joaquin River. At age eleven, Randy was filled with the Holy Ghost.

When he was fifteen, Randy was in deep prayer long after service was over, and there he received a vision of an endless harvest field stretching to the horizon. He knew this represented unsaved souls. He felt the call to the ministry and began to preach as youth leader of his local church.

Randy was an A student, and his high school counselor encouraged him to study medicine in college. But he earned the only annual Sheaves for Christ scholarship to Western Apostolic Bible College in Stockton, California, and headed off to Bible school. There he met Sharon Langford when she “accidently” bumped his chair with a vacuum cleaner while he was studying in the library. The couple soon were married, and they quickly embarked on the evangelistic field. Many of these early revivals were at small churches where offerings were not substantial and the only sleeping accommodations were empty Sunday School classrooms. But God blessed these meetings with full altars and changed lives.

The Mendota-Firebaugh church in California’s Central Valley elected Brother Keyes as pastor when he was twenty-one. During this time God blessed the young couple with a baby girl, Kimberly. Soon they were back on the evangelistic field, this time for three years, before Brother Keyes was elected pastor in Prescott, Arizona.

The church in Prescott doubled in two years, and Brother Keyes was elected to be the district’s Conqueror’s (youth) president. But he couldn’t escape the pull of the evangelistic field, so he and Sister Keyes resigned and began traveling again. Brother Keyes described this period of ministry as his “graduate studies,” as he had the opportunity to preach revivals for and be mentored by pastors such as Orlin Fauss, J. T. Pugh, David Gray, Paul Price, James Kilgore, and Clyde Haney.

During this time Brother Keyes also preached several revivals for Pastor J. D. Dansby in Modesto, California. When Pastor Dansby decided to resign, he encouraged Brother Keyes to apply to become the Modesto church’s next pastor. Three larger, more prosperous congregations also asked Brother Keyes to consider becoming their next pastor, but he felt drawn to Modesto because he believed it had the greatest potential for growth. God gave him a vision that confirmed this feeling.

The Modesto congregation had 142 members when the Keyes arrived in 1981. The church responded to their new pastor’s vision, and soon the building was overflowing with people. The congregation purchased and renovated an abandoned theater in the city’s downtown area, and, eventually, more than fifteen hundred people of varying ethnicities and backgrounds were gathering to hear the Acts 2:38 message. The congregation was renamed Revival Center, reflecting the fact that revival had come to Modesto.

Under Brother Keyes’ leadership, Revival Center became a hub of regional and global evangelism. The church established a Spanish-speaking ministry and launched daughter works in neighboring communities. Julio Hernandez, a Spanish-speaking convert, helped the church establish thirty-three daughter works in and around the Bay Area of California. In addition, Revival Center financed outreach efforts in Mexico, Central and South America, Russia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines.

Two of Revival Center’s most successful outreaches were in India and Fiji. Uday Narayan, Brother Keyes’ “son in the gospel,” planted numerous churches for Hindi speakers, and sixteen trinitarian pastors and their congregations were converted to the Oneness Pentecostal movement in central and northern India. Brother Keyes also partnered with Xenn Seah to develop and sponsor crusades in Singapore and Malaysia. He and his brother, Rick, honored the memory of their late father by building a Bible college in Thailand, the Isaac A. Keyes Memorial UPC Center for Christian Studies. In 1989, Revival Center began hosting an annual stewardship missions conference to finance these evangelism efforts, an event that continues to raise substantial sums for missions.

In addition to being a visionary pastor, Randy Keyes also is a popular conference speaker and respected organizational leader. He served in a variety of leadership roles in both the Western District and for the United Pentecostal Church International. Most notably, he was elected assistant general superintendent for the UPCI’s Western Zone in 2001. He currently is an honorary member of the UPCI General Board, and he and Sister Keyes serve as mentors to pastors and leaders.

Today, Revival Center is known as Revival Church, and the Keyes’ son-in-law, Todd Johnson, serves as pastor, with Randy Keyes filling the role of bishop. Their granddaughter, Mehgan, is married to Pastor Taylor Fairbanks of Vessel Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while their other granddaughter, MaKayla, is a worship leader and a multimedia director at Revival Church. The Keyes also have a great-grandson, Atlas Clay Fairbanks.