Monthly Archives: June 2008

Anglicans in Lakeland

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I have just been asked privately if any Anglicans, apart from myself, have been involved in this Todd Bentley and Lakeland outpouring thing. After all, in some ways it looks a very un-Anglican thing. But then there has been a long tradition of Anglican involvement in healing ministry, in ways which often differ more in style than in substance from what Todd is doing.

I did mention in a previous post that my Church of England vicar, his wife and two youth ministers from my church went to Lakeland. They returned last Friday fired up with the Holy Spirit and held “impartation” meetings on Friday and Sunday evenings. I missed the Friday meeting, but on Sunday night the Holy Spirit was moving powerfully. In these few days we have seen at least two clear healings and probably others that I haven’t heard about. I may write more about this later.

I have heard that there are a number of other Anglicans involved in this movement. But the only one I can name is Rev Mark Stibbe of St Andrew’s Chorleywood. Mark has written a short article on his church’s website about how since he returned from Lakeland in May his church has been holding weekly “impartation” meetings, with the inspired acronym FIRE: “the Father’s Impartation for Revival through Evangelism”. For indeed this outpouring should be motivating and empowering the church for evangelism, not just for sitting around waiting for crowds to flock in.

If you know of any other Anglicans involved in this, please mention it in a comment.

Lakeland in the news

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I was away at a conference for a few days, and I may report on it later. Since then I have been catching up. But now I have found time to get back to this blog.

Some readers of my ad hoc series on Todd Bentley and the Lakeland outpouring in Florida have made the point that these events have received little coverage in the secular media. I discussed possible reasons for this here.

But in fact there has been some coverage. In this comment I linked to several stories in the Florida local media. Today, thanks to an e-mail from God TV (which wasn’t really a scam, despite being detected as one because it included a hyperlink which did not match the accompanying text), I have seen this report at MSNBC, one of the USA’s main secular news providers, which gives a very fair picture of what is happening at Lakeland. Perhaps this is a bit late coming, but the secular media are being forced to acknowledge that something significant is happening in Lakeland.

I like the final paragraph of this news report, referring to Erik Thoennes of Talbot School of Theology:

Thoennes believes many Christians today are open to the idea that God might move in miraculous ways, even if they don’t embrace movements like Bentley’s. And, he offered specific advice to non-Christians who may be confounded by such reports: “I’d hope they wouldn’t get distracted by movements that seem odd, or by how goofy Christians can be, so that they miss seeing Jesus as the most beautiful, good, loving, just, true, person there is.”

Meanwhile I have discovered a great blog about what is happening in Dudley, basically one man’s stories of the healing and evangelism he has been doing there: Miracles on the streets of Dudley.