Lakeland Airport Christian Fellowship?

Here's my lede on my first Todd Bentley post

If you're not a Lakeland, Florida person, you might not get the pun in the title. One of Lakeland's big tourism draws (other than Detroit Tiger spring training) is the Sun-'n-Fun Fly-In, where recreational aviators from around the country show up for a week of flying-related events at the airport south of town.

Lakeland might be on the verge of having another tourist destination, and it won't involve a theme park; a big revival has broken out at Ignited Church on the north side of town, with rising Pentecostal evangelist Todd Bentley (my dad's been taking about him for years after seeing him at a conference about six years ago) being the touchstone of some interesting rashes of conversions and reported healings.

The thing is still going, and my description was prophetic (figuratively) on two grounds; the first is that it has become a burgeoning pilgrimage site for charismatics. That I figured would happen, but not as fast as it did. Cary McMullen from the Lakeland Ledger has an excellent update, covering quite a bit of historical ground on the Third-Wave charismatics and other issues that I covered in my first post, including Rodney Howard Brown's Carpenter's Home revival of the 90s.

The second is that they're setting up shop at the Lakeland airport.

Revival leaders are expected to announce today that beginning May 26, they will hold evening services on the grounds of Sun 'n Fun Fly-in under a giant inflatable "air dome" that will hold up to 10,000 people. It will be the home of the revival "indefinitely," said Lynne Breidenbach, a spokeswoman for the revival.

"Todd is hiring staff and renting apartments. They're setting up camp to stay for three or four months," [host pastor Stephen] Strader said.

Lakeland's airport is non-commercial, so pilgrims have to fly into either Tampa or Orlando. However, it is a bit ironic that they'll be set up for now at the airport, since the host church of the Toronto Blessing was the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship; they had to buy a failed conference center in an industrial park near the airport to hold the crowds they were getting a decade ago.

It looks like they are starting to institutionalize things much like Toronto, having a smaller service in the mornings at the host Ignited Church and a big evening service out at the airport.

However, I'd still feel more at home a couple miles to the east along Pipkin Road at the Lakeland Vineyard, my old church in my Florida days. For folks going to the revival and looking for a break from the high-octane stuff, check them out, although they may be a bit tame by Bentley standards, being founded by a Southern Baptist pastor who got too charismatic for the Baptists a couple of decades back.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Comments

[Bene D]

Bentley isn't getting much traditional media attention, I found a minister's opinion piece in The Pembroke Daily Observer.

http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1041424

Rodney Howard-Browne is out stumping now with a Great Awakening Tour. GodTV is central to the advertising. He was involved with the Straders and the subsequent conviction bragging that "sheep needed to be fleeced or they would have too much hair and could not see where they are going. It was the pastors job to fleece the sheep."

I saw a question on why Florida was the place many of these Third Wave meetings take place. Apart from the fact Charisma Mag is headquartered in Lake Wales, I wonder too.

People go to Florida to get away, find some sun, fun and excitement, I guess it makes sense to give them what they want.
Any thoughts?

[Mark Byron]

Bentley won't likely get much attention as long as the miracles aren't in-your-face ones and there isn't any scandals beyond some rather loopy (to put it kindly) theology. Newspapers aren't good about writing about good news or the Good News, so unless there's some kind of conflict, there's no story.

Charisma is out of Lake Mary (which is north of Orlando), not Lake Wales. I used to teach in Lake Wales and would have remembered a major (at least in Pentecostal circles) magazine being published out of there.

Why Florida? Lakeland has Southeastern College, an Assembly of God school, so a lot of Pentecostals will set up shop in Laklenad.

Also, the weather's nice and there are plenty of people moving to the area looking for a church. Benny Hinn was HQed in Orlando, RH Brown and Paula White work out of Tampa and James Kennedy (a conservative Presbyterian and not a third-waver by any means) worked out of Fort Lauderdale. Campus Crusade has its HQ in Orlando.

That "fleecing" line can be taken two ways. If it's mere pruning, Brown's not far from the truth, for spiritual growth will require some trimming away of the dead wood; check out John 15 for a good use of that metaphor.

It takes on a different meaning when high-salaried televangelists "fleece" their flocks, especially in the case of one of the sons of the Carpenter's Home pastor, who is in jail for a financial scam that many parishioners got caught up in.