Lakeland and Toronto – Part 3

Following my last couple of posts (1 & 2), reflecting on the Lakeland Outpouring, and trying to learn some lessons by contrasting to the Toronto "blessing".  This post I move on to the role of the media…

Media

Toronto, in the early 90′s, was pre-internet, and in the UK at least, pre-Christian TV.  News spread of something that God seemed to be doing by word of mouth, and eventually Christian magazines.  There were no blogs to read of people’s experience or questions.  It wasn’t screened nightly into our living rooms from day 1.  I don’t think I heard about anything until probably around May time in 1994, and the first meeting with Randy Clark in Toronto was Jan 20th that year.  Even then reports were sketchy – something about a meeting at Holy Trinity Brompton, people lying on the floor for ages, people "drunk" in the Spirit.  During a week of mission in August in our church, in the morning prayer times, the Holy Spirit moved powerfully amongst us.  This wasn’t transferred, but broke out spontaneously.

This time allowed people to process what they were hearing over time, assess without being told by one source what to think of it.  It was much more organic.  It gave time for the leaders in the church in Toronto to learn, to have a little theology for what was going on, to get a little more wisdom on how to deflect criticism, steer a middle path between emotionalism and allowing God to move.  Even then there were excesses and mistakes.  My experience of Toronto was still too focused around the manifestations: even though it was said that wasn’t the deal, when people were "zapped in the Spirit" it was still celebrated, betraying what people really thought.

Lakeland, on the other hand, was virtually instantaneous, screened live by God TV and on the internet.  In my opinion, God TV have a lot to answer for, as they effectively became the ones who proclaimed this from the rooftops: this is God – jump in.  It didn’t allow time for people, or for questions, or for process.  They were forcing people to make a choice: are you for this or not?

I can’t imagine the pressures that suddenly hit Todd Bentley and his Fresh Fire ministry.  In the matter of a few days, he was catapulted from a somewhat known itinerant preacher to global superstar in the Christian world.  Just look at these charts.  The first one shows Google searches on "Todd Bentley" over the last few years, and you can clearly see two clear spikes: one when Lakeland was growing in prominence, the other when news hit about his moral failure.  They show that searches were 14 times the average over the last 5 years.

This chart  (on the left) shows the increase of blogs about Todd Bentley as recorded by Technorati.  Again it is easy to see the huge spike in interest and attention in Todd.

In the end, the failing of Todd to live faithfully to his wife, has had a greater impact on the body of Christ due to the prominence he had ‘achieved’ over the last few months.  If Lakeland hadn’t happened, I doubt it would have registered a hit on Christian radar.

For that, I think that GodTV do have real responsibility.  Not for Todd choices.  But for the pressure that he was put under.  For not allowing Lakeland to grow slowly or fizzle out.  For promoting something, and then not taking responsibility for the leadership they brought to the worldwide body of Christ.

What would have happened if Lakeland hadn’t been broadcast on the internet and TV’s?  Is it possible that some help could have been brought to Todd without such a public failure?  Could some of the theology been sorted?  Might there have been a greater discernment about what God was doing, and what was excess?

We will never know.  All I know is that wouldn’t want to have been put in the place that Todd found himself.  And if I found myself in the midst of a move of God, I wouldn’t be getting in contact with GodTV.   Unless my flesh had its own way…