What is deliverance ministry?

Question 08070

Deliverance ministry covers a wide range of practice, from careful pastoral work with genuinely troubled people to something closer to a stage act. Because the label is so elastic, I want to describe what it usually involves before saying what I think of it.

I write as someone who believes demonic activity is real and who has encountered what I take to be genuine cases. So this is not scepticism about the supernatural. It is a concern that a real thing has been surrounded by a great deal that is not.

What Deliverance Ministry Claims to Be

In its common form, deliverance ministry treats demonic influence as a routine explanation for ongoing problems in a believer’s life. Depression, addiction, lust, anger, illness and financial difficulty are each attributed to a specific spirit, which is then identified and commanded to leave.

The practice usually involves a session with a practitioner or team, sometimes preceded by a questionnaire about family history and past involvement in the occult. Spirits are frequently named after the problem, so a person is told they have a spirit of rejection, a spirit of infirmity or a spirit of poverty.

Some deliverance ministry is far more restrained than that, and I do not want to tar careful pastors with the same brush as the conference circuit. But the version most people encounter is the one I have just described, and it is the one that needs examining.

What the Gospels Actually Show

Jesus cast out demons constantly, and the Gospel writers make no attempt to reduce this to metaphor. The verb is ekballo, to throw out, and the encounters are described with unmistakable physical detail.

Two features stand out. The cases are obvious. Nobody in the Gospels needs a questionnaire to determine whether a demon is present, because the manifestations are unmistakable to everyone watching. And Jesus never uses a technique. There are no formulas, no repeated commands, no lengthy sessions. He speaks and it is done.

There is also a striking distinction in the accounts between demonic affliction and ordinary illness. Matthew repeatedly lists the demonised and the sick as separate categories of people brought to Jesus. The Gospel writers did not think every ailment had a demon behind it, which is a caution worth holding on to.

The Apostolic Pattern in Acts

In Acts the same thing continues, but the frequency drops sharply. Philip encounters unclean spirits in Samaria. Paul addresses the spirit in the slave girl at Philippi. The seven sons of Sceva attempt it without any relationship to Jesus and are badly beaten for the attempt, which is a story Luke evidently thought worth including.

What we never see in Acts is a believer being taken aside for a session. The encounters happen in the course of evangelism, among people who are not yet Christians, and they are incidental to the preaching of the gospel rather than a ministry in their own right.

The letters continue that pattern. Paul writes at length on how to deal with sin, conflict, immaturity, false teaching, grief and temptation, and never once instructs a church to conduct deliverance ministry on a believer struggling with any of them. That absence is not an argument from silence about a minor matter. It is silence where the popular practice would expect a manual.

Where Deliverance Ministry Overreaches

The main overreach is in scope. Once you accept that a spirit of anger explains anger, you have quietly removed anger from the category of sin to be repented of and placed it in the category of affliction to be removed. Galatians 5 lists these things as works of the flesh, which is a rather different diagnosis.

The second overreach concerns believers. I hold with Scripture that a genuine Christian cannot be possessed in the sense the Gospels describe, because the indwelling Spirit and demonic occupation are not compatible. Believers can be harassed, oppressed and attacked from outside, and I have written about that in whether Christians can be demonically oppressed and whether Christians can be demon-possessed.

The third is procedural. Where Jesus spoke once, much deliverance ministry involves prolonged sessions, repeated commands and elaborate interrogation of the spirit. If the New Testament pattern is a word of authority, an hour of negotiation suggests something has gone wrong somewhere.

The Empty House Warning

Jesus gave a warning that ought to sit at the centre of this whole subject. In Matthew 12:43-45 He describes an unclean spirit leaving a person, wandering, and returning to find the house swept and put in order but empty. It then brings seven others, and the last state is worse than the first.

That is a warning about expulsion without occupation. Getting something out is not the goal. Having Jesus in is the goal, and any ministry that concentrates on the first while assuming the second has misunderstood what it is doing.

This is why I have no interest in deliverance ministry detached from the gospel. If a person is not converted, removing a demon leaves them tidier and more vulnerable. The objective was never a cleaner house. It was a new occupant.

When Genuine Demonic Activity Is Present

I do believe there are real cases, and I have met what I understand to be two of them. In one, a person in deep rebellion spoke in a voice noticeably unlike their own. In another, a person knew I was a Christian before I had said anything to indicate it.

In such situations I would want several things. Considerable certainty rather than enthusiasm, since misdiagnosis does real harm. Involvement of the person’s own church leadership rather than a visiting specialist. Medical and psychological input, because conditions with recognisable clinical presentations should be investigated properly rather than spiritualised. Prayer, Scripture and the name of Jesus, without theatre.

And the aim throughout must be the person’s salvation. I do not present myself as having a gift in this area, and I keep a deliberate distance from the culture that has made demonic confrontation into a platform ministry.

Pastoral Safeguards Worth Insisting On

A few safeguards are worth stating plainly. Never conduct such ministry alone or in private with a vulnerable person. Never charge money. Never build a public reputation on it. Never proceed where a medical explanation has not been considered. Never leave someone with the impression that their failure to improve is a failure of faith.

When deliverance ministry does not appear to work, the fallout is severe, and I have written separately about what to do when deliverance ministry does not seem to work. People are frequently left believing that God has passed them over, which is a lie they did not need to be told.

The Sons of Sceva and the Danger of Borrowed Authority

Luke includes one episode that reads almost like a warning notice attached to the whole subject. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest in Ephesus attempted to use the name of Jesus as a formula, invoking the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. The evil spirit answered them in Acts 19:15: Jesus I know, and Paul I recognise, but who are you?

They were then beaten so badly that they fled the house naked and wounded. Luke tells the story without softening it, and the effect on the city was considerable, since it was after this that the Ephesians burned their magic books.

The lesson is that the name of Jesus is not a password. It carries authority for those who belong to Him and no power at all as an incantation. Any deliverance ministry that drifts toward formula, repetition and technique is moving in exactly the direction Luke is warning about, and I would want anyone drawn to this work to read that chapter before they read anything else.

So, now what?

A last observation. Almost everyone I have met who does this work well is reluctant to do it at all, and almost everyone who is eager to do it should not be. That is not a rule, but it is a pattern worth noticing when you are deciding whom to trust with something this serious.

If you are considering deliverance ministry for yourself or someone you love, slow down and talk to your own pastor first. Ask what the actual problem is, and whether the ordinary means of grace have been given a proper run at it. Most of what gets brought to deliverance ministry is addressed by repentance, discipleship, honest community, sleep, medical help and time.

If you have been through it and nothing changed, please do not conclude that you are a special case beyond God’s reach. That conclusion is not from Him.

And if you are genuinely facing something more, get sober help from people who are not excited by it. Who in your church could you talk to this week?

“Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”

Matthew 12:44-45, ESV