IHOPKC Church Hosts Final Service Following Mike Bickle Sex Scandal, Closing Forever

The International House of Prayer’s (IHOP) Kansas City church held its final service last week in Grandview, a conclusion and natural consequence of the sprawling sex abuse scandal brought on by founder and disgraced prophet Mike Bickle. Bickle was uncovered to be one of the most manipulative, creepy, and pervy “prophets’ of the past fifty years, causing his vaunted ministry to implode.

Forerunner Church Senior pastor Isaac Bennett led the service, which was packed to the brim with members and ministry partners exchanging farewells and teary goodbyes to each other, mourning the loss. Mike Bickle was not present.

“This morning our heart is really to just express gratitude to the Lord and gratitude towards those that have served and been a part of this community over the years. There’s no easy way to do this. …I recognize that this has been a very painful season…I’m so sorry for the pain and the difficulty that you’ve been through…. There’s no easy way to do this. How do you bring a close to something like this, the Forerunner Church? And so I appreciate your grace and your patience and your sensitivity during this time.”

Reflecting on their loss, Bennett apologized to and acknowledged those who have moved on and left as a result of the scandal:

“I’m so sorry for that. I really hope that this next season for you is one of comfort and of healing from the Lord.”

Bennett shared that closing various ministries across the IHOPKC missions base, including Forerunner Church, is not something they expected to do, but it needed to happen so they could have a fresh start. He encouraged people to have fellowship in home and small groups over the next few months, join them for mid-week gatherings while they “worship and seek the lord together,” and stay tuned about future plans.

“We’re honored to partner with Jesus in what he is birthing through this people and in this season, and we want to invite you to join, if it’s in your heart to as a fellow pioneer, as the Lord leads us and guides us into the next season.”

While Forerunner Church no longer exists, it is almost certain that the leadership will take a few months over the summer to plan and plot it out and then announce a new church wholly separate from IHOPKC. The 24/7 prayer room, which has been operating for decades and has been a staple of IHOPKC, will continue over the summer, though it is still being determined what will happen in the fall.

This thing is a seismic event in the charismatic community. IHOPKC has been a leader in the signs and wonders movement for many years. And if you've been around that movement to any degree, you will have seen genuine impossible healings and impossibly accurate prophetic words, etc. It's a very real thing. What the IHOPKC situation is doing is forcing people to acknowledge the elephant in the room - just because people are working signs and wonders doesn't mean that the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the force behind the spiritual activity.

The DNA of IHOPKC is massaged into the foundations of other wildly popular and influential movements like Bethel Church at Redding, CA; UpperRoom in Dallas, Denver, and wherever else they are now; and likely hundreds or thousands of other churches and prayer rooms around the globe. There's no way to overstate the implications of what is happening as the foundational prophecies and stated goals of the source - IHOPKC - are disintegrating.

There's youtube podcast called Wake Up and Win, hosted by a young married couple. The husband was perhaps the first most public defector from IHOPKC, around 2009. The Wake Up and Win podcast spends quite a bit of time in the past seven months hashing out the realities of IHOPKC's history and current crisis.

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