TOP STORY: THE CHARISMATIC EXPERIENCE: Spirited Toronto flock shakes, rattles, rolls—and howls

A Pentecostal church in Toronto made headlines for its controversial charismatic practices.

c. 1996 Religion News Service

TORONTO (RNS)-The visiting pastor from England rolled on the floor, face flushed, hair mopped with sweat, as three women prayed over him, shouting and ululating and waving their arms.

A contingent from Mexico was called forward for prayer, and one by one they fell backward,”slain in the Spirit,”as others laid hands on them, until the front of the church was covered with prone bodies, some laughing, some weeping convulsively.


Throughout the 2,500-member congregation, people were roaring, moaning and howling. They twitched and trembled and gasped like air brakes, and they laughed with giddy abandon. People on stage could barely speak before falling down or being overcome by laughter.

And all that happened before the sermon. Things really heated up afterward.

It was another night at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, a church that has attracted visitors from throughout the world since a revival began there in January 1994. Church leaders and supporters say the behavior of people attending the services is the work of the Holy Spirit, even though it goes beyond such traditional Pentecostal and charismatic fare as speaking in tongues or praying for healing.

The prominence that the Toronto church gives these manifestations prompted its dismissal last year from its denomination, the Association of Vineyard Churches.

But visitors keep coming, and the church has held revival meetings six nights a week since 1994. The service on this particular night was especially lively and well-attended because it occurred during a church conference. Nevertheless, so many people keep flying in for the services that nearby hotels offer discounts to those seeking the”Toronto Blessing.” And it’s not just in Toronto anymore. At least a half-dozen large churches in the United States are holding Toronto-style revival meetings on multiple nights each week, as are churches in England, Sweden, Finland and South Africa. Pastors from Latin America and Asia are seeking to plant the movement in their churches, too.

As bizarre as the manifestations appear, supporters say they are proof God is changing the lives of participants, healing them of past hurts and newly empowering them to reach out to others.”These people go down and they come up different people,”said Dr. Grant Mullen, a physician and mental-health specialist from Grimsby, Ontario, whose own church has undergone a revival spawned by the Toronto movement.

Whatever is happening internally, the”holy laughter”and other external behavior have drawn the most attention. Participants have even roared like lions, barked like dogs and flapped their arms like eagles.”I think the easiest explanation is to view the manifestations as human responses to God rather than physical activities caused by God,”said James Beverley, whose book,”Holy Laughter and the Toronto Blessing,”gives a mixed critique of the movement.”The more bizarre the manifestation, the easier it is to believe it is caused by human emotion,”said Beverley, a professor of theology at Ontario Theological Seminary.

The service during the recent conference began with nearly an hour of worship led by a Christian rock band while the exuberant audience sang, danced, leaped and waved colored banners and pennants.


Later, after the sermon, visitors went to the front and back of the cavernous church for prayer by church members.

They lined up side by side on red-taped lines, spaced about six feet apart so that people would not topple on each other as they were”slain in the Spirit.”As church members laid hands on them, most fell over quickly as”catchers”stood behind them to cushion their falls.

One woman, as church members prayed for her, grew beet red and trembled until she lost control and fell. Another woman lay on the carpet laughing uncontrollably, while a young man in jeans and a windbreaker lay face down, crying spasms of grief into his sleeve as a church member gently stroked him.

Participants, asked afterward to describe their experience, emphasized the spiritual component.”You lock in with the Lord, that’s all that counts,”said Sue Hatkoski, 33, of Scarborough, Ontario, as she sat up on the carpet.”It’s not about the manifestations, it’s about what happens inside of you,”said Susan Fiore of West Milford, N.J., who co-pastors an Assemblies of God church with her husband.

Her comments were occasionally interrupted by small lurching spasms.”Whoa!”she said with a laugh.”I haven’t always been that way.” Fiore said she had misgivings about the manifestations when she and her husband first visited Toronto last year. But ultimately, she added, the couple became convinced their experiences were genuine when church members prayed for them.”God really imparted his love,”she said she and her husband felt. A similar revival broke out at their church when they returned home, she said.

Elsvig Liljeborg, 41, a Pentecostal from Trelleborg, Sweden, making her third trip to Toronto, also had misgivings during her first visit. But when a church member prayed for her, she broke into a laughter that lasted for hours. The experience restored her sense of joy, she said.”It isn’t just spiritual situations,”she said.”I can have fun in any kind of situation, see the humorous again.” 


The Toronto church has grown from about 360 to 1,000 members since the renewal began, outgrowing its original building by the city’s airport and relocating to a nearby former convention hall. But its main impact has been on the estimated 200,000 visitors from throughout the world. The recent conference attracted large groups from South Korea, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, England, and other countries.”We were curious about the (church) because the whole world was coming here,”said the Rev. Ki Kwan Kim of Seoul, a Presbyterian who led a contingent of Korean pastors. Japanese and Brazilian pastors described Toronto-style revivals in their home countries. The revival has been particularly strong in England.

Churches in Washington state, California, Michigan, Tennessee and Florida regularly hold similar revival meetings, according to the Toronto church.”We used to have hardly anybody else (besides members) in church on Sunday nights,”said Darrel Stott, pastor of Lake Boren Christian Center, an Assemblies of God church in Seattle.”Now on Sunday nights our place is full with several hundred people”from numerous denominations. His church hosts revival meetings three nights a week in conjunction with two other churches.

The meetings began in October 1994 after Stott and another pastor visited Toronto.”Our background is Pentecostal/charismatic, and we’d thought we’d seen everything, but it was amazing what God did in us,”he said.

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Some scholars call the Toronto movement the”third wave”following the Pentecostal and charismatic movements that began earlier this century, both emphasizing the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as healing and speaking in tongues.

The trembling and twitching have precedents in the Great Awakening Christian revivalist movement in colonial America from 1725 to 1760 and the English revivals that gave the Quakers and Shakers their names. And participants in the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century reportedly made animal sounds.

But some Christians have found the animal behavior and other Toronto phenomena disturbing.”These manifestations should not be promoted, placed on stage, nor used as the basis for theologizing,”wrote John Wimber, head of the Association of Vineyard Churches, in a letter last December announcing the Toronto church’s dismissal from the small charismatic denomination.


John Arnott, pastor of the Airport church, said he was disappointed in the split, attributing it partly to miscommunication.”The best we can do is figure we just got too big,”he said.”We were changing the look and the emphasis of the Vineyard, and some of them didn’t like that. It was really time for us to be out on our own.” Arnott said he and other pastors at the Toronto church initially questioned the trembling, animal behavior and other manifestations, but saw some scriptural precedent.”Why are we surprised, when you get touched by the Holy Spirit, that powerful things happen?”he said. The apostle Paul”was knocked to the ground and blinded by the power of God. It must have been a very powerful thing.” Arnott said church members experiencing the manifestations were neither unstable nor exhibitionist, and thus he became convinced their experiences were genuine.

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Sociologist Margaret Poloma of the University of Akron, Ohio, a supporter of the revival, said that of 850 visitors who filled out a survey that she designed, the”overwhelming majority felt they had experienced an unusual touch of God that has lasted beyond the spirited time at the Toronto renewal site.” In addition, a fifth of the respondents reported receiving physical healing as a result of attending the church, 5 percent said they were healed of clinically diagnosed mental-health problems, and 78 percent reported an overall”inner or emotional healing.”

The movement has drawn mixed reviews from theologians.”The Toronto Blessing has let a lot of repressed Anglo-Canadians and English people cut loose,”said John Stackhouse, a professor of religion at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.”It gives us social permission to be wildly enthusiastic about Jesus.” But Stackhouse criticized the church for weak, rambling preaching and a”random, scattershot approach to Scripture,”and he and Beverley said the church resists criticism from anyone unsympathetic to the movement.

Stackhouse also said despite leaders’ statements, they continue to highlight sensational physical behaviors above inner spiritual growth.”No matter what they say their priorities are, if you go to their meetings, you see what their priorities are,”he said.

An assistant pastor, Mark Dupont, brought cheers from the congregation one evening with his own answer to”critics saying it’s only emotions.””It’s not, but what if it was only emotions? Hallelujah, at least somebody’s having a good time in church.”

 

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