Mike Bickle: A Prayer, a Prophecy, and a Predator

0:09On October 20, 2023, Mike Bickle stood on stage at the Forerunner Church in Grandview, Missouri, Missouri, Missouri, Missouri. of Kansas City. He was at home up there, looking out into a sea of faces in the dimly lit auditorium. Bickle founded the International House of Prayer of Kansas City in 1999 and has led worship for a devoted congregation ever since. The forerunner church emerged as a suburban offshoot of his larger ministry. A typical Bickle sermon is lengthy and peppered with personal tangents, mainly focused on connecting the prophecy he receives from God to the mission of his niche church.

0:52But that October day, he gripped his mic a little tightly. His usual charismatic, friendly vibe was kind of dark. Bickle began to deliver a sermon that would soon be scrubbed from the internet and become infamously referred to as the Black Horse Sermon. I think it raises big questions about their faith and about this type of Christianity and has really shaken people's foundations as this has all come to light. Bickle described an apocalyptic scene where a satanic black horse whispered into the ears of people, urging them to betray and accuse each other of atrocities. Most pointedly, Bickle claimed he had visions of a demonic attack of accusation against himself.

1:42One he insisted would not prevail. It wasn't subtle. And as you probably guessed, he was using the stage to get out in front of an accusation before it surfaced. There has been such a predatory type of misconduct that has come out through these investigations. The concern is that, well, if he hasn't even ended up to this, hasn't ever really apologized, will he just do it again? Whatever Bickle's sense that day wasn't symbolic or prophetic. The reckoning was already in motion, and he was standing directly in its path.

2:28This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Mike Bickle, A Prayer, A Prophecy, and a Predator. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we delve into the story of Mike Bickle, a so-called man of God who used his power and influence to groom and abuse young women who trusted him the most.

3:12Mike Bickle is well known in the Christian scene as the founder of the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, commonly referred to as IHOPKC. He didn't just start another dime-a-dozen church in the Midwest. He helped to kick off a veritable wave of charismatic Christianity, a movement that gained considerable momentum throughout the United States in the 1990s. Here is Rebecca Hopkins, a journalist with the Royce Report, who has written extensively about Bickle. So he started pastoring in the, I believe it was the 1980s. Started as an intern at a church and then has worked at a few churches from there.

3:57He's from Missouri, got his start in ministry in St. Louis, and then the bulk of his ministry was in Kansas City. While Bickle was working as a church intern in 1982, he reported receiving prophecies and visions from God. He claims God told him that he will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in one generation. A year later, another local prophet named Bob Jones came to Bickle and told him he had received a prophecy that Bickle would lead young people in a massive worship movement. Shortly after talking with Jones, Bickle had visions that he went to heaven, met with Michael the archangel, and received direction to follow in the spirit of the tabernacle of David.

4:46With prophecies in hand, Bickle jumped headfirst into launching his career as a church leader. He first became well known by being part of the Kansas City Prophets. He was part of this group of men who were part of a church that he had also founded called Kansas City Fellowship. The other two men were Paul Kane and Bob Jones. And the three of them, Mike Bickle, Paul Kane, Bob Jones, were known as being able to kind of prophesy very specific things into the church. And this was during the 80s and 90s. By early 90s, they were making national news for being these prophets. It kind of really galvanized a very charismatic side of Christianity and kind of this prophetic side in a way that hadn't really happened before or happened to that level.

5:43Charismatic Christianity is a sect of Christianity that focuses on the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit. It can include a focus on all kinds of little miracles, from healing to speaking in tongues. Though what really sets it apart is the preacher's ability to receive visions and prophecies. This kind of approach to religion can be appealing to people because it seeks to make the religious experience tangible. Who wouldn't want to hear directly from God? Bickle and his friends were really tapped into this, and they had the personal charisma to back it up. If you want people to believe God is speaking through you, you've got to have a believable stage presence.

6:35I think he was an exciting figure. He was an incredible teacher. He had a way with words. He is known to be a very generous person. He very quickly, within just a few years of pastoring and really just early on into founding IHOPKC, had quite a large following. People all around the world were listening to him. And then once he started IHOPKC, people were coming from all around the world to be part of this prayer movement. So I think the prophecy was very exciting because it just added this freshness to Kansas, to prayer and to Christianity. He had a way of cultivating those connections and growing an audience.

7:18One of Bickle's key missions within IHOPKC was the foundation of 24-7 prayer. And that's exactly what it sounds like. There have been people engaged in prayer every second of every day in IHOPKC since 1999. nine. It's prayer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And they have like this special prayer room and there's these, these prayer ministers, there's these musicians that are playing. And in fact, you're called an intercessory missionary intercessory meaning prayer. And then a missionary, like your job is to pray and it's to actually usher in the end times and people would come from all over the world to do this.

8:07And they would raise their own money. They would live on very little money. They'd do these like, you know, prayer vigils. They would pray through the night. People were so devoted. They wanted to be part of this super exciting prayer movement that was going to bring in the end times and bring Jesus back to earth. In IHOPKC, Bickle had created a church that was more than a place you dragged your kids to on a Sunday morning. A place where God spoke, where people stayed up all night and all day praying, and where the end times were approaching. In other words, the stakes were high. When you have a cult of personality attached to a high-demand culture, it's pretty easy to get people to buy into your shtick.

8:58So practically, they would go to this prayer room. They would sign up for these slots to pray. And so it wasn't even that you could pray during your day. I mean, sure, you can do that too. But they would have to go and pray through the night in this prayer room. And so as you can imagine, how do you hold a super full-time job if you're signing up for all of these prayer sessions? In a lot of cases, it became their job, their role, their calling in life. In this case, the most devoted followers of Mike Bickle and IHOPKC were giving up unimaginable amounts of time in pursuit of 24-7 prayer. Going to church at IHOPKC was their full-time unpaid internship.

9:46A lot of them were very young people. They were people in their late teens, early 20s. They were, some of them, not going to college because they felt like this was what they were supposed to be doing. And making, yeah, very, very little money working all the time in this prayer room. It could be all-consuming. While all kinds of people from all over the world were joining IHOPKC, Bickle notably chose to pay special attention to young people. Maybe this had to do with the prophecy he received from his friend Bob Jones. However, there wasn't anything in the prophecy about young women. That seems like something Bickle tacked on.

10:30Early on in Michael Bickle's ministry, he seemed to focus on women, young women. And there were some, I would call them very strange aspects of this. So one of the factors is that he would really promote and encourage the women to be celibate, to stay single, to not get married, and to be part of his own group of women that he was discipling. But very much with this idea that they were not going to have boyfriends, they were going to be celibate, but also he was grooming the women for himself. No one called out this kind of behavior in the early days of IHOPKC. Maybe he was able to hide his connections to young women behind his larger pattern of engaging primarily with young people in the ministry.

11:26Or maybe it was just hard for true believers to imagine that a man who spoke the very words of God could be doing something fishy. One thing that was pretty key to Mike Bickle's IHOP KC ministry is that most of the people that worked for him were very young, even the men. There were some men that came in and became leaders, but most of them were much younger than him. And they looked up to Mike Bickle as a spiritual father. I mean, by then he'd made national news for being a Kansas city prophet. He routinely would say he heard from God. That's how he preached, but he managed to keep kind of his connection with women kind of separate from the men.

12:10He wouldn't necessarily like broadcast that. And he always had a spiritual reason for everything. So even if you kind of thought like, this seems weird, he would have a way to justify it using, using God, using the Bible, using prophecy. And so it was really confusing for people. As a father figure to a group of younger individuals, Bickle effectively insulated himself from critique. When a person sets up a power structure as emotionally rooted as a father-child dynamic, it can feel almost impossible to question them. As it turns out, it was also the perfect stage for undercover abuse.

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14:07Mike Bickle was the charismatic leader of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri. He led a massive ministry preaching supernatural prophecies, not to mention attempting to usher the end times to earth. But behind the scenes, he was isolating young women and calling them disciples. It was in this environment, where young women were financially vulnerable, awed by claims of prophecy and fiercely loyal to Bickel, that a 40-year pattern of sexual abuse and grooming took root. But Bickel didn't wait until he founded his own church to start this pattern of behavior. His earliest recorded victim reports her story as starting in the mid-1970s.

14:59For her anonymity, she has chosen to go on record by the initials T.H. When Bickle and T.H. first met, he was in his early 20s. She was just 15. Here is Rebecca Hopkins, a journalist with the Roy's Report. he's this church intern working with the youth group she's part of the youth group and at the time she believes she was in like a dating relationship with him even though definitely an age difference she's very young but i would say definitely a physical aspect crossed the line past what a kind of a chaste christian relationship should be definitely physical touching and he told her this interesting prophecy.

15:48So years later, he told her that his wife, when he became married later, was going to die in an earthquake in St. Louis. And then that would open up the possibility that they could be together. So this became the golden thread, this prophecy, but that was the first victim. Again, very early on, he's not married yet, But definitely some aspects where now looking back, she sees it as grooming. In interviews with the Roy's report, TH says that she viewed Bickle as a spiritual father and that they had to date in secret because her parents didn't approve. Their relationship ended in 1976, but by the early 80s, Bickle had called her and rekindled their emotional connection.

16:40At this point, he had a wife and kids. After a period of becoming increasingly close to Bickle, T.H. ended up cutting off their emotional affair and married someone else within the church. This wedding finally closed the door on T.H. and Bickle's almost decade-long relationship. But it wasn't until allegations against Bickle were made public in 2023 that TH started to question her memory of her boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Bickle's next recorded victim tells a story that follows the same disturbing pattern. The next victim was this woman named Tammy Woods. This was the early 1980s. She was 14.

17:29he was in his early twenties. He was pastoring in St. Louis and he asked her to become the babysitter, but then he started giving her rides home. He would go visit her at her school, like wait by her locker. He'd ask her to call him from school. And he also told her this prophecy that, um, his wife, Diane was going to die and then they would be able to get married. And there was definitely like the sexual element to this relationship. But he kind of convinced her that he's not preying on her, but that they're in a relationship. How could Bickle and Tammy become so inappropriately entangled without raising suspicion from her family?

18:16By using his power as a pastor and an influential member of his religious community, Bickle was able to groom not only his victims, but their families. He also befriended her parents. He would try to get into the whole family. Another thing that was a pretty common pattern with these women is that after he would have some kind of sexual encounter with them, he would apologize, he'd be in tears, he'd ask forgiveness. But then of course he would do it again. And it would really, really mess with these women's lines. Bickle's patterns of control worked. Tammy Woods stayed silent for years because she sincerely believed she was Bickle's only victim.

19:05When she found out that wasn't the case, she felt, quote, duped. So by the time Bickle founded IHOPKC, his MO was already set. The parallels between these two women's stories were glaring. First, Bickle would mix typical predatory grooming techniques with religious prophecy, thereby significantly raising the stakes of the relationship for the young woman. He would break down the physical boundaries, you know, starting out with hugs, pretty typical grooming techniques. this idea that they were in a relationship, but he's driving the whole thing clearly. And then this thread of this prophecy, he would tell multiple women, this idea that his wife was going to die and then they could be together.

19:56And that kind of gives him this way to work around the fact that, you know, in Christianity, marriage is sacred. You're not supposed to divorce. So how can he convince these strong Christians, devoted women to overcome, like, they're not going to be okay with him getting divorced from Diane. But if you convince them that she's going to die soon, so it's okay. It became this way for them to have a way to be with him, even though they were pretty mixed up about it, even when it was happening. Bicklewood also may get a point to stay involved in these women's lives for as long as possible, going so far as to cry in public on their wedding days.

20:40sometimes when they finally would date someone and end up marrying them, he would, um, kind of back off a little bit. Usually he's still found a way to stay in their lives. And this was one of the common patterns is, um, and the victims who've really talked about this, they've talked about how even though he might officiate the wedding of a sibling or someone close to them, he would refuse to officiate their weddings. And there would be some moment where he would either call them crying or he like walks to the front of the church on the wedding day and is like just sobbing. And whether that was because he still had an attraction to them, was still trying to pray on them, or he was just trying to stay in their good graces so they wouldn't then tell their new husband or, you know, start talking about this as they got older and realized, wait, this wasn't right.

21:34Bickel worked hard to maintain these relationships long past their periods of intimacy, knowing that to release control would mean opening his actions up to scrutiny. And this behavior wasn't relegated just to the young women he victimized to the fullest extent, or to the few who have reported it. Bickel is reported to have had internal deadbolts on his office doors in IHOP KC, despite the fact that no other church leader had them installed. Many people from IHOPKC report noticing Bickle's inappropriate contact with women, from a hand lingering on a thigh to an inordinate amount of time alone in a locked office.

22:24His carefully built image made the warning signs easy to ignore. He was a master manipulator that convinced his victims that the relationships were not only consensual, but sanctioned by God. Many didn't recognize the behavior as abuse until years later. After 40 years, the silence broke. Not by chance, but by defiance, when one woman came forward to tell her story. Her name is Deborah Perkins, though she began this process as Jane Doe. There had been a lot of people that for a lot of years were observing some of his behavior toward women and felt pretty uncomfortable with it. But again, he's such a big force.

23:11It was hard to really wrap your head around that he's really doing this. But this one woman who at the time was going by Jane Doe, but now has come out as Deborah Perkins. She was a victim during the time that he was actually starting IHOPKC. So the late 90s, she met him when she was 19. In 1995, Debra's brother moved to Kansas City to join IHOPKC. The family's enthusiasm for Bickle's mission ran deep. Her father was also an admirer. When Debra followed in 1996 to join her brother at the church, Bickle began to single out the Perkins family. She was 19. Bickle was 42. Bickle aged, but the teenage girls he targeted did not.

24:05He took Debra and her brothers to dinners and football games. The family felt singled out by a powerful man, but Debra most of all. Soon after she joined IHOP KC, Bickle told her he had begun dreaming about her. Then he gave her a prophecy. In it, he cast himself as the biblical David and Deborah as Esther. He told her that she was, quote,

24:38For context, David's story in the Bible is often used to teach unwavering faith through adversity, while the story of Esther teaches courage in the face of danger. He very much from the beginning was trying to like prophesy over her, trying to give her this really big vision, and then started a physical relationship with her, came on pretty strong at this one point. So she's kind of entrapped in this like sexual dynamic with him that she, you know, didn't necessarily want to have happen. By 1997, Bickle had requested that Deborah come work for him as a research assistant. He rented her an apartment and sent her to libraries all across the city to scour text for information on the return of Jesus.

25:30Deborah remembers feeling like the center of his world at the time, but that he came to control practically every aspect of her life. She fasted with him for half of every week, and intentionally isolated herself from others in order to follow an obscure passage from the Bible concerning the Desert Fathers, who were early Christian monks and hermits. Basically, Deborah was not allowed to have friends. If Deborah were the center of his world, Bickle was also making sure that he was the center of hers. About three years later, in 2000, the relationship seemed to have fizzled out. Deborah had moved into a house owned by her father and had new roommates and friends.

26:22At the same time, it's reported that two new women might have caught Bickle's eye. Deborah grew up as best she could, making a life for herself in Kansas City and compartmentalizing the abuse she experienced. But trauma has a way of coming back to the surface when you least expect it. In March 2023, while listening to a podcast featuring a survivor of Bill Cosby's sexual assaults, something clicked for Debra. The pieces finally fell into place. All of a sudden, things clicked into place of what this was. And it just, like, crushed her. And the way she puts it is that it was trauma unearthed and she just starts sobbing.

27:13She ends up telling her husband for the first time what happened. She ends up talking with a friend who actually, the friend said to her first, Hey, has Mike Bickle ever done anything physical with you? She hadn't talked about it before. And here's this friend saying this. And she's like, Oh my goodness. Yes. And I'm just figuring this out. Right. And then this friend says, I think there's a current woman. And when she realized it was not just her, it wasn't just this one time thing that happened. Let's tuck it away. Let's not think about it. That was weird, but we all moved on. It was, oh my goodness, there's a current woman that is going through this.

27:51Just like T.H. and Tammy Woods, Debra was motivated to speak up once she realized that her experience with Bickle wasn't a fluke, nor a special circumstance. Once she saw the pattern that she was a part of, she couldn't unsee it. It was then she realized that action needed to be taken or the story would keep repeating. And then that's when she decided to speak up and she started contacting some of the other former leaders that she was close to from IHOP. And to their great credit, they believed her and they decided to come beside her After confiding in her husband and coming up with a game plan, Deborah approached Alan Hood and Dwayne Roberts, both former influential members of IHOPKC.

28:45This was a smart move. These two men had known her for over 20 years and knew her well enough not to doubt her integrity on this world-shattering story. By September 2023, Roberts approached the executive director of IHOP KC, a man named Stuart Greaves, with a general complaint against Bickle. Roberts was demanding a formal meeting between himself, Greaves, and Bickle in hopes of getting to the bottom of the matter. But Greaves refused. Bickle had built something nefarious into the fabric of IHOP KC. Such a large organization had to have a structure in place to deal with sexual assault and abuse allegations.

29:33Conveniently, IHOP KC's internal system of accountability was based on the Bible verse Matthew 18. There were some women that were starting to share their stories of sexual assault by other staff or leaders within IHOP, and they had tried to get IHOP leaders to, you know, protect them, to bring accountability, to fire these people. They were met with this idea that they had to use Matthew 18. That's this verse in the Bible that talks about how if there's someone who is sinned against you, you go to them first, have a one-on-one conversation. And so that's what keeps the culture going is that there wasn't this quick, like, let's turn them into police.

30:17Let's fire them. It was, let's take our time. Let's work through this Matthew 18 process. It's a really scary concept, but that Matthew 18 came up again and again and again, including the Mike Bickle thing is that's how the leaders wanted to deal with Deborah's allegations as well. IHOP-KC's sexual assault protocol required victims to confront their abuser one-on-one, a setup that favored the accused by isolating the victim, reinforcing existing power imbalances, and eliminating witnesses or accountability. But the church argued that this was a Bible-based chance for dialogue, focused on reconciliation instead of punishment.

31:01In practice, the Matthew 18 process functioned as a containment strategy, designed to bury misconduct, silence women, and keep scandal inside the walls of the church. But Deborah didn't take no for an answer, just as she didn't fall in line and participate in the Matthew 18 process. process. The situation came to a head in October of 2023. By this point, a whole host of people had been brought over to Debra's side and Greaves was frustrated that the story was getting out of control. On October 9th, Bickle agreed to meet with Debra's husband. The meeting went how you would expect. Bickle denied, denied, denied.