The Kansas City Prophet

I don’t really remember ever not knowing about IHOP, or at least Mike Bickle and his outlandish prophecies. It was pretty impossible to grow up evangelical in Kansas City in the 90s and 2000s and not have at least some knowledge of IHOP. I remember thinking it strange when someone hadn’t heard of IHOP, or when someone only associated the acronym with the pancake house. How small minded I would think to myself. How do they not know about this place? 

I went to two churches growing up. From birth to second grade, I went to a church called Full Faith. Being too young to understand at the time, I now know that the figurehead of Full Faith churches, a man named Ernie Gruen, had a lot to say about Bickle and the evangelical rockstar movement called “The Kansas City Prophets.” In 1990, he denounced the IHOP founder, among others as “seers” who ran a church that exhibited “cult-like tendencies.” 

In ‘93 however, Ernie decided that everything was ok, and he and Bickle released a joint statement of apology and forgiveness. A couple weeks later, Ernie resigned as the pastor of his Full Faith mega church, citing divorce and specifically saying he didn’t have an affair. Which is kind of like specifically saying “I’m classy.” If you have to say it, it’s probably not true… 

My dad left Full Faith Church in 1992 and we helped start Vineyard Church in Kansas City. This made the IHOP connection all that more tricky, because IHOP was birthed from a church called Metro Vineyard Fellowship in Kansas City before breaking off to do their own thing. I have memories of some of the “prophets” coming to church events, as we were loosely related to these folks during that time. Even at a young age, it felt strange, unsettling. Not overtly scary, but certainly left me with a lonely feeling. 

I remember a lot of yelling from the stage when the prophets were around. I remember feeling uneasy as they shared, with great passion and vigor, what God was up to, who God was concerned about, what God was going to do in Kansas City, and when Jesus was going to come back and end the whole thing. There were always stories about people traveling to Heaven for a chat with God, an infamous story about one of the prophets going to Hell and seeing a guy’s head swinging on a rope for all eternity, and several stories of folks coming back to life after prayer. 

As I grew up, our church veered back to the middle, and IHOP veered off the highway altogether, so by middle school, we weren’t really connected at all. Then in the early 2000s, after the 24/7 prayer room got off and running, IHOP really blew up. They hosted a New Year’s Eve event called The OneThing Conference in downtown KC. Many of my friends who were fairly new to the faith and certainly new to the extreme evangelical/prophet culture wanted to go check it out, and, despite my misgivings and my pleas for us to stay home, a group of us attended the conference. 

I don’t remember now if it was when Bickle had the room full of several thousand folks ceremoniously walk under an alter to symbolize the bridegroom and marriage to Christ, or if it was when someone threw a pair of sneakers on stage, abruptly causing Bickle to stop talking and share a prophesy that God told him he’d be getting a new pair of shoes that day, but at some point everyone I was with understood why I didn’t want to go and we all left. 

Over the next several years, it so happened that I saw some success in the Contemporary Christian Music scene, and started to make friends with evangelical folks all over the country. When they heard I was from Kansas City, the first question was “Oh, are you a part of IHOP?” I didn’t know how safe it was to share that I thought it was a freak cult and wanted nothing to do with it, so I would just say things like “Oh no, they’re pretty far from my house,” or “ no, we’ve got a great community at my church, and we really lean in to that.” 

I’d gone to IHOP a handful of times from 2002-2007, always with someone else who wanted to attend. By 2008 or so, I couldn’t even step foot in the place. Friends would visit from out of town and request to spend some time in the 24/7 prayer room like tourists want to see the Empire State Building in New York. Reluctantly, I’d pile people into my car, drive to IHOP, point to the door and sit in my car in the parking lot until they were finished. 

I didn’t know about the abuse at IHOP at the time, but I assumed. I had seen the majority of the country’s evangelical circles by that point. I’d spent time with some of the most influential evangelical leaders, preachers, singers and writers. All over the country were stories of spiritual abuse, but it was so downplayed that if you weren’t paying close attention, you’d miss it. 

You’d hear stories about people who “needed to take some time away from the church,” or “had to step away to work on his marriage.” You’d hear about a church splitting because “some of the people supported the pastor in a tough time and the rest of the church believed some lies about him.” There were families who abruptly left a church because “they disagreed with some of what was going on.” And so on to infinity…

When the news came out about Mike Bickle a couple weeks ago, my only surprise is that it took until 2023 for this to come to light. There were, of course, several terrible situations involving IHOP and their brand of crazy over the last decade, but those situations seemed to surround the members of the church more than the leadership. The allegations against Bickle, depending on how the church handles it, will follow the same trajectory that every other mega-church pastor has followed: Remove him from ministry during the investigation, hire a Evangelical outside investigator, ask everyone to pray for the victims, make some off-handed comment about the media making things worse, mention and highlight any false victims, or people trying to gain money out of the situation, then wait for it all to blow over. Two years, maybe 18 months from now, Bickle will be back in action, either at IHOP or having started his own ministry. 

All the while, there will be apologists; folks supporting Bickle and IHOP, folks begging us to search our own hearts before we judge Mike. Imploring us to “wait until all the facts come out” and righteously reminding us all what Jesus said about casting the first stone. It is this mentality that allows abuse to foster in the evangelical movement. It is also this mentality that helps clarify the evangelical obsession with Trump. As long as the leader hasn’t violated one of two “no-no issues,” he is bathed in grace by his followers. Those issues are, of course, abortion and LGBTQ+ advocacy.  If on those two solid rocks the evangelical leader stands, all other ground is sinking sand.