What is ‘impartation’ in charismatic circles?
Question 04118
The word “impartation” has become so standard in charismatic vocabulary that many Christians use it without pausing to ask whether it describes something the Bible actually teaches. The idea is deceptively simple: that a spiritual gift, anointing, or measure of the Spirit’s power can be transferred from one person to another through the laying on of hands, prayer, or even physical proximity to someone who carries an unusual anointing. It gained mass visibility through the Toronto Blessing of 1994, was present in different form at the Brownsville Revival of 1995, and has remained a feature of every significant charismatic renewal event since. Understanding what is biblical about laying on of hands, and what the impartation doctrine adds that goes beyond Scripture, is a matter of considerable pastoral importance.
Toronto, Brownsville, and the Spread of a Culture
On 20 January 1994, the Toronto Airport Vineyard under John and Carol Arnott began experiencing what became one of the most discussed and divisive renewal events of the twentieth century. Meetings were characterised by sustained uncontrollable laughter (the phenomenon was quickly labelled “holy laughter”), falling, shaking, rolling on the floor, and in some cases animal sounds — roaring, barking, and what was described as crowing. The meetings drew visitors from across the world almost immediately, and the explicit understanding shared by both leaders and participants was that those who received prayer in Toronto would carry the anointing back to their home churches. Pastors arrived from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and across North America, received ministry, and returned home to lay hands on their congregations. The anointing, on this model, was transmissible — something that could be caught, carried, and deposited. The Vineyard movement itself ultimately disfellowshipped Toronto Airport Vineyard in December 1995, unable to endorse the theology being built around the manifestations.
Brownsville, beginning in June 1995 at the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola under evangelist Steve Hill and pastor John Kilpatrick, was a genuinely different phenomenon in some respects. The emphasis was heavily on repentance, conviction of sin, and evangelism. Steve Hill’s preaching was confrontational and gospel-focused in ways that Toronto’s ministry style was not, and many conversions were claimed over the revival’s five-year run. The manifestations were present, but the theological weight of the meetings was more consistently placed on the cross and on personal repentance than on spiritual experiences as ends in themselves. Brownsville was not primarily an impartation culture; it was a repentance culture with charismatic expression, which is a meaningful distinction.
The Cwmbran Outpouring of 2013 at Victory Church in South Wales is worth treating separately again, because it was characterised by something its own leader deliberately resisted. Richard Taylor, a former drug addict and prisoner whose transformation by the gospel was itself a remarkable testimony, was explicit in ways that set his meetings apart. “Don’t fall over. Don’t expect an appeal for cash. Don’t follow celebrity preachers” were not the typical announcements of a renewal meeting, but they were his. Reports from visitors noted that the focus on the blood of Christ, genuine conversions among the local drug rehabilitation community, and the absence of the manipulative mechanics that characterised Toronto were conspicuous features of what happened in Cwmbran. Whether everything claimed there was genuine is a question requiring discernment, but Cwmbran’s instinct to resist the impartation machinery was notable precisely because it ran against the prevailing culture of the renewal world it inhabited.
What the Bible Says About Laying On of Hands
The laying on of hands is a genuinely biblical practice with a clear and consistent purpose across both Testaments. It is used for blessing, as when Jacob laid his hands on his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh in Genesis 48. It is used in healing prayer, as when Jesus laid hands on the sick and they were healed (Mark 5:23; 6:5). It is used for commissioning and ordination, as when the Jerusalem church laid hands on the seven in Acts 6:6, and when the Antioch church laid hands on Paul and Barnabas before sending them out in Acts 13:3. Paul’s instruction to Timothy to “fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6) indicates that his own apostolic commissioning of Timothy was marked by this practice. In certain transitional episodes in Acts, the laying on of apostolic hands is accompanied by the visible reception of the Spirit — at Samaria in Acts 8 and at Ephesus in Acts 19.
None of this is in question. The laying on of hands is a real practice with real biblical precedent and real continuing value. The question is what the impartation doctrine does with that foundation, and whether what it builds on it is actually there.
What the Impartation Doctrine Claims Beyond Scripture
The impartation doctrine makes several claims that go substantially further than the biblical evidence for laying on of hands. It holds that spiritual gifts, measures of the Spirit’s power, and specific anointings can be transferred from a carrier to a recipient through physical contact or proximity — that a minister who has received an unusual gift can deposit it into others through intentional ministry. The mechanism requires not merely prayer and commissioning but a specific transfer of something the minister possesses.
The most commonly cited proof text is Romans 1:11, where Paul writes: “I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” The Greek phrase is charisma ti metadō — literally, “that I might share with you some grace-gift.” The context is critical. Paul immediately qualifies his statement in verse 12: “that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” What Paul is describing is the mutual strengthening that comes through Christian fellowship and shared ministry, not a one-directional transfer of a spiritual endowment. The word metadidōmi (“to share” or “to impart”) is used elsewhere of sharing food with the hungry (Luke 3:11) and of sharing one’s own self with those being taught (1 Thessalonians 2:8). It describes the giving of what one has in fellowship, not the transfer of a supernatural commodity.
The most striking passage in the New Testament for evaluating the impartation doctrine is one that is almost never cited in its defence: Acts 8:18-20. Simon the Sorcerer observed that “through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given,” and he offered them money, asking that he too might have this power to give the Spirit to others through his hands. Peter’s response was withering: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” The doctrine Peter condemns as spiritually dangerous is precisely the doctrine that the impartation culture endorses — the idea that the Spirit can be transferred from one human being to another through the laying on of hands as a skill or power that a minister possesses. Simon wanted what every impartation conference promises. Peter told him he was in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity for wanting it.
The Spirit moves as He wills (John 3:8). He distributes gifts “to each one individually as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11). He is not a commodity that any human being carries around and deposits into others. When the Spirit is given in connection with laying on of hands in Acts, the hands are not the mechanism; they are the visible accompaniment to a sovereign act of God at historically unique moments in the spread of the gospel into new communities. The Samaritan episode in Acts 8 is not a template for contemporary ministry practice; it is a redemptive-historical event marking the Spirit-authenticated inclusion of Samaria within the body of Christ, as Judea had been included at Pentecost and as the Gentile world would be included at Caesarea in Acts 10.
The Manifestations Problem
Closely connected to the impartation doctrine is the question of what the physical manifestations that accompanied Toronto and similar events actually were. Uncontrolled laughter, falling, shaking, and animal sounds were understood by participants and leaders as evidence of the Spirit’s power being poured out. The difficulty is that none of these phenomena have any clear biblical parallel as expressions of the Spirit’s work. The Pentecost narrative describes a sound like rushing wind, tongues of fire, and Spirit-given speech in languages the speakers had not learned. The healings in Acts are bodily restorations that leave people standing upright and praising God. The prophetic speech of Acts 19 is intelligible. Nowhere in the New Testament does the Spirit’s coming produce animal sounds, sustained involuntary laughter, or the inability to stand.
This is not an argument that nothing real was happening at Toronto or at Brownsville. It is an argument that the physical manifestations cannot be used as evidence of the Spirit’s presence, because the New Testament provides no basis for that identification. Emotional and physical responses to the presence of God are understandable and may be genuine. But the culture that developed around Toronto specifically made the manifestations the point — the measure of how much anointing had been received, how successful a meeting had been, how significant the transfer of the Spirit had been. That framework inverts the biblical pattern, in which the Spirit’s work is assessed not by physical phenomena but by the fruit of repentance, faith, and transformed character (Galatians 5:22-23).
What It Actually Did to Churches
The human cost of the Toronto Blessing is rarely discussed in the retrospective accounts of those who championed it, but it was real and it was widespread. I was a church member, not a minister, during the period when the Toronto wave reached Britain, and what I witnessed in the fellowship I belonged to was not revival. The out-of-control shouting, the animal noises, the abandonment of any recognisable order in worship — these did not bear the marks of the Spirit who inspired Paul to write that “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33) and that “the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets” (1 Corinthians 14:32). Whatever was driving those manifestations, the self-control that is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23) was conspicuously absent. I found myself thinking, not for the last time, that what I was witnessing had more in common with descriptions of demonic manifestation than with anything the New Testament associates with the Holy Spirit’s presence and work.
That church split. It was not the only one. Across Britain and beyond, congregations that had been stable, gospel-preaching fellowships were torn apart along the fault line of Toronto: those who believed God was genuinely at work in unprecedented ways and those who looked at what was happening and could not reconcile it with Scripture. Families were divided. Long friendships ended. Pastors lost ministries. The people who had travelled to Toronto and returned convinced they were carriers of something extraordinary were not, as a rule, open to the possibility that their experience might need to be tested rather than celebrated. The certainty with which the manifestations were attributed to the Spirit made any questioning feel like resistance to God, which is precisely the dynamic that makes spiritually abusive environments so difficult to challenge. When ordinary believers raised concerns, they were told their hearts were closed, their faith was insufficient, or their religious spirit was quenching the move of God. That is not how a fellowship that belongs to Jesus Christ treats the members of His body.
The division the Toronto Blessing produced in churches it touched is itself theologically significant. Jesus said that a good tree bears good fruit (Matthew 7:17). A movement that consistently produced congregational fracture, relational damage, and the silencing of legitimate scriptural concern was not bearing good fruit, whatever the meetings felt like to those within them.
Why the Culture Persists
The impartation culture persists for reasons that are worth understanding rather than simply condemning. There is a genuine spiritual hunger at its root — a longing for God to be real and present and powerful, a dissatisfaction with Christianity that is cerebral, routine, and experientially hollow. That longing is not wrong. The New Testament describes genuine experiences of the Spirit’s presence, genuine healings, genuine prophetic revelation. The problem is not the hunger but the framework offered to satisfy it.
When the transfer of a measurable spiritual commodity becomes the model of Christian ministry, it creates a dependency structure that is both spiritually and relationally problematic. Those who can impart hold power over those who wish to receive. The ministry becomes oriented around access to the anointed person rather than around the word of God and personal faithfulness. Ordinary Christian life, with its disciplines of Scripture, prayer, fellowship, and obedience, comes to seem inadequate compared to what can be obtained in a conference environment. The pattern in which people fly to Toronto, or Pensacola, or Cwmbran, hoping to receive something they could not find at home, reflects a theology of scarcity — the anointing is concentrated in certain people and places, and pilgrimage is required to access it. Nothing in the New Testament supports this.
So, now what?
The laying on of hands in commissioning, in healing prayer, and in blessing remains a valid and important practice. There is no reason to abandon it on account of what the impartation culture has made of it. What should be resisted is the idea that spiritual gifts are commodities transferable through human touch, that certain ministers carry an anointing others can receive by physical proximity, and that physical manifestations are the measure of the Spirit’s work. The Spirit is given by God, distributed as He wills, evidenced in fruit rather than phenomena, and accessible to every believer through the ordinary means of grace rather than through special conference attendance. The hunger for more of God is right. The channel through which that hunger is most reliably satisfied is the one Scripture consistently points to: the word, prayer, fellowship, and the slow faithful work of obedience over a lifetime. That may not produce the kind of meeting that generates a queue around the block, but it is what genuine spiritual formation actually looks like.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23
