What was the Toronto Blessing?

Question 4156.

The Toronto Blessing is the name given to a wave of unusual religious phenomena that began in 1994 at a church near Toronto airport and spread to thousands of congregations across the world. For a few years it was almost impossible to be part of charismatic church life in Britain without encountering it or being asked what you made of it.

I write about the Toronto Blessing as someone who has personal experience of charismatic church life and does not approach these matters as a distant observer. I want to describe honestly what happened, take seriously the hunger for God that drew people in, and then weigh the phenomena by the only standard that finally matters, which is Scripture.

What actually happened

In January 1994 a small church then called the Toronto Airport Vineyard began to experience meetings marked by striking physical phenomena. People fell to the floor, shook, wept, and in particular broke into prolonged and uncontrollable laughter. Some made animal noises. Many spoke of being overwhelmed by a sense of God’s love. Word spread quickly, and the church became a destination, with visitors flying in from around the world to receive what was being poured out.

The phenomena travelled home with those visitors, and within a year the Toronto Blessing had touched a great many churches in Britain and beyond. Meetings would often end with people lying on the floor for long periods, and leaders would move among them praying for more. Supporters saw it as a fresh outpouring of the Spirit. Critics saw something far more troubling. The disagreement was sharp and, in places, it split congregations.

I remember the period well. It dominated conversation among believers, divided friends, and put a question to every charismatic church in the land: was this God, or was it something else dressed up in his name? That question deserved a careful answer then, and it still does, because the same kinds of phenomena keep reappearing under new labels.

It is worth naming what was new about the Toronto Blessing and what was not. Falling and weeping under deep conviction are as old as the hills and need cause no alarm. What marked this movement out was the prominence of prolonged laughter and the animal sounds, features that earlier awakenings simply did not display, and that novelty alone should have prompted a closer look rather than a rush to embrace.

For those too young to remember, it is hard to convey how large this loomed. Conferences were given over to it, magazines argued about it, and pastors were pressed to declare themselves for or against. Few controversies have so dominated British church life in living memory, and that very heat made calm discernment harder than it should have been.

The hunger behind it

Before weighing the phenomena, I want to honour the hunger that fuelled the movement. Many who flocked to these meetings were sincere believers, weary of dry and lifeless church, longing for a fresh sense of God’s nearness. That longing is good and right. A church that has domesticated the Spirit into respectable dullness should not be surprised when its people go looking for him elsewhere.

So I have no wish to sneer at the people caught up in the Toronto Blessing. The thirst was real, and in many cases the love for God was genuine. The question is not whether the hunger was sincere but whether the thing that was fed to it was actually the Spirit of God, and that is a question of discernment rather than of motives.

I have a good deal of sympathy here, because a cold and formal church can starve a soul. If our gatherings are so buttoned-up that no one expects God to do anything, we have created the very vacuum that strange fire rushes in to fill. The answer to deadness is never to despise the hunger, but to feed it on the genuine bread rather than on a counterfeit.

I say all this with real sympathy for the disappointed. A great many who embraced the Toronto Blessing did so because their churches had handed them stones when they asked for bread, and the hunger that drove them out looking was healthier than the thin diet they had been fed at home. The right response to a famine is not to eat anything at all, however unwholesome, but to go and find good food.

Testing the spirits

John tells us plainly, ‘do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God’ (1 John 4:1). Sincerity is not the test. Intensity of experience is not the test. Even a sense of God’s love is not, on its own, the test, because feelings can be stirred by many causes. The test is conformity to the truth God has already revealed in his Word.

This is where I find I must part company with the movement, however gently. When I take the manifestations of the Toronto Blessing and lay them beside Scripture, several of the most prominent features find no warrant there at all, and some run directly against what the Spirit himself inspired Paul to write.

Testing is not the opposite of love or of faith. It is the command of God for our protection. The same apostle who urged us not to quench the Spirit told us in the same breath to test everything and hold fast what is good. To test a movement is to take both halves of that instruction seriously, which is the most loving thing we can do for one another.

None of this testing springs from a cold heart. I would far rather err toward longing for more of God than toward a tidy unbelief that expects nothing of him. But longing is not a licence to switch off the mind God gave us, and the Toronto Blessing is precisely the kind of thing he means his people to weigh. The Bereans were called noble for examining even the apostle Paul against the Scriptures, and no modern movement stands above that scrutiny.

Where the Toronto Blessing meets Scripture

The governing chapter for the use of spiritual gifts in the gathered church is 1 Corinthians 14, and its watchwords are intelligibility, order and edification. ‘God is not a God of confusion but of peace’ (1 Corinthians 14:33), and ‘all things should be done decently and in order’ (1 Corinthians 14:40). A meeting marked by uncontrollable laughter, people on the floor for hours, and animal noises is difficult to square with those instructions by any honest reading.

The fruit of the Spirit, moreover, includes self-control (Galatians 5:23). The Spirit of God does not override a believer’s will and reduce them to helpless shaking or hysterical laughter. The prophets could control themselves, for ‘the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets’ (1 Corinthians 14:32). A phenomenon that removes self-control, far from being a mark of the Spirit, sits uneasily with the very fruit the Spirit produces. I have written separately on the related practice of being slain in the Spirit and on the idea of being drunk in the Spirit, both of which were common in these meetings.

When I weigh the Toronto Blessing against these texts, the difficulty is not that the Bible says nothing about strong experiences of God. It plainly does. The difficulty is that the particular pattern of these meetings, the loss of control, the animal sounds, the hours on the floor, matches the warnings of 1 Corinthians 14 about confusion far more closely than it matches anything the Spirit is said to do. That is not a small thing to set aside.

I keep coming back to one simple question that cuts through a great deal of noise. Would the apostle Paul, who wrote 1 Corinthians 14, have recognised these meetings as the orderly, intelligible, edifying gatherings he there described? I find it very hard to answer yes, and where a practice and an apostle’s plain instruction pull in opposite directions, it is the apostle who must win the argument.

What about the good fruit people reported?

Defenders of the Toronto Blessing often point to changed lives, renewed love for God and a fresh zeal for prayer. I do not dismiss those reports out of hand. God is gracious, and he can meet a hungry heart even in a confused setting, just as he often blesses us despite our muddle rather than because of it. Genuine good may come to a person who went seeking him sincerely.

But we must not reason backwards from a good outcome to a divine source. The test of a movement is not only what some people felt afterwards but whether its central practices match the pattern of Scripture. A warm experience and even a measure of lasting good can accompany something that is, in its actual form, well off the biblical map. Discernment means holding both truths at once, refusing to deny the good while still naming the error.

I have known people genuinely helped in those years, and I will not pretend otherwise to win an argument. But I have also known people left chasing the next experience, disillusioned when the feelings faded, and quietly ashamed of things they had done in meetings that no apostle would have recognised. The mixed harvest is itself a reason for the careful weighing I am urging.

So I sit loose to the testimonies on both sides. Some who passed through the Toronto Blessing were genuinely helped, and some were genuinely harmed, and any careful pastor of that era will have met both. That mixed result is not what you would expect from an unmixed work of the Spirit, and it is only honest to say so. Feelings, after all, are poor evidence in either direction, for a meeting can leave you trembling and tearful and be wholly of the flesh, while a quiet hour with an open Bible can be the deepest work of the Spirit you ever know.

The danger of seeking experiences

My deepest concern about the Toronto Blessing is the appetite it fed, the appetite for an experience rather than for the Lord himself. Once a believer learns to measure the Spirit’s presence by goosebumps and falling and laughter, the ordinary means of grace begin to feel thin. The steady reading of Scripture, faithful prayer, the preaching of the Word and the fellowship of the saints can seem dull next to a meeting where you might end up on the floor.

That is a dangerous reordering. The Spirit’s normal work is to make much of Jesus, to convict of sin, to produce holiness and to feed faith through the Word. A movement that trains people to crave manifestations is, however unintentionally, training them away from the very things by which the Spirit usually works. For the healthier path I would point readers to my answer on honouring the Spirit while avoiding charismatic excess.

There is a kind of spiritual sweet tooth that prefers the sugar rush to the nourishing meal, and it leaves the soul undernourished in the end. The Spirit is not against joy or feeling, far from it, but he aims to make us like Jesus, and that work is mostly steady and quiet rather than dramatic. A faith that can only run on highs will struggle badly in the long valleys where most of the Christian life is actually lived.

Watch your own heart here, for this is where the real peril lies. If you find that a quiet time in the Word has come to feel dull next to the memory of a dramatic meeting, that is not a sign you need another meeting. It is a sign your appetite has been miseducated and needs gently retraining on the plain, nourishing bread of God.

Holding continuationism and discernment together

I should be clear that my caution here does not come from cessationism. I believe the gifts of the Spirit remain available to the church today, and I have no wish to quench what God is genuinely doing. But continuationism is not a blank cheque. To believe the Spirit still works wonderfully is precisely why we must test what claims to be his work, lest his name be attached to things he never did.

So I hold two things together. The Spirit is alive and active and gives good gifts to his church. And not everything that calls itself an outpouring of the Spirit is one. The Toronto Blessing is a case study in why both halves of that sentence are needed. You can read about a similar later episode in my answer on the Brownsville Revival and the Lakeland Outpouring.

It would be easier, in a way, to be a cessationist about all this, because then every strange phenomenon could be dismissed without a second thought. But I do not believe Scripture allows that easy exit. The harder and more faithful path is to keep the door open to the Spirit’s genuine gifts while watching that door carefully, welcoming what is of God and turning away what is not.

If you press me for a verdict, it is this. The Toronto Blessing held real hunger and, here and there, real grace, wrapped around practices that Scripture will not bless and that did lasting harm to some. There is a cost to saying so. The enthusiasts will think me a quencher of the Spirit, and the hard cessationists will think me dangerously soft, and I am content to be misunderstood by both if it keeps me close to what Scripture actually says.

So, now what?

If you lived through the Toronto Blessing, or you carry warm memories of it, I am not asking you to despise everything God may have done in your heart in those years. I am asking you to do what John told us all to do, which is to test the spirits against the Word rather than against the strength of the feeling. God is big enough to be honoured by careful discernment.

And if you find yourself today hungry for a deeper experience of God, that hunger is a good thing, so take it to the right table. Feed it on Scripture, on prayer, on the gathered worship of a faithful church, and trust the Spirit to make much of Jesus to you there. Why chase the lightning when the steady fire is already burning on the hearth God has provided?

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1, ESV)

For Further Study

Readers wanting to think further about discernment and the charismatic movement will be helped by the careful work of sound evangelical writers. Charles Ryrie and J. Dwight Pentecost both treat the work of the Spirit with a sober regard for Scripture, John Walvoord’s writing on the Holy Spirit is a steady guide, and Lewis Sperry Chafer sets the gifts within a dispensational frame that keeps Israel and the Church distinct. Millard Erickson surveys the charismatic debates fairly, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum is helpful on keeping the programmes of Israel and the Church apart when prophetic outpourings are in view. A close reading of 1 Corinthians 14 alongside any of these will serve the discerning believer well.