Tracing the Call and Fall of Mike Bickle and the Leadership of IHOP-KC
- First, Some Admonition
Whenever others fail in stewardship of the Lord’s ministry under testing, it becomes an example from which the rest of us are expected to learn:
Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased; for their dead bodies were spread out in the wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they indeed craved them. I Cor. 10:5-6
We must remember that all ministry is foremost for our own inner testing in advance of the manifest kingdom. That’s it. That’s all. The ministry is the Lord’s, not the man’s. The man is not the ministry and the ministry is not about the man except as to God’s proving of him ahead of the day of Christ.
“Greatness” of ministry here below then does not indicate a great man within, and vice versa. Many of those considered great now will be found in the lowest places of the kingdom to come, assuming they make it into the kingdom (said Jesus Himself). So our first priority in face of public ministry failure is to get low and realize we are being tested too, and we could fail next. We are all on equal ground of testing, remembering this is called the fear of the Lord.
Conversely, from this position of internal lowness, the watching church is expected to righteously judge (i.e., evaluate) all evidence regarding fruit underneath ministry, and then to dutifully expose, discipline and, where necessary, judge (i.e., execute) the bad fruit of ministry-fail. (This too is the fear of the Lord.)
Exposed ministry-fail that yields repentance requires merciful discipline and motion toward personal restoration (not ministry restoration). Ministry-fail that produces no repentance requires judgment, meaning expulsion from the church. These are clear-cut apostolic instructions from the Top that cannot be spiritualized away in the name of humility, compassion and “judge not.” (One thing in the church as bad as ministry-fail is church-fail to deal with ministry-fail as instructed.)
Lastly, as distant observers of others, we are responsible to believe the best about them in love, and be slow to draw conclusions, giving space and taking time in our fruit-evaluating process. Not only must fruit be allowed to ripen, but our own capacity for observation must also be given time to ripen. Again, as observers we are being tested for this. We must test our own observational capacity by giving ourselves to waiting on the Lord’s spirit of discernment. We must seek His inner witness in course of drawing the conclusions we must. This means dispensing with cut and dried verdicts of “guilty” or “not guilty.” Especially in areas of sexual controversy, there will always be a labyrinth of conflicting testimony and motive to discern through.
It’s from this platform of admonitions that I now offer my observations in light of all the principles outlined in this teaching.
- From the Beginning: Ministry Persona Idolatry
I begin by speaking to my limitation. I was never “part of” the Kansas City movement, certainly not in its earliest development. But I heard Mike Bickle speak numerous times either live onsite or via tapes or over the internet for a period of 30 years. I corresponded with him only once, and occasionally for a year with another of his close leaders at IHOP’s beginning.
I also have had long acquaintance with one of our Readers who was an early “confidante” within Mike Bickle’s inner circle of relationships for several years before my time. I also take into account David Pytches’ testimony of the early movement in Some Said It Thundered which I take as reliable but not fully objective. And lastly I have evaluated all the details of current inner events available through the Roys Report and the direct communiqués from IHOP-KC leadership emails.
Going back to the beginning, we have the 80’s controversy between Ernie Gruen and the Bickle team which eventually led to the temporary “receivership” of that team by John Wimber and the Vineyard. To this day, completely conflicting reports still stand as to whether that controversy was fully or truly resolved. What I can say is that my first personal impression of Mike Bickle as a “talker” allows me to understand why that confusion is still possible.
At my first hearing of him, Mike conveyed somewhat of a showmanship air in which enthusiastic story was used to sensationalize the prophetic events occurring in his ministry. At the same time though, I believe Mike was and has always been sincere in his enthusiasm for the Lord. Yet this uber-enthusiasm, though much more tempered the last 20-25 years, has still lined his speaking manner to the present.
This “over-speaking” as I will call it goes to the heart of what we first identified in this article as ministry persona. Mike clearly developed a larger-than-life ministry image coming out of his original encounters with prophetic ministry through Bob Jones and Paul Cain. He was not the one actually prophesying. But he came to serve somewhat as a “show-host” for those who were. Yet he was having some spiritual experiences of his own that he would relay with equally dramatic flare.
It would be here therefore, with the mouthy persona, that we would find the first real ministry failure on Mike’s part. Ministry persona is its own idolatry, no matter how much otherwise one may proclaim Jesus. In such a subtle way, public ministry that showcases “focus on Jesus” can easily double as focus on self. My feeling is that Mike yielded to that power in conducting the ministry he was otherwise called to from the beginning.
A corroborating element always conveying that sense to me is Mike’s power to equivocate his points, so as to say nothing directly that his audience could interpret as “imbalanced,” or that could directly implicate his audience with fault—ever speaking through a ceaseless unreal smile. This speaks to me as not only a result of Mike’s false perception of God’s full heart (one that denies that God ever vents disapproval and even anger toward His people), but also of the desire to be found acceptable with men. It is characteristic of crafted ministry persona idolatry.
- Lust-Contaminated Prophetic Vision
In this part of the discussion, I want to strike a balance in exposing the inexcusability of Mike’s actions with elucidating the understandability behind them. For while the “law” demands that Mike Bickle be ministerially executed for his behavior, “equity” first requires we have more than a superficial understanding of it. This is not just a matter of “act yields consequence.” Evidence must consider intent, weakness and internal struggle. This is the only way to “judge righteous judgment.” To this end, I am writing from the position of one who is “subject to like passions” as Mike Bickle.
Previously, we discussed how satan is especially desirous to take out ministry through prophetic sexual perversity. Mike clearly stood out as a ripe target for this. Inside this sex-crazed American culture that bombards men night and day through every medium with lusty female images, every man is especially vulnerable to sexual take down, whether in or out of ministry. So the bar for moral testing is extremely high now in this wicked generation, and the bar for ministerial testing is thus even higher, and the bar for prophetic ministerial testing is even higher still.
What comes clear to me is that early on, even though married, Mike wrestled with a latent lust issue not adequately crucified by the time the Lord engaged him into prophetic ministry. This is not exceptional. Hardly a man reading this article right now has not had to struggle to face down and conquer sexual lust, married or not! Few overcome in the Spirit to find deliverance and to execute the discipline necessary to stay mentally free and faithful.
Somewhere in this time of early ministry, as he was plumbing spiritual depths, we know Mike came to realize the importance of the passionate element of the Lord’s nature as portrayed through scripture, especially the Song of Solomon. This likely would have been particularly imparted or embellished by any of the mystic writings he studied, as well as possibly brought forward from his Catholic background. In any case, it would have been a quite genuine revelation.
However, in developing this passionist perception of the Lord, Mike became deceptively led to eschew the Lord’s demanding disciplinary nature. To do this required Mike to mentally rewrite what God says about Himself as a God of military wrath against an evil world at large as well as a God who expresses anger toward a disobedient church. This rewrite may have been due to Mike’s inability to relate God’s hard nature to the fact of culture-wide brokenness, a reality he quipped on regularly; and/or because of his own inner struggles; and/or in reaction to theologians who never saw the real emotional empathetic nature of God that he now did.
Regardless, at this point of rejecting God’s harder nature toward us (see Mt. 25:24-28), Mike had to make a conscious shift to elevate his sensitivity to human brokenness and his own weakness above and contrary to the whole of God’s Nature revealed in the Word. It’s at this point therefore that our evaluating of Mike Bickle must move from understanding his weakness to inexcusing his failure. See in this that we are tracing Mike’s eventual sexual infidelity to this prior inexcusable shift to spiritual infidelity to the Word. Mike, not satan, is ultimately responsible for that shift.
So then, when we combine this now one-sided Passionist view of God with the prophetic novelty thrust on him, all of it bolstered by a happy-go-lucky ministry persona covering an uncleansed lust issue, we see all the toxic ingredients necessary to set Mike up for an eventual sexual take down under prophetic delusion. Now, with a theology of romance that would appeal to and even incite his natural male weakness, and without a God now who could ever get angry with Him, all the while dabbling in “the flow” of prophecy and gender-driven prophetic types, the spiritual safeguards in the Word and the fear of the Lord that could have kept him from crossing into lust-fulfilling delusion were removed.
Mike unquestionably knew at the beginning of his ministry that such behavior as he later engaged could never be justified in God’s sight. Not only so, but we also know by the Spirit of Truth (and I know from firsthand testimony) that over the course of developing his prophetic ministry persona and untempered shift toward God’s romantic nature, God would have sent warnings to him both by the Spirit and by true prophets about his erring path underneath his call.
But if Mike nevertheless blew off these clear warnings from the Lord so as to open himself to the self-deceiving synergy of the above ingredients, then satan had all the permission needed to lead his heart and mind into the sexually perverse prophetic delusion he is now exposed as having engaged, and which he would never have imagined committing at the start. And the kicker is that all of this was unbelievingly happening at exactly the time Mike was otherwise receiving anointed ministerial vision for the Friends of the Bridegroom and House of Prayer ministries (showing again that the ministry is not the man)!
This now meant Mike was living a double life for a period of several years. In those years, he had to hide what he was doing under the cloak of his ministry persona, working out lies to prove to himself he was truly “ok” with God, when he was not at all. Based in turn on his recent repentance letter (which though inadequate, proves to be his one saving grace*), it then becomes clear that at a further point, Mike knew he could not keep living the way he was, he needed to break off the affair(s), and he needed to “get right with God” about the whole mess. That speaks favorably for him spiritually.
(*Note: this article is based on my present reflections so far. Mike’s immediate actions and correspondence leading to his repentance letter, and the letter’s failure to address Mike’s actual victim(s), though otherwise very confessional, yet indicate an effort to protect his persona, making it incomplete. Time will still be required to prove the comprehensiveness of Mike’s repentance in view of remaining investigations to be conducted. But this is how the righteous evaluation process works. It is what God expects of us. )
But private repentance would never suffice in God’s eyes for sin of such magnitude against Mike’s own wife, as a public minister, and against the character of the Lord he publicly claimed to hail. Mike believed God could just forgive and forget (so he said), while he continued on in the strength of his persona, itself still an idol on par with the sexual sin in God’s sight. And now, according to the Lord’s own timing nearly a quarter century later, God (not the violated other woman) surfaced the promptings necessary to force all of this into the light for public exposure, chastisement and possibly more severe judgment yet to result (remember that the sword never departed from David’s house, despite his confession and repentance.) God’s timing is sovereign.
- Ministry Idolatry and Executive Team Leadership Failure
In course of exposing Mike’s infidelities, an equal test of the Lord was brought to the entire Kansas City IHOP leadership team. What thus came to be further exposed as a result of that test is the ministry idolatry at the core of IHOP as a whole.
How so? The evidence string regarding how leadership fielded the charges against Mike Bickle when first brought forward show that the overriding concern was to protect the public face of the ministry. Again, public face means ministry persona—not here of the individual, but of the entire corporation (“IHOP-KC”). Face means mask. It means image. There is an image to protect. And an image is another word for idol.
The issue behind the way communiqués were crafted appears to have been, “How do we present this to the public in such a way as to make the best impression about how we are handling this?” This produced politicized language that included subtle mischaracterization of the nature and motives of those (i.e., former IHOP leaders themselves) who brought to light the issues concerning Mike as well as misrepresentation of the time line regarding the first disclosures.
Further fire regarding these appearances has led to IHOP leaders abandoning their positions by resignation without explanation, fueling more dishonorable speculation. Again, we are witnessing what can only be described as the best way to “save face,” even if it is finally one’s own. Meanwhile, threats remain of further disclosures of sexual infidelities involving other leadership personnel. Whatever is true or not of such promised disclosures, the protecting of ministry persona and personal face still remains the apparent objective.
This is the meaning of Malachi 3 when the fiery-eyed Lord says He will come suddenly to His temple, and who can stand when He appears? When the temple becomes its own cause célèbre, it must fall and its leaders. It must be humbled. IHOP has been celebrating its own faithfulness to the Lord over the years. In declaring the “beauty of Jesus,” it has made a name for itself. It has garnered enthusiasm for itself, all while fulfilling a mission that on its face is given over only to Jesus. This is the subtle idolatry that every ministry must fight to its own core.
Conclusion
Despite all we have observed though, and on the present evidence, no doubt exists in me that Mike Bickle was called into his ministry by the Lord, that he genuinely knows the Lord and that His desire for Jesus has always been real, as was David’s. I also have no question that the Lord, not Mike Bickle, raised up the global 24/7 prayer movement, however yet imbalanced and immature its Passionist “bridal” view of the Lord. Frankly, no man could ever have “started” such a movement on any power of his own personal enthusiasm for it (which Mike testifies he never had in the first place). And the faults arising within that ministry due to its imbalances do not impugn the movement as “not of God,” any more than the presence of dross in the temple of Malachi 3 indicates it is not the Lord’s temple or that its Levites are not truly His. The surfacing of this dross from these lives proves just the opposite!
Meanwhile however, the heat will continue as God moves to burn up ministry idolatry in the place of His abode. IHOP is just the beginning. This fire will go on to burn throughout the prophetic worship and intercessory church in all its streams. The pride in brick and mortar structures, techno-wiz theaters, websites and social media will be replaced by simple fiery gatherings of worshippers in diverse places as the church is driven into the wilderness to conduct her robe washing in the blood of the Lamb. This will prove to be the true revival for which all have awaited. (Alas also, I have concluded that it will only be within the furnace of wilderness tribulation that the great Isa. 62:5 marriage of the sons of God and the bridal people of the Lord will be finally forged!)
Let us all then look to our own garments, and allow the Lord’s fire gaze to do whatever cleansing is necessary in advance of His appearing, so that when He appears, we indeed may be able to stand before the Son of Man, made compatible with His fire.
As more comes to light on the IHOP situation I will add further commentary where appropriately led. And I heartily welcome any other firsthand testimony that may expose any inadequacy or even error in my perspective as presented in this article.
Blessings, saints.
Chris Anderson
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org12/23
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