(Photo: Todd Bentley. Image Source: Baptist Press)

From the start of his ministry, Todd Bentley set himself apart from other evangelists within the Charismatic Christian world. The Canadian preacher swapped button-up shirts and slacks for t-shirts and cargo shorts, was tattooed from head to toe, had a long red beard, and screamed a signature battle cry as he laid his hands on those seeking healing: “BAM!” 

Bentley’s Charismatic Christianity is less a Protestant denomination than a wide-ranging, free-flowing, rapidly growing movement. In 2006, Pew Research Center found that Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians numbered roughly 23% of American Christians. By 2023, the Public Religion Research Institute was able to identify that over half of American Christians who describe themselves as evangelicals are participating in Charismatic practices. “Independent Charismatics are the rowdy, unregulated cousins of the Pentecostals, those Holy Spirit-filled, revivalist denominations of modern Christianity,” Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, wrote for The Revealer. “In lieu of institutional superstructure, the entrepreneurial Independent Charismatic leadership culture that has emerged in the past few decades is collaborative and intricately networked. Independent Charismatic leaders go by many titles—pastor, apostle, evangelist, prophet, televangelist, Messianic rabbi, worship leader, revivalist—but they all work together,” he explains. Todd Bentley wasn’t required to attend seminary or receive ordination in order to lead a ministry as a Charismatic Christian. Instead, the notion that God had called and chosen him as an evangelist was sufficient.

In the spring of 2008, a midsize Charismatic church in Lakeland, Florida invited Bentley and his organization, Fresh Fire Ministries Canada, to hold a week-long revival service. The revival started on April 2, 2008, but stretched far past its initial week to become what was known as the      Florida Outpouring. Bentley live-streamed the services, which received over 1 million views in their first five weeks. Christian satellite channel GOD TV picked up the revival, canceling its primetime programming to broadcast services every night. The revival moved to Lakeland’s convention center and then eventually to a tent on the grounds of the local airport, where 10,000 people came daily to receive what Bentley was offering: an encounter with God, baptism in the Holy Spirit, sightings of angels, and miracles. By the end of May, 140,000 people from over 40 countries had come to Lakeland; by June 30, that number exceeded 400,000 from 100 nations.

A common refrain from commentators and televangelists on GOD TV was that the only way to truly understand what was happening in Lakeland was to see it for yourself. So that summer, when I was 14, my family flew to Lakeland to spend a week at Todd Bentley’s feet.

That summer, I had no idea that I was about to experience my first real disillusionment with the faith in which I was raised as I watched Bentley meteorically rise in fame and then fall into scandal. His rehabilitation and the forgiveness offered by pastors and congregants alike within the Charismatic world illuminates how much power a leader’s claim to be chosen by God holds. In this world, the anointing of God covers a multitude of sins regardless of whether the sinner ever demonstrates actual repentance. What matters more than repentance is a compelling story.

***

Every day for a week, my family spent hours in the Lakeland Center’s bleachers. I snapped pictures with our digital camera to try to capture images of odd flares, bright circles with spectral patterns. Many others brought cameras with them too in hopes of capturing this specific phenomenon. Todd Bentley told us these strange lights were angels and I had no reason to question him (the reality, that these apparitions were likely just lens flares, did not seem to occur to anyone). But to my young teenage self, if Lakeland contained miracles, why should it not also contain angels visible only through my Canon Powershot?

Pilgrims who flocked to Lakeland were often in search of miracles, or at least they hoped to witness them firsthand. Bentley claimed that angels visited him nightly, giving him direct messages from God which he would relay at his services. He told the crowds that God was healing everything from cancer to arthritis to fibromyalgia to AIDS and encouraged generous donations when offering plates were passed around. “People get stingy when they give, but they want a generous blessing,” Bentley told his followers. “So you think about that as I sow. You think about what God wants you to plant as a revival seed.”

(Crowds at the Florida Outpouring. Image Source: Roy Fields on Facebook)

Bentley’s faith healing techniques were unconventional, sometimes violent. He would declare that someone in the crowd had an ailment—a tumor, a disease, an unspecified injury. He would begin to pray loudly as he called forward anyone who fit the description he gave. Then, he set out to heal them. The healing act was a physical one. In one clip of a service, Bentley knees a person seeking healing for terminal stomach cancer in the abdomen, claiming that God told him to attack the cancer. In another service, Bentley admits to kicking an elderly woman in the face, choking a man, banging on a disabled woman’s legs, and knocking a man’s tooth out: “People just can’t understand why God would tell me something like, ‘Kick that woman in the face,’ [but] hundreds were healed.”

Others who came to Lakeland wanted to receive a second baptism and be “slain in the Spirit.” This is a kind of Charismatic colloquialism, a loose interpretation of Isaiah 66:16: “‘It will come to pass in the last days,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will plead with all flesh, with the sword and fire, and the slain of the Lord will be many.’” As John the Baptist tells his followers in the Gospel of Matthew, “After me comes one who is more powerful than I… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Baptism by the Holy Spirit is evidenced by slaying: falling to the floor as if in a trance and speaking in tongues, like the disciples of Christ on the day of Pentecost.

At Lakeland, the sincerity of one’s slaying and the reality of their second baptism was measured physically—how swiftly a person dropped to the ground, how loudly and passionately they spoke in tongues. All week long, in a faintly air-conditioned arena, I watched slayings unfold. As the worship team played the same songs over and over again on the main stage, Bentley prayed, screamed, and prophesied. Near the stage, queues formed leading to “intercessors,” who would administer the baptism of the Holy Spirit. An intercessor would place their hands on the head and shoulders of the next person in line, praying for them to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. As if by clockwork, the person would begin to show tangible signs of their baptism: moaning and eyes closed, they would fall backwards and start to speak in tongues. Volunteers stood behind each person to lower them gently to the floor, catching them as they were slain.

***

The downfall of both the Florida Outpouring and Todd Bentley came in a quick one-two punch. On August 12, 2008, Bentley abruptly announced via written statement that he and his wife, Shonnah Bentley, were separating. Three days later, the board of Bentley’s Fresh Fire Ministries released a statement saying that they had learned Bentley was involved in an “unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff”—a former Fresh Fire intern and the Bentley family’s live-in nanny. Bentley disappeared from the Outpouring’s services, and the revival fizzled out by October.

Questions started to come with force not only about Bentley’s personal life, but also about his miracles. Fresh Fire Ministries claimed that hundreds of people had been healed and that a mind-boggling twenty-five people had been raised from the dead at the Florida Outpouring. A conservative Christian news magazine, WORLD, attempted verification: “Bentley claims hundreds of people have been healed of everything from deafness to infertility,” they reported. “WORLD made repeated requests for documentation of healings, but claims of ‘privacy issues’ were the only response.”

In 2009, WORLD released a follow-up report saying that after making over a dozen requests for a list of people who had been healed at the services, Fresh Fire Ministries gave them thirteen names. One person, whom Bentley claimed to have healed of cancer, was back in treatment. Another, whom Bentley claimed to have healed of migraines, said she still suffered from the ailment. Some names on the list couldn’t be reached. Not one healing had occurred exactly the way Bentley said it had. And two people on the list had died from the illnesses they had supposedly been healed from at Lakeland.

I remember reading WORLD’s reporting at the time it was released, trying to make sense of what I thought I had witnessed as it clashed sharply against the apparent facts. Some people just didn’t understand the workings of the Holy Spirit, my family told me. But I was no longer as sure as I had been about the angels I thought I had seen through my camera lens. How could a person who claimed to believe the same things I believed lie? And if other Christians still trusted in Bentley, why couldn’t I?

***

Public scandals are not always enough to keep humiliated preachers away from the pulpit. Todd Bentley’s redemption arc was crafted by Rick Joyner, the founder of MorningStar Ministries and a major player in the Charismatic world whom Bentley considered his “spiritual father.” Under Joyner’s guidance, a committee was instituted to restore Bentley to a leadership position. For the Charismatic leaders, while questioning Bentley’s personal failings was fair game, casting doubt on the validity of the Florida Outpouring was akin to doubting God’s power. Bill Johnson, senior pastor of the Charismatic megachurch Bethel, told Charisma that “people have to come to grips with the fact that it was never about Todd, it is really about God.” GOD TV co-founders Rory and Wendy Alec went a step further: “[Todd] was consistently and unrelentingly criticized, maligned, and persecuted. The attacks [have grown] increasingly violent, and the heartbreaking thing was that so much of it came from the church.”

Bentley moved to Fort Mill, South Carolina, to undergo his “restoration” under Joyner’s watchful eye. By that time, in 2008, he had divorced his first wife and married his former intern and nanny. “[Todd] is deeply sorry for the problems that his problems have caused others. He is well aware that he made some mistakes and foolish choices,” Joyner wrote in an open letter to those following Bentley’s journey. “I am very confident that Todd will not only be back in ministry, but will ultimately have a much bigger impact and be walking in even more power than he has yet walked in.” For the next several months, Joyner and Bentley put out regular video updates sharing their conversations together with their combined ministries’ audiences.

In just under a year’s time, Bentley had returned to the pulpit, launched his own newly rebranded ministry, and was back to hosting revival rallies across America.

***

Bentley’s restoration lasted for nearly a decade. During that time, Bentley toured the world, hosting revival services broadcast by GOD TV. He continued to make bold claims of God’s healing power. For instance, in 2015, Bentley claimed that 500,000 Muslims attended one of his crusades in Karachi, Pakistan. Of those, he said 290,000 turned to Christ, and three people had been raised from the dead. “You would go, how do you know he was dead?” Bentley said of the miracles he claimed. “Did the doctors come? Did you call 911? I said, ‘We’re in Pakistan. It doesn’t work like America.’” Medical verification of these resurrections was never provided by Bentley or his team.

A lack of evidence did not dissuade those who followed Bentley, attended his meetings, donated to his organization, and lived off his “prophecy.” His redemption was sealed—until suddenly it wasn’t.

***

Stephen Powell was Todd Bentley’s protege. He traveled and served with Bentley’s ministry and attended regular services at Rick Joyner’s megachurch. “I’ll always be grateful to Rick & Todd for their positive influence in my life, despite some of the bad things that have happened and regrettable things I’ve become aware of more recently,” Powell wrote in a Facebook post on August 22, 2019. “But I’ve come to the conclusion through much fasting, prayer, and hundreds of hours of counseling with wise counselors over the last several months, that I must do what I’m about to do next.”

In his post, which spread like wildfire throughout the Charismatic world, Powell leveled serious allegations at Todd Bentley and by extension Rick Joyner. “Todd has a perverse sexual addiction,” Powell wrote, partly blaming this on a “demonic entity” that “uses Todd to prey on others.” He accused Todd of sexually harassing numerous women and men, “many of them interns and/or students under his leadership care.” Powell claimed to have seen concrete evidence and heard eyewitness testimony of Bentley soliciting female students for nude photos, offering to pay interns for sexual encounters, sending explicit photos of himself and his wife to students and interns, and engaging in sexual contact with a young female assistant, all without repercussions. Powell went on to relay the story of a male intern who Bentley solicited in 2013 and who reported that information to Rick Joyner. “Todd was still allowed to go on in ministry as if everything was okay,” Powell said. “I believe Todd has proven over more than two decades of ministry, moral failures, and abuse of others that he cannot be trusted with the care of God’s people.”

Powell approached Rick Joyner in June 2019 with a thirty-two page report he prepared on the information he had received regarding Bentley’s failings and misconduct. Joyner did not respond and shortly thereafter went on sabbatical. In his Facebook post, Powell claimed that Joyner finally responded to him via email on August 19, 2019, denying the allegations Powell presented while simultaneously claiming that if any of those events had indeed occurred, Bentley had already been chastised and corrected—no need for anyone to ask for forgiveness.

***

Another committee consisting of pastors representing major Charismatic churches formed to investigate the allegations brought against Bentley. “Based on our careful review of numerous first-hand reports, some of them dating back to 2004, we state our theological opinion and can say with one voice that, without a doubt, Todd is not qualified to serve in leadership or ministry today,” the committee concluded. The committee’s leader told Religion News Service that while Bentley had initially agreed to cooperate with the investigation, the committee later received a cease and desist letter from his lawyer.

Bentley denounced the panel as a “witch trial,” comparing the investigation to the hearings over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault accusation and the impeachment of President Trump. “I am not here to pretend that I haven’t struggled,” Bentley continued. “I am just here to say so much of what is being [said] out there now is old, some of it six, seven, ten, fifteen years. And I am actually here to say, where’s the power of the cross for me now?”

***

After a temporary step back, Bentley reemerged once more with a rebranded ministry. “The unwavering flame of God’s calling on Todd Bentley’s life and the essence of our ministry remains unchanged,” his website states. He is scheduled to preach at revival services in the U.S. and Canada through 2025. Like any good influencer, he sells digital courses and offers one-on-one mentoring. In between prophetic missives shared on his various social media platforms, Bentley also hawks beard care products.

While his reach was initially more constricted after the panel’s decision, it is critical to note that because Charismatic Christianity is not a formal denomination, the panel had no real authority to remove Bentley from ministry altogether—all they could do was advise others within the Charismatic world that they believed Bentley to be unfit for leadership.

Yet in December 2024, Bentley was invited to return to Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries to speak at their Vision Conference and pray for anyone in attendance in search of healing. “We love this guy, haven’t seen enough of him lately, he kind of disappeared,” Joyner said to introduce Bentley, as if with the wave of a hand, any hint of unsavory behavior could be washed away. Joyner carries weight in the Charismatic world—just as he was able to offer redemption to Bentley after his first scandal, he remains able to solicit forgiveness on Bentley’s behalf even if Bentley himself never asks for it. The slate is wiped clean, evidence of repentance unnecessary.

This is a feature, not a bug, of Charismatic Christianity. It is precisely because of this movement’s emphasis on God’s calling on individual believers —coupled with a purposeful lack of structure and measures to actually hold anyone accountable—that someone like Bentley is able to return again and again to the stage, drawing an audience willing to forgive.

Charismatic Christianity tells its participants a story about themselves. They are chosen by God, set apart from other believers by virtue of their baptism by the Holy Spirit. They have been selected to receive special revelation about their lives and futures. They may be misunderstood by other Christians, but such misunderstanding is only further evidence that God is speaking to them in a voice only they can hear. It is hardly an accident that Charismatic Christians were some of the first and remain some of the most vocal proponents of President Donald Trump, to whom forgiveness for any number of sins has been extended any number of times. The culture created by the Charismatic world enables it to continue to flourish and draw crowds so long as those leaders continue to preach the narrative that their followers want to hear.

Deeply ingrained in Charismatic Christianity is the notion that God has selected specific people for his purposes. As long as someone like Bentley continues to claim to exercise God’s power and receive divine revelation, he is qualified to lead. Bentley can perform miracles, draw crowds, speak prophecy, and impart revelation that he insists comes directly from above. This man is chosen by God, after all. If God has forgiven him, why can’t the rest of us fall in line?

“We’re spiritually hungry—which can be a good thing,” J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma wrote directly after Todd Bentley’s departure from the Florida Outpouring. “But sometimes hungry people will eat anything.”

Elena Trueba is a writer based in Southern California and holds a Master’s in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. You can find more of her writings on religion and politics on her Substack, Unholy Alliances.