Rodney Morgan Howard-Browne (born June 12, 1961) is a South African-born American evangelist and conspiracy theorist. He has resided in Tampa, Florida, since the mid-1990s and is pastor of The River Church in Tampa Bay. The River is considered both Pentecostal and Charismatic with revival meetings, led by Howard-Browne, known for those in the audience breaking into "holy laughter" and experiencing other phenomena similar to the Great Awakenings and Azusa Street Revival. Howard-Browne is the head of Revival Ministries International, a ministry he and his wife founded in 1997. Biography Howard-Browne and his three brothers (Mervyn, Bazil, and Gil) were raised in a Pentecostal family in the cities of Port Elizabeth and East London, South Africa. His father, Frank Mervyn Derric Howard-Browne (1924–2005), was a cleric. Howard-Browne became a Christian at age five. In 1981, he met and married his wife Adonica (née Weyers). In the 1980s, he volunteered to work for Youth for Christ before doing a teaching stint with Rhema Bible School in Johannesburg. In December 1989, the family emigrated from South Africa to the United States, Howard-Browne opened his first U.S. church in Clifton Park, New York, in April 1989. In 1991, he moved to Louisville, Kentucky where he began holding revival meetings. 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, his youngest brother Bazil established an eponymous evangelical ministry on 1 January 1994 with the professed aim of people achieving financial freedom through the special anointing of God. Prior to this he had worked alongside his brother Rodney for a year. In 1996, Howard-Browne founded a church he named "The River" at Tampa Bay Church in Tampa, Florida, serving as its pastor ever since. Howard-Browne and his wife also founded Revival Ministries International in 1997, as well as River Bible Institute and River School of Worship. Howard-Browne's services are characterized by laying on of hands with worshipers giggling in apparent spiritual drunkenness, speaking in tongues, breaking into uncontrollable holy laughter, shaking, dancing in the aisles, or falling to the ground. He refers to himself as "God's bartender" and the "holy ghost bartender". Howard-Browne is credited with introducing holy laughter to Carpenter's Home Church in Lakeland, Florida during a series of revival services with Karl Strader