What was the Lakeland Outpouring?

Question 4158.

The Lakeland Outpouring was a series of nightly meetings held in Lakeland, Florida, in 2008, led by a travelling evangelist and broadcast widely over Christian television and the internet. For a few months it gathered large crowds and attracted enormous attention before collapsing amid scandal almost as quickly as it had risen.

Of all the movements I am asked about, the Lakeland Outpouring is perhaps the clearest cautionary tale, and it offers sober lessons about how easily the name of the Spirit can be attached to something that will not bear examination. I want to describe it plainly and then draw out what the church should learn.

What happened at the Lakeland Outpouring

The meetings centred on a single charismatic figure who claimed an unusual anointing and reported spectacular healings and angelic visitations. The atmosphere was high-energy and theatrical, with dramatic claims made nightly from the platform. The events were carried live to a global audience, and for a season the Lakeland Outpouring was the talk of the charismatic world, endorsed by a number of prominent leaders.

Then it unravelled. The central figure’s claimed healings could not be verified, serious questions were raised about the conduct and character of the leadership, and within months the evangelist’s personal life collapsed into public scandal. The meetings ended, the endorsements were quietly withdrawn, and many sincere believers were left disillusioned and hurt.

The speed of the rise and fall is part of what makes the episode so instructive. In the space of a single summer it went from being hailed as a great move of God to being a byword for everything that can go wrong when discernment is suspended. That whole arc, compressed into months, lays bare lessons that slower failures can hide.

The warning signs that were there from the start

What grieves me is that the warning signs were present from the beginning for anyone willing to apply Scripture rather than be swept along. The healings were announced but not demonstrated. The focus rested heavily on one man and his special anointing rather than on Christ. Strange claims of angelic encounters were made without any scriptural testing. The whole thing depended on spectacle.

Jesus warned that ‘false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect’ (Matthew 24:24). Spectacular claims are not self-authenticating. The Lakeland Outpouring should teach us that a movement which centres on a personality and trades in unverified wonders deserves the most careful scrutiny, not breathless endorsement.

It is sobering how many seasoned leaders lent their names to it in the early weeks. That tells me the pressure to be seen approving of a supposed move of God can override the plainest caution, even in people who should know better. If it can happen to them, it can happen to any of us, which is exactly why we anchor our judgement to the Word rather than to the excitement of the crowd.

The problem of impartation

A feature of Lakeland and movements like it is the idea of impartation, the notion that a specially anointed leader can transfer spiritual power to others by a touch or a blow. This has no defensible basis in Scripture and tends to concentrate spiritual authority in a charismatic individual in a way the New Testament never sanctions. I deal with this directly in my answer on impartation in charismatic circles.

When spiritual life is made to flow through a gifted personality rather than through Christ and his Word, the stage is set for exactly the kind of collapse Lakeland suffered. Build a movement on a man and it will fall when the man falls. The Spirit gives gifts to the whole body and points always to Jesus, never to a celebrity through whom power must be channelled.

This is part of a wider drift toward self-styled apostles and prophets claiming an authority the New Testament never hands to anyone. When a movement teaches you that you need a special man to lay hands on you before the Spirit can work, it has already moved you away from the gospel, in which every believer has the Spirit and direct access to God through the one Mediator, Jesus.

Testing by fruit and by truth

Jesus told us we would know false prophets by their fruit (Matthew 7:16). The fruit of the Lakeland Outpouring, examined honestly, was disillusionment, scandal and a great deal of damaged faith. That is not the fruit of the Spirit. Paul lists that fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and a movement is fairly weighed by whether it leaves those things in its wake.

This connects to the wider phenomenon of the so-called third wave and the New Apostolic Reformation, which I describe in my answer on third wave charismatic teaching. The pattern of self-appointed apostles claiming extraordinary authority is one the discerning believer should learn to recognise and to avoid.

Fruit takes time to show, which is one reason we should be slow to crown any movement while the excitement is still fresh. Give it a few years and look at what is left. Are there holier lives, healthier churches, a deeper love for Christ? Or is there wreckage, cynicism and a trail of wounded people? The tree is known by what hangs on it when the season has passed.

Continuationist but not credulous

I hold that the gifts of the Spirit continue today, so no one can fairly say I dismiss Lakeland out of cessationist prejudice. My objection is the opposite. Precisely because I believe the Spirit truly works, I am jealous that his name not be dragged through scandal by movements that have nothing of him in their central practices. To believe in the real thing is to care deeply about exposing the counterfeit.

Discernment is not unbelief. It is the loving labour of a church that wants to honour the Spirit by refusing to call false what is true and refusing to call true what is false. The healthier path, the one that honours the Spirit’s gifts without the excess, I set out in my answer on honouring the Spirit while avoiding charismatic excess.

A bank teller learns to spot forged notes by handling the genuine article until the counterfeit feels wrong in the hand. So it is with us. The more deeply we know the true work of the Spirit, set out in the Word, the more quickly the false will strike us as off, even before we can name exactly why. That kind of trained discernment is worth far more than either naive enthusiasm or blanket suspicion.

Caring for those who were hurt

Behind the headlines of the Lakeland Outpouring were thousands of ordinary believers who came hungry for God and went home wounded. I do not want to lose sight of them in the analysis. When a movement collapses in scandal, the casualties are often the most sincere, the ones who believed the most and gave the most. They need patient, gentle care, not a lecture about how they should have known better.

If you were one of those who was caught up and then let down, please do not let a charlatan’s failure rob you of the real Saviour. The fault was never in the Spirit, and it was never in your longing for God. It was in trusting a man who should not have been trusted. The Lord himself has not failed you, and he is well able to bind up the disappointment.

Disillusionment, painful as it is, can be the beginning of something healthier, because it strips away a false hope and leaves us reaching for the true one. If your faith was shaken by Lakeland or anything like it, take that shaken faith straight to Jesus, who never disappoints those who come to him, and let him rebuild it on a surer foundation than the word of any platform.

The Lakeland Outpouring did real damage to real people, and that damage is not a footnote to be hurried past. The Lakeland Outpouring is remembered now mostly as a scandal, but behind the scandal were believers who prayed and gave and hoped, and they deserve our compassion rather than our scorn as they find their feet again with the Lord.

So, now what?

The Lakeland Outpouring stands as a warning written large for the whole church. When the next movement arises promising signs and wonders through a single anointed figure, remember Lakeland, reach for your Bible, and test the spirits before you book your flight. The Spirit of God will never object to being examined by the Word he himself inspired.

And if your confidence has been shaken by a movement that let you down, take heart. The counterfeit only exists because there is a genuine article worth imitating. Turn back to Christ and his Word, settle among his faithful people, and let the Spirit do his patient, unspectacular, life-changing work in you. Is that not the kind of outpouring worth wanting?

For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. (Matthew 24:24, ESV)